Local limitations on protected time for research, ethical review, technology, and training threaten the productivity and development of investigators in low- and middle-income countries.

National governments of many low- and middle-income countries underprioritize research or thwart its progress through political repression or instability.

At the international level, investigators in low- and middle-income countries must compete with advantaged investigators from high-income nations for funding and publications.

The field of global health aims to leverage global partnerships to investigate issues transcending local boundaries.1 It acknowledges the importance of forming collaborative teams with diverse knowledge and experience to combat health disparities.2 However, in practice, global health is dominated by high-income countries (HICs). Most global health centers, global health conferences, and corresponding authors in global health journals are located in HICs.3–5 Though income is an imperfect classifier of countries, the dominance of HICs hints at the colonial legacy plaguing global health.

Global health’s colonial legacy stems partly from the concept of “tropical medicine,” which was born from the necessity to understand diseases in areas of the world occupied by European colonial powers with economic, political, or military agendas. Today, global health remains plagued by power structures based upon colonial legacies of inequity and agendas mired in priorities set by HICs. These structures and agendas drive HICs to engage within low- and middle-income country (LMIC) health systems without prioritizing partnerships with LMIC investigators.6 This practice threatens the global health promise of equity and justice and decreases the LMIC relevance and, thus, the quality of global health projects.7

There are mounting efforts to decolonize global health and work toward a future where investigators from LMICs and HICs engage in equitable partnerships.8 To that end, the University of Washington developed a Decolonizing Global Health Toolkit …