Global health actors, institutions, and communities are trying to respond to the unprecedented U.S. development aid cuts and the “America First” strategy to global health that focuses largely on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, polio, and global health security. Amid this normalized neglect of people and health issues, we argue that a social scientific lens is increasingly necessary to understand and improve conditions associated with Neglected Tropical Diseases throughout the world. Neglected Tropical Diseases are an institutionalized group of 20 diverse parasitic, viral, bacterial, and fungal diseases that can cause death, disability, disfigurement, and pain for over a billion people in every low-income country. Based on a review of social scientific research on Neglected Tropical Diseases, as well as other primary and secondary sources, this paper explores macro, meso, and micro themes ripe for social scientific research, including: 1) the social construction of disease categories; 2) the politics of agenda-setting and governance in the global health field; 3) political, economic, and commercial determinants of health and disease; 4) tensions between global disease initiatives and community realities; and 5) neglected disease treatment access and illness experiences. The article lays the groundwork for more holistic social scientific and biomedical research on Neglected Tropical Diseases that considers the intricate interplay of biological processes and social factors. We call on researchers to resist neglecting health issues that do not rank as highly on the hierarchy of global health problems. Instead, social scientists and biomedical researchers can procure more nuanced representations of marginalized health issues impacting people across the world so they can be better addressed through research, policy, and programs.
Farber et al. (Mon,) studied this question.