Minju Jung

Minju’s research interest is in global health governance, and global health politics more broadly. In particular, she is interested in decision-making in a global health institution based on public-private relationship. 

Currently, Minju has been working on policymaking in the global vaccine alliance (GAVI) for her PhD thesis. She is studying how policy actors with different backgrounds and interests are involved in decision-making process in the GAVI Board. 

Minju’s PhD Project

PhD Project Title: The Determinants of Policy Decisions in GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.
Primary supervisor: Professor Simon Rushton
Secondary supervisor: Professor Ian Bache
Date started: October 2018 (submission expected 2022)

1. A Brief Summary of Minju’s PhD Project
What factors influence decisions made within GAVI about the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines?

Minju’s PhD project delves into the policy decisions that Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) makes in relation to its involvement in global efforts to ensure the development, procurement, and fair global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. GAVI is a public-private partnership organisation, created in 2000 to improve global vaccine access, especially in developing countries. In 2020, it took on a new role in relation to COVID-19 vaccines.

In line with the fact that nobody can be safe until everyone is safe, the fair and equal allocation of COVID-19 vaccines has become a critical global political issue. GAVI is co-leading the COVAX project, which is intended to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, in particular for people those most in need, living in both rich and poor countries. regardless of their affordability. In conjunction with the WHO, GAVI is coordinating the development and implementation of COVAX’s vaccine distribution programs.  

Given GAVI’s important role in COVAX, Minju’s PhD project explores the political dynamics of decision-making in the GAVI Board, where a wide range of public and private stakeholders with different ideas and interests work together. Her study aims to understand how decisions regarding the operation of COVAX and equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines are made in discussions where different ideas and interests compete with one another. 

2. What’s new about Minju’s PhD Project? 
Although existing studies on GHG have made a significant contribution to our understandings of global responses to important global health events (such as major disease outbreaks and the creation of global health institutions such as GAVI), it has not yet discussed how global health policies are made in actual policy discussions. In addition, we do not know exactly why GHG policy actors have different perceptions on particular policy questions, and how conflicting ideas and perceived interests influence policy-making within global health institutions (i.e. the internal policymaking mechanism of global health institutions). 

To fill this research gap, we need to investigate the policy decisions of global health institutions to know what factors influence those policy decisions, which might lead to changes in the missions of the institution. Minju’s project sheds light on internal policy-making mechanisms (rather than the big picture of the GHG system) of global health institutions. It is important to investigate actual decisionmaking processes, because a wide range of GHG policy actors with different ideas, interests and authorities, interact and compete with one another in global health institutions such as GAVI, to influence policy decisions.

3. The Contributions of This PhD Project to the Field of Global Health Governance
This study would make three contributions to the field of global health governance. First, it will provide an in-depth empirical case study of how global health policies are created in practice in policy discussions within one of the most important institutions of GHG. Second, using process tracing, it will provide thick descriptions of what factors determined particular policy decisions in the GAVI board and, in particular, whose ideas were important and how different policy actors’ identities and interests (and their perceptions of the identities and interests of others) influenced decisions in those cases. Third, this study will shed light on how GAVI’s policy actors use different forms of authority dispersed in GAVI to exert their influence on decision-making processes. 

4. What’s most interesting about her project? 
What makes Minju’s PhD project most interesting, is that it provides an actual empirical case study of decision-making process within one of the most important global health international organisations. Her study traces decision-making process in GAVI regarding COVID-19 vaccine distribution within the historic global cooperation to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented global health threat. By doing so, Minju’s study explores how GAVI expands the boundary of its work, beyond the tasks that its creators had originally designed it to do. Minju believes that this timely project’s unique case study makes it intriguing and important.