The Global Polycrisis and Health Inequalities

In the current era of multiple, overlapping global crises, it is essential to consider the political economy of health within the broader framework of global interconnectedness. In this article, we employ the polycrisis concept to understand the impacts of the multifaceted, concurrent, and synergistic contemporary global crises on global health and health inequalities. A polycrisis occurs when crises in multiple diverse global systems become causally entangled, compounding their effects. Despite its potential relevance and analytical insights, the polycrisis concept has rarely been applied in public health research. This article fills that gap, and through reviewing the impacts of past economic, environmental, health, and political crises, we argue that the polycrisis is creating a complex web of challenges that are likely to amplify existing and future health inequalities. We conclude by discussing strategies to mitigate these impacts and suggest pathways for research to ensure that the future is not inevitably unequal.