Global Health and health diplomacy: analytical perspectives and examples

Vaccination has become a global concern as intergovernmental actors such as the World Health Organization (WHO) have reinforced their efforts to foster transnational collaboration on vaccine-preventable diseases. As the ongoing COVID19 pandemic has made visible, these global efforts stand in stark contrast to the contextually contingent nature of national immunization programs: Delivery systems and vaccination schedules differ greatly and so do the ways in which these systems are valued in terms of metrics, but also ethical and social dimensions. This paper examines why and how some repertoires of valuation become more dominant in some sites, and with what consequences for vaccination governance on a global scale. To do so, this study critically examines the role of rankings both in what we label ‘everyday health diplomacy’ at the level of the WHO and in the current rolling out of national and global COVID19 vaccination programs.