Mapping of Research

Research on financialisation and blended finance in global health is dispersed across disciplines and sectors, making it difficult to identify trends, gaps and future research priorities. The group addresses this by mapping the scholarship and synthesising existing research to provide a clear overview of the field and identify knowledge gaps.

This page serves as a non-exhaustive repository of relevant academic and ‘grey’ literature and a map of knowledge gaps.


Alphabetised Repository:

A

Akina Mama Wa Afrika and Wemos, 2022. The Africa Medical Equipment Facility (AMEF) in Kenya: Does this new blended finance facility contribute to equitable access to healthcare services?

Ayhan and Ustuner, 2023. Turkey’s public–private partnership experience: a political economy perspective. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 23:1

B

Ballestero, Andrea, Andrea Muehlebach & Gloria Pérez-Rivera (2023) What is a financial frontier?, Journal of Cultural Economy, 16:3, 311-322, DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2023.2176345

Bayliss K, 2016. The financialisation of health in England: lessons from the water sector. FESSUD Working Paper Series No 131

Benoît, C., 2023. The regulatory path to healthcare systems’ financialization. Journal of European Social Policy, 33(4).

Borsa A, Bejarno G, Ellen M and Bruch JV, 2023. Evaluating trends in private equity ownership and impacts on health outcomes, costs, and quality: systematic review. BMJ, 382:e075244

Brim B and Wenham C, 2019. Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility: struggling to deliver on its innovative promise. BMJ Global Health, 367:l5719

Bruch R, Roy V and Grogan CR, 2024. The Financialization of Health in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 390(2): 178-182

Bůžek, Richard, 2025. Dissociation of Value Extraction: The Financialisation of Solidarity-Based German Ambulatory Healthcare. Finance and Space 2(1).

C

Camacho S, Castrejon D and Silva D, 2023. El Negocio de Las Vacuuna$: Balance post-pandemia. PODER: https://poderlatam.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/InformeVacunas_BalancePostPandemia.pdf 

Chakravarthi I, Roy B, Mukhopadhyay I and Barria S, 2017. Investing in Health: Healthcare Industry in India, Economic & Political Weekly, 52(45): 50-56

Cordilha AC, 2021. Public health systems in the age of financialization: lessons from the French case. Review of Social Economy, 81(2), 246–273

Cordilha AC, 2022. Financialisation and Public Health Systems: a new concept to examine ongoing reforms. Economie et Institutions [online], 30-31. 

Cordilha AC, 2023. Public Health Systems in the Age of Financialization : Lessons from the Center and the Periphery. Brill.

D

E

Erikson, Susan. 2025. Investable! When Pandemic Risk Meets Speculative Finance – A Cautionary Tale. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Erikson, Susan. 2025. The Business of Betting on Catastrophe. The MIT Reader, June 23. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-business-of-betting-on-catastrophe/

Erikson, Susan. 2025. Shifting Aid Money to Wall Street: The Financialization of Aid is Underway. The McLeod Group, March 12. https://www.mcleodgroup.ca/2025/03/shifting-aid-money-to-wall-street-the-financialization-of-aid-is-underway/

Erikson, Susan and Iveoma Udevi-Aruevoru. 2023. The Future of Reproductive Health Financing. Handbook of the Anthropology of Reproduction, eds. Cecilia Van Hollen and Nayantara Sheoran Appleton. New York: Wiley.

Erikson, Susan 2020 Betting on Pandemic. Medical Anthropology. Apr 20. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01459740.2020.1746302

Erikson, Susan and Leigh Johnson. 2020. Will Financial Innovations Transform Pandemic Response? Lancet Infectious Diseases 20(5):529-530. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30150-X. Open Access:https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30150-X/fulltext Reprinted: Alliance 2020 25(4):60-61 as Pandemic Bonds: Betting or Innovation for Good? https://www.alliancemagazine.org/feature/will-financial-innovation-transform-pandemic-response/

Erikson, Susan. 2019. Global Health Futures? Reckoning with a Pandemic Bond. Medicine Anthropology Theory 6(3):77-108. https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.6.3.664; Open Access: http://www.medanthrotheory.org/read/11401/global-health-futures Translated and reprinted in Spanish and published in Aiken: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y de la Salud 2021 1(2):63-87. ¿Futuros de la salud global? https://eamdq.com.ar/ojs/index.php/aiken/article/view/24; Also reviewed in Spanish:Pozzio, Maria. 2020 AVÁ 37: 153-15https://www.ava.unam.edu.ar/images/37/n37a07.pdf

Erikson, Susan. 2016 Metrics and Market Logics of Global Health. In Metrics: What Counts in Global Health, ed. Vincanne Adams. Pp: 147-162. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Erikson, Susan. 2015. Secrets from Whom? Following the Money in Global Health Finance. Current Anthropology 56(S12):306-316. https://doi.org/10.1086/683271 Open Access:https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/683271

Erikson, Susan. 2012 Global Health Business: The Production and Performativity of Statistics in Sierra Leone and Germany. Medical Anthropology, 32(4):367-384.  https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2011.621908 Open Access:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01459740.2011.621908?needAccess=true

Erikson, Susan L. 2016. Money Matters: Ebola Bonds and Other Migrating Models of Humanitarian Finance. In Global Dialogues, Markus Böckenförde, Nadja Krupke, and Philipp Michaelis (eds.) Duisburg: Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21). Doi: 10.14282/2198-0403-GD-13. http://www.gcr21.org/fileadmin/website/daten/pdf/Publications/Cooperation_and_Migration_2198-0403-GD-13.pdf

Erikson, Susan L.  2015.  The Financialization of Ebola. Somatosphere. http://somatosphere.net/2015/11/the-financialization-of-ebola.html

F

Friel S, Schram A, Frank N et al, 2024. Financialisation: a 21st century commercial determinant of health equity. Lancet Public Health, 9:e705-8

G

Ghosh J, Heintz J and Pollin R, 2012. Speculation on commodities futures markets and destabilization of global food prices: exploring the connections. International Journal of Health Services, 42(3), 465-483

H

Hughes-McLure S and Mawdsley E, 2022. Innovative Finance for Development? Vaccine Bonds and the Hidden Costs of Financialization. Economic Geography, 98(2):1-25

Hunter BM, McCoy D, Cordilha AC, Marriott A, Roy V, Stein F, and B Wood (2025). Private Financial Actors and Financialisation in Global Health. UN University International Institute for Global Health, Kuala Lumpur. [Available here]

Hunter BM, Chakravarthi I, Marathe S, and SF Murray (2025). Financialisation and the Reshaping of Private Healthcare: A Case Study in India. Sociology of Health & Illness [Available here]

Hunter BM. 2023. Investor States: Global Health at the End of Aid [Elements Series on Global Development Studies]. Cambridge University Press. [Available here]

Hunter BM and JD Shaffer. 2021. Human capital, risk and the World Bank’s reintermediation in global development. Third World Quarterly, 43(1): 35-54 https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1953980 

Hunter BM and SF Murray. 2019. De-constructing the financialization of healthcare. Development and Change, 50(5): 1263-87 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dech.12517 

Hunter BM and A Marriott. 2018. “Development Finance Institutions: The (in)coherence of their investments in private healthcare companies”, in: The Reality of Aid International Coordinating Committee (eds.) Reality of Aid 2018 Report. Quezon City: IBON

L

Lavinas L. 2017. The Takeover of Social Policy by Financialization: The Brazilian Paradox. Palgrave Macmillan.

Lazonick W and Tulum O, 2022. Sick with “shareholder value”: US pharma’s financialized business model during the pandemic. Competition & Change, 28(2): 251-273

M

Marathe S and Shukla A, 2024. Perverse Development-Examining German Development Finance Institutions’ Engagement in Private Healthcare Sector in India. Development, doi.org/10.1057/s41301-024-00408-4

Marathe S, Hunter BM, Chakravarthi I, Shukla A and SF Murray. 2020. The impacts of corporatisation of healthcare on medical practice and professionals in Maharashtra, India. BMJ Global Health, 2020;5: e002026

Marchandot B, Morel O, 2025. The Financialization of Healthcare in France: Trends and implications, Public Health in Practice, 9.

Marriott, A, 2023. Sick Development: How rich-country government and World Bank funding to for-profit private hospitals causes harm, and why it should be stopped. Oxfam

Marriott, A and Harmer J, 2014. Investing for the few: the IFC’s Health in Africa initiative. Oxfam

Murray SF, 2024. The Problem of Private Health Insurance: Insights from Middle-Income Countries. Cambridge University Press

R

Romero and Vervynckt, 2017. Unpacking the dangerous illusion of PPPs, in Kishimoto and Petitjean (Eds) Reclaiming Public Services: How cities and citizens are turning back privatisation. Transnational Institute

Roy V, 2023. Capitalizing a Cure How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines. University of California Press

S

Seddon, J., Currie, W., 2017. Healthcare Financialisation and the Digital Divide in the European Union: Narrative and Numbers. Information & Management, 54(8)

Smith K and Lawrence G, 2021. Finance’s Social License? Sugar, Farmland and Health. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 10, 957-967

Stein F and McNeil D, 2025. Blended finance to the rescue: Subsidies, vaccine bonds and matching funds in global health. Global Public Health

Stein F, 2021. Risky business: COVAX and the financialization of global vaccine equity. Globalization and Health, 17, 112.

Stein F and Sridhar D, 2018. The Financialisation of Global Health. Wellcome Open Research, 3(17).

Suzuki et al., 2025. Trends in the Financialisation of Outpatient Care Across OECD Countries: What do we know? OECD Health Working Papers, No. 179

T

Taneja A and Sarkar A, 2023. First, Do No Harm: Examining the Impact of the IFC’s support to private healthcare in India. Oxfam

Tracey M, Schulmann K, Tille F, Rice T, Mercille J, Timans R, Allin S, Dottin A, Syrjälä S, Sotamaa T, Keskimäki I, Rechel B., 2025. What are the policy options for regulating private equity involvement in health care? A review of policies implemented or considered in seven high-income countries. Health Policy, 156.

Tchiombiano, S., 2019. Public health, private approach: The Global Fund and the involvement of private actors in global health. Face à face [online], 15.

V

van Dijk, Tessa S., Martijn Felder, Richard T. J. M. Janssen, and Wilma K. van der Scheer, 2023. For Better or Worse: Governing Healthcare Organisations in Times of Financial Distress. Sociology of Health & Illness.

Vural IE, 2017. Financialisation in health care: An analysis of private equity fund investments in Turkey. Social Science & Medicine, 187.

W

Wood B, Robinson E, Baker P et al, 2023. What is the purpose of ultra-processed food? An exploratory analysis of the financialisation of ultra-processed food corporations and implications for public health. Globalization and Health, 19(1), 85

Wood B and Sacks G, 2023. The influence of share buybacks on ill-health and health inequity: an exploratory analysis using a socio-ecological determinants of health lens. Globalization and Health, 19(3)

Wood B, McLean A, and Sacks G, 2024. Health in the age of asset manager capitalism. Health Promot Int 39 (5)