The implicit ideological function of the global health field and its role in maintaining relations of power

### Summary box One formidable barrier to equity in the global health field is its implicit function of legitimising and reproducing the existing power structure in addition to its explicit goal of improving population health and health equity. In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Nuclear Threat Initiative, and the Economist Intelligence Unit published the Global Health Security Index.1 An international advisory panel of ‘21 experts from 13 countries ranked 195 countries based on a comprehensive framework of 140 questions, organized across 6 categories, 34 indicators, and 85 subindicators to assess a country’s capability to prevent and mitigate epidemics and pandemics’.1 The USA, the UK and the Netherlands were ranked top 3 countries on the overall score, with the USA ranked first in four out of …