Care for Health: Care for Health: Linking Systems to Advance Equity, a Perspective from the Global South

The Care for Health project investigates how unpaid care work, especially that performed by low-income women caregivers, affects mental and physical health. Grounded in systems thinking and an expanded socio-ecological model of health, it explores how structural, community, interpersonal, and individual factors shape health outcomes. The project includes a longitudinal mixed-methods evaluation of Bogotá’s Care Blocks, a pioneering public care infrastructure that can inform policy design in other global south contexts. Methodologically, it advances Community Engaged Research by co-producing knowledge with women caregivers through the Voice, Vote and Budget model, approach we will design to operationalize epistemic justice. The project also introduces and applies the Simplexity Framework, a novel tool to make complex systems visible, accessible and actionable, with an emphasis in public health. Project outputs include four peer-reviewed articles, a Simplexity Report, open-access datasets and publications, and a policy report outlining legal, institutional, and fiscal pathways to integrate care into health policy. The project also features a capacity-building plan to strengthen the PI’s leadership and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. The project seeks to reposition care work as a critical social determinant of health and empower caregivers as key actors in shaping knowledge and practice for building healthier, more equitable societies.