Many claims are made concerning which issues are on the global health agenda and which are neglected. Scholarship is inconsistent and generally vague about how an issue's status is (or should be) measured, however, leaving such claims open to questions about their validity. This inquiry explores a novel way of addressing the largely overlooked matter of how to comparatively assess the agenda status of health issues systematically, over time and in consideration of a global health context that lacks centralised authority. We draw upon a model from sociology which proposes that collective definitions of social problems and public attention evolve in multiple, interacting institutional arenas, each of which has the capacity to give robust attention to a limited number of issues. We systematically track status indicators for two significant global health issues, diabetes and oral diseases, in three arenas since 2000. Oral health's status declined while diabetes rose in international representation, international organisation and scientific research arenas during the past decade. This article sets out some preliminary contours of an analytical approach that holds promise for enhancing understanding of causal mechanisms and outcomes across a wider set of global health issues and agenda setting arenas.
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