‘Labouring’ on the frontlines of global health research: mapping challenges experienced by frontline workers in Africa and Asia

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the reflections and discussions from a special session at the 2021 Global Health Bioethics Network summer school, this paper has summarised the key challenges faced by Frontline Workers (FWs) across research sites in Africa and Asia in performing the everyday ‘body work’ entailed in operationalising global health research. Using a ‘body work’ lens, we specifically explore and map key challenges that FWs face in Africa and Asia and the physical, social, ethical, emotional, and political labour involved in operationalising global health in these settings. The research encounter links with wider social and economic structures, and spatial dimensions and impacts on the FWs’ performance and well-being. Yet, FWs’ ‘body-work’ and the embedded emotions during the research encounter remain hidden and undervalued.

KEYWORDS:

• Body work
• frontline workers
• everyday ethics
• research ethics
• Africa
• Asia

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all members of the Global Health Bioethics Network (GHBN) who took part in the special session on ‘Co-producing locally embedded interventions to support fieldworkers’ during the 2021 GHBN Summer School for sharing their valuable experiences and engaging in fruitful discussions, which formed the basis of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The GHBN is funded by a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award (096527).