Episode 6 - Health Inequities and Disability cover art

Episode 6 - Health Inequities and Disability

Episode 6 - Health Inequities and Disability

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 Episode 6 Health Inequities and Disability - show notes The sixth episode of The Global Health Histories Podcast, hosted by Shane Doyle (Professor of African History and Co-Director of the Centre for Global Heath Histories at the University of Leeds), focuses on disability and health inequities. The podcast features interviews with: Professor Jessica Meyer, Professor of British Social and Cultural History at the University of Leeds. Jessica is a specialist in the history of health inequities experienced by veterans with disabilities after the First World War (01:34); and with Dr Kaloyan Kamenov, who currently leads the World Health Organization program on disability, and helps coordinate the WHO Disability Health Equity Initiative (27:26). 1.3 billion people, around a sixth of the world’s population, live with disability. In the recent pandemic, COVID-related mortality among people with disabilities was 2.7 times higher than in the rest of the global population. This relative disadvantage is not a new phenomenon – in a series of studies analysing mortality due to all causes, people with disabilities were found to have a mortality rate that was around twice as high as people without disabilities. Much of this elevated risk of death is due to factors which are avoidable. In November 2025, the World Health Organisation launched a Disability Health Equity Network aiming to address the structural disadvantages which affect people with disabilities as they engage with health systems around the world. This episode discusses the ambitions of this new WHO program, and considers the significance of the First World War in the long history of efforts to achieve health equity for people with disabilities. Discussion focuses on a series of key issues: the importance of stimulating a demand for equitable health access; the prioritisation of ensuring state recognition of health equity as a right; and the challenges of achieving broad-based progress when health budgets are under pressure. For further reading, see: https://www.who.int/health-topics/disability#tab=tab_1 WHO Disability Health Equity Initiative World Health Organisation, Global report on health equity for persons with disabilities (2022) https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/expert-opinion/why-healthcare-leaving-people-disabilities-behind https://menwomenandcare.leeds.ac.uk/ Jessica Meyer, ‘“He does not appear to have done much useful work since he was wounded”: Age, disability, and the history of masculinity’, Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, 25, 1, May 2022: 41-58 Emre Umucu et al., ‘Health inequities among persons with disabilities: a global scoping review’, Frontiers in Public Health, 10, 13, Feb 2025 10;13:1538519.
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