Global Health Institute

While using health services provided by one’s own state remains a prominent avenue of access, in less formal state environments vulnerable populations frequently count on services from a variety of providers including foreign states, non-governmental organizations, charities, and foreign aid. 

This project, led by Lucia Vitale, defines a new conceptual framework for assessing health care access in our modern era, characterized by increasing migration, securitization, and health system fragmentation. This new concept, Assembled Access, explains a new era of health care in which those on the margins piece together care across a variety of providers and, in many cases, across borders. By making care more incoherent, inconsistent, and inequitable for patient populations, piecing together services through Assembled Access puts reliable primary health care out-of-reach for many in low- and middle-income countries.

Featuring

Lucia Vitale is an interdisciplinary global health scholar who uses comparative, mixed methods to study the politics of primary health care access in border spaces. She is an adjunct professor in Georgetown's Science, Technology, and International Affairs program and a Ph.D. candidate in the Politics Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her broader work has engaged topics of intellectual property rights in health and medicine, and the promises and pitfalls of artificial intelligence for global health. She is an active member of the International Studies Association’s Global Health Section, as well as the American Political Science Association’s Health Politics and Policy, and Migration and Citizenship Sections. Her previous and upcoming residencies include the American Political Science Association's Centennial Center in Washington, DC, and the Brocher Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland.