Background
Crisis-driven policymaking often unfolds under conditions of urgency and heightened political pressure, producing policies portrayed as neutral but embedding assumptions that obscure power asymmetries and deepen existing inequities. A literature review revealed a scarcity of policy analysis instruments capable of evaluating the gendered and intersectional equity-promoting potential of public policies.
Purpose
This paper describes the development of a sex- and gender-based analysis plus (SGBA+) tool designed to assess whether COVID-19 public policies meaningfully consider equity and inclusion.
Approach
The tool’s development followed an iterative process involving a mapping literature review, a structured planning and design phase, piloting with Canadian pandemic policies, and consultation with community organizations working with population groups facing marginalization or exclusion.
Findings
The resulting tool comprises 81 questions across six policy dimensions, with a scoring system that rates policies from “unequal” to “transformative” based on their responsiveness to gender and intersecting social identities. While validity and reliability have not yet been tested, the tool fills an identified gap in equity-oriented policy analysis.
Implications
With adjustments, the tool could be applied to public policies adopted in response to health, environmental, and economic crises. By making visible how policy design distributes resources and risks, SGBA+ approaches offer policymakers, advocates, and researchers a concrete means to interrogate decision-making and guide emergency governance toward greater equity.

Citations

• Introducing Health Politics
  Haejoo Chung, Carles Muntaner
  Health Politics.2026; 1(1): e001.     CrossRef

Background
The post–World War II institutional order that structured social protection and public health governance is under sustained strain, yet no coherent alternative has consolidated. Planetary, technological, and social transformations are simultaneously reshaping who lives, who receives care, and whose suffering is normalized. Political configurations are now more decisive for health and health equity than at any point in the postwar period.
Problem
Scholarship on health politics remains fragmented across disciplines, theoretically under-developed in its treatment of power relations, and methodologically limited in its capacity for causal inference. Existing journals either publish health politics research as a secondary concern within broader portfolios or lack the editorial infrastructure to integrate the theoretical and methodological traditions the field requires. No journal currently centres theories of power and institutions as applied to health.
Aim
To establish Health Politics as a dedicated, interdisciplinary journal for rigorous, policy-relevant research that explains how power, institutions, and political conflict shape health and health equity.
Approach
The journal bridges political science, political economy, political sociology, and public health. It is anchored in the political economy of health tradition while engaging theories of power, institutions, and political processes from across the social sciences. It combines methodological pluralism with a quantitative edge, emphasizing causal inference alongside qualitative depth and comparative analysis.
Illustrative cases
Four current examples demonstrate how politics shapes health under crisis conditions: the politicization of vaccination policy, war and humanitarian restrictions in Gaza, climate disaster response in Canada, and platform power and adolescent mental health in EU and United States. Each case reveals distinct political mechanisms through which power produces health consequences.
Contribution
A new scholarly home for power-aware, methodologically rigorous health research that fills a structural gap in the journal landscape and provides an interdisciplinary platform for the emerging field of health politics.

Citations

• Introducing Health Politics
  Haejoo Chung, Carles Muntaner
  Health Politics.2026; 1(1): e001.     CrossRef