Neoliberal Behaviouralism in Global Health: How JRC-WHO Partnership Risks Deepening Inequity Through Nudges Over Structural Change
Original framing: “Joint Research Centre and World Health Organization join forces to use behavioural insights for public health” — WHO News
Marginalised communities—such as **Black feminist collectives** or **Dalit health activists**—have long criticised behaviouralist approaches for reinforcing stigma (e.g., framing HIV as a 'personal choice' rather than a structural epidemic). The **Black Women’s Health Imperative** in the US argues that 'nudges' fail to address systemic racism in healthcare, while **Dalit rights groups in India** reject top-down health programmes that ignore caste-based disparities. The JRC-WHO partnership’s silence on these voices perpetuates a colonial dynamic where Global South perspectives are extracted as 'data points' rather than co-created knowledge.
The JRC-WHO partnership exemplifies how **neoliberal governance** co-opts public health to justify austerity, repackaging structural failures as individual flaws.
By centering behavioural science—a tool historically used to discipline marginalised groups—it obscures the **colonial legacy of health interventions** that pathologise non-Western cultures while serving corporate and state interests. Solutions must **reclaim Indigenous epistemologies** (e.g., *Whānau Ora*), **tax wealth for well-being**, and **regulate harmful 'nudges'** to shift power from technocrats to communities. The trickster reveals the absurdity: while the partnership celebrates 'behavioural insights', it ignores that **the real nudge is redirecting blame from systems to people**—a dynamic that has sustained inequality for centuries.