In this month's feature interview, we speak with Corinne Hinlopen, Global Health Advocate and policy researcher at Wemos, a Netherlands-based global policy analysis and advocacy non-profit focused on structural change in service of global health justice. What runs below are some highlights; the full version can be read here or by clicking the button following our excerpt.

Corinne, thanks so much for joining us today for our chat. Perhaps to start, could you let our readers know a bit about Wemos?

Wemos is an Amsterdam-based NGO working on the right to health. We are an advocacy group, first and foremost. If we feel that the right to health is compromised somewhere in the world, then we start there, by identifying these situations as a potential area for us to work on. We were founded some 45 years ago by medical students who were studying tropical medicine and international health, and who would do their practicum in low and middle income countries, as their way of getting to know tropical diseases, gaining experience for 1 or 2 or 3 years typically, and then coming back here to The Netherlands. The [students who would go on to form Wemos] concluded that this was a neocolonial way of working; you go there, you get your knowledge, you share some of your knowledge, you contribute to healthcare provision, but then you go back. So these founders started to feel like this was not the right way to go about it. 

Could you talk a little bit about how trends in migrant health and care workers tend to fit into the philosophy and structures of what Wemos looks to address?

On and off over the past decades, we have had big and small projects focused on international mobility and migration of health workers. This topic ties into the theme of richer countries as well. Because richer countries have more resources, they can spend more on health personnel [than a lower income country]; these workers will see higher wages than Ghana, Nigeria or Zimbabwe, for example. Therefore, people can be attracted to come and work in these richer countries. There is a huge flow of health and care workers who leave their native countries and go to The UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or to neighboring countries in their region, where salaries and working conditions are better. At the same time, the countries that they are from have little money, and this money does not always go towards investments in health systems. 

One thing that we wanted to ask about was advocacy and maybe how to get the public more aware and involved. Any thoughts on this piece of the puzzle?

My message, or my plea, to your student readers would be that they take on roles as advocates alongside whatever it is that they may be doing in their position. Those who are the most marginalized and most vulnerable need structural changes, and people who advocate with and for them. Here in the Netherlands we have a woman who is known as the “lung doctor who smokes”. She quit smoking a long time ago and then became a passionate advocate against smoking and the tobacco industry, and so she has become a bit of an icon here. So beyond her practice work, she is highly critical of Big Tobacco, their marketing strategies and their efforts to attract new customers with vapes. She initiates campaigns, appears in the media, and really is the kind of inspiration that I would like public health students to follow and become!