As in the previous cycles of funding, the Chair accords primacy to health systems being shaped by the human agency of diverse actors responding and shaping the social contexts they work in. In this way, health systems complexity illuminates the intricate web of factors, both personal and structural, that determine health system’s responsiveness to addressing equity and social change imperatives.

Furthermore, taking an intersectionality perspective to explore different actors’ contexts, rationales and positionalities, allows for an understanding of how various actors in the systems are simultaneously in a position privilege and vulnerability. Insights into this duality can powerfully inform the ways in which health reforms can recognize, respect and draw on the agency of those often neglected on the frontlines of health care service delivery. Rather than see health care users and community members as passive beneficiaries and health workers and managers as demoralised callous individuals, Professor George’s work investigates ways to create a common basis to improve how those relationships can work more equitably, effectively and mutually respectfully to improve health and save lives. This appreciation of power relations serves the basis for her research grounded in advancing social change for social justice.

The Chair will therefore overall seek to ensure that understanding of gender, intersectionality and other social power relations are applied to health policy and systems research to enable learning at multiple health systems levels with local, regional and global spheres of influence.

Major collaborations have involved/ involve:

• Learning Partnerships for Gender Transformation with NACOSA and Hope Africa to support gender mainstreaming within a platform addressing adolescent girls vulnerability to HIV in Klipfontein, Cape Town.
• Gender Transformation for Africa: A sexual, reproductive and maternal health research collaborative linking 7 implementation research grants across 8 countries supporting gender mainstreaming.
• African Regional Community of Practice on Gender and Health
• An African regional network that undertook thematic and country based policy analysis of the first years of the Global Financing Facility, the global fund dedicated to women and children’s health.
• Imarisha: A research consortium supporting learning across Burkina Faso, Tanzania and South Africa to strengthen PHC by addressing gendered workplace violence.
• Setting sex and gender research priorities for COVID-19, including a more recent podcast series on challenging the backlash against gender inequality in global health.
• Queering Health Systems, a collaboration with Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, to support a journal supplement and knowledge platform to elevate attention to SOGIESC transformation of health systems.

The South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) was established by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the National Research Foundation (NRF). The aim is to attract and retain excellence in research and innovation at South African public universities through the establishment of Research Chairs.