What is Geneva Health Files?
Geneva Health Files is an investigative, inter-disciplinary reporting initiative that seeks to capture power and politics in global health. This independent reporting initiative tracks international health policy as it unfolds in the capital of global health - Geneva, Switzerland.
It uses a comprehensive approach to its reporting that combines perspectives from science, trade, economics and governance to look at global health issues critically.
Although it is practically a one-person newsroom, the initiative does not exist in a vacuum. A community of readers, supporters, sources, friends and family shape it continuously. Welcome to this community!
This unique journalistic effort reaches a diverse readership comprising policymakers, academics and interested experts in global health through a weekly newsletter that offers distinct curation, investigative analyses every week. Its mission is not only to bring diverse perspectives to global health journalism, but to also contribute towards greater accountability and transparency in global health by honest, rigorous reporting.
Launched in April 2020, we have made already space for ourselves as a source of independent and consistent reporting that readers trust and value. As a result, a small but distinct community has begun to engage and emerge. Our reportage has found way into the syllabus of master’s programs and it has been cited in academic literature. We have spoken with governments, auditors and civil society organizations who have reached out to us for our critical perspective gleaned from our regular reporting on matters of global health in Geneva.
You can write to us at patnaik.reporting@gmail.com. Or follow us on twitter: @filesgeneva and @pretpat. Sign up to the bi-weekly newsletter on Substack.
Priti Patnaik
Founding Editor, Geneva Health Files
THE STORY OF GENEVA HEALTH FILES
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WHY SUBSCRIBE?
Readers of Geneva Health Files become a part of a community working towards greater transparency and accountability in global health policy-making.
As a paid subscriber you get timely and comprehensive analysis every Friday. We help you make sense of this relentless news cycle by going deep into one significant development in global health every week. You will also have access to interviews of experts and will be the first to know of fast-moving developments in global health policy-making as they take shape.
You can become a core supporter, if you see value in our work, believe in our mission and want us to become viable.
There are special discounts for students – the custodians for the future of global health.
Free subscribers have access to curated editions and will have limited, delayed access to some of the exclusive analyses from Geneva Health Files.
You can also support this independent reporting initiative paypal.me/genevahealthfiles. Your contributions will fund specific investigations in global health.
Why we created Geneva Health Files?
Priti Patnaik, Founding Editor, Geneva Health Files
I am an independent journalist based in Geneva, Switzerland.
As an independent journalist, I had weathered the vicissitudes of freelance reporting for many years. While reporting on global health (when no one was looking), I often found that crucial policy debates in Geneva had little space in mainstream media. The prospect of investigating these technical matters and publishing for a specialized readership was a dream I had long nurtured.
I started self-publishing in April 2020. COVID-19 was raging across the world — unbounded by the policies crafted in Geneva by a range of global health actors. Under these unusual circumstances, I set out to tell stories unfolding in Geneva to the readers I had acquired over the years, and in the process, I reached many more.
Geneva Health Files was born. This was an idea long germinating in draft business plans, in conversations with interested experts, but really came into existence when health policy began dominating global headlines in early 2020. I simply had to go ahead and start telling these stories in the way only I could and in the way I cared. Global health was (and is) undergoing seismic changes and this needed to be documented in a systematic, thorough manner.
The pandemic drew the world’s attention to Geneva. This relatively quiet Swiss city has been a dynamic ecosystem where private and public interests collide in sequestered settings of international organizations away from the media glare. Up until now. As the capital of global health, Geneva is home to more than 200 different organizations associated with the framing of international health policy.
The pandemic became a personal inflection point that compelled me to become a publisher and a media entrepreneur. As a reporter, I was seized by the moment when I realized the historic importance of witnessing events at the absolute forefront of global health policy-making, in those early days of the pandemic. Years of working independently had honed my editorial decision-making and I felt confident.
We went on to tell the most important stories of pandemic-related policy-making, in-depth and in real-time. Less than 3 years into our operations by November 2022, we had published nearly 200 newsletters.
We have moved the needle on global health journalism. We are here to stay.
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