Interrogating the World Bank's role in global health knowledge production, governance, and finance.

Background: In the nearly half century since it began lending for population projects, the World Bank has become one of the largest financiers of global health projects and programs, a powerful voice in shaping health agendas in global governance spaces, and a mass producer of evidentiary knowledge for its preferred global health interventions. How can social scientists interrogate the role of the World Bank in shaping 'global health' in the current era?

Main Body: As a group of historians, social scientists, and public health officials with experience studying the effects of the institution's investment in health, we identify three challenges to this research. First, a future research agenda requires recognizing that the Bank is not a monolith, but rather has distinct inter-organizational groups that have shaped investment and discourse in complicated, and sometimes contradictory, ways.

Conducting Virtual Global Health Engagement (GHE) activities in the Midst of the Global COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations for the Department of Defense GHE Enterprise.

The global COVID-19 pandemic resulted in restriction of non-essential travel across the globe, as seen in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Memorandum, "Force Health Protection Guidance (Supplement 4): DoD Guidance for Personnel Traveling During the Novel Coronavirus Outbreak" (11 March 2020). This resulted in the suspension of most, if not all, Department of Defense (DoD) security cooperation (SC) programs, including DoD Global Health Engagement (GHE) activities.1 One such program is the African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership (APRRP), which relies heavily on face-to-face interactions with select African Partner Nations (PNs), and which was significantly impacted by the inability to conduct in-person training with key partners.

Understanding the Impact of Historical Policy Legacies on Nutrition Policy Space: Economic Policy Agendas and Current Food Policy Paradigms in Ghana.

Background: The global food system is not delivering affordable, healthy, diverse diets, which are needed to address malnutrition in all its forms for sustainable development. This will require policy change across the economic sectors that govern food systems, including agriculture, trade, finance, commerce and industry - a goal that has been beset by political challenges. These sectors have been strongly influenced by entrenched policy agendas and paradigms supported by influential global actors such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Mainstreaming as rhetoric or reality? Gender and global health at the World Bank.

Over the past decade gender mainstreaming has gained visibility at global health organisations. The World Bank, one of the largest funders of global health activities, released two showcasing its gender policies, and recently announced a $1 billion initiative for women's entrepreneurship. We summarise the development of the Bank's gender policies and analyse its financing of gender projects in the health sector.

Balancing science and political economy: Tobacco control and global health.

: Global tobacco control is a major public health issue, as smoking-related disease burden remains high worldwide. The World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) are the driving forces in global tobacco control. However, little research has focused on their development, financing, decision-making, and accountability structures.

Earmarking for global health: benefits and perils of the World Bank's trust fund model.

In the third article in this series, and review different types of trust funds and how they fit within the bank’s lending mechanism, and discuss the major benefits and risks of the bank’s use of the trust fund model for health

World Bank's financing, priorities, and lending structures for global health.

In the first article of a series, describe how the World Bank has used its influence to catalyse change in global health