Through multidisciplinary research and policy engagement we bring new understanding and action on critical issues around health and health systems, and how they overlap with other systems such as food, as well as nutrition, sanitation, epidemics and zoonotic diseases. Enhancing understanding of how to ensure healthy lives for all is a vital part of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030) and has been an integral focus of IDS’ work since its inception.
Our research and analysis on innovations in health services and systems – including work on identifying effective strategies to address the challenges of antimicrobial resistance – is accelerating progress towards achieving universal health coverage in Asia and Africa. Our work on nutrition spans the spectrum from dietary transition and globalisation of food systems, through to responding to the ways that marginalisation and inequity drive high child malnutrition rates. We bring vital social knowledge to aid effective preparedness and response on pandemics. We show how direct impacts on the spread of diseases such as Ebola can be achieved by bringing learning from research on social issues and contexts to the right people in the right organisations at the right time. Together with our global partners, we are generating and sharing new knowledge and evidence to identify the underlying causes of poor health and social inequalities, and the progressive policies and practices that can help bring about transformative change.
The paper aims to provoke thought on the apparent entrapment of the poorest countries in a vicious circle of self-perpetuating backwardness. It begins with a selective review of the debate on growth failure, covering conventional and structuralist arguments and new growth theory.
This paper proposes a minimal model of the relationship between
human resources and foreign trade in developing countries, aimed at making
it easier for economists working in these two fields to communicate with
one another. The model combines familiar ingredients in a framework which
is...
"Participation" has three uses and meanings: cosmetic labelling, to look good, co-opting
practice, to secure local action and resources; and empowering process, to enable people
to take command and do things themselves. Its new popularity is part o f changes in
development rhetoric, thinking...
The paper explores post-modern currents in food security. It identifies three main
shifts in thinking about food security since the World Food Conference o f 1974: from
the global and the national to the household and the individual; from a food first
perspective to a livelihood perspective;...
Whether a country exports manufactures or primary products is determined mainly by the skill level of its labour force, relative to the extent of its natural resources.
This proposition is derived from a modified version of Heckscher-Ohlin theory, and strongly supported by econometric evidence....
Sustainable rural livelihoods will be needed for many more people in the 21st century. Three
widespread views tend to mislead and need to be qualified: that more people in rural areas is
always and necessarily bad for the environment; that poor people inherently take the short-term
view; and...
In an extraordinary time of challenge and change, we use more than 50 years of expertise to transform development approaches that create more equitable and sustainable futures. The work you do with us will help make progressive change towards universal development; to build and connect solidarities for collective action, locally and globally. The University of Sussex has been ranked 1st in the world for Development Studies for the past five years (QS World University Rankings by Subject).