The prospects for “global health”: debating the alternatives

Date: 
3 Oct 2010
 International conference: health justice – worldwide!

The prospects for “global health”: debating the alternatives
Side meeting organized in collaboration with the People's Health Movement (PHM)
“HEALTH JUSTICE IN EUROPE – networking workshop”

 
Berlin, 18.09.10, 3-6 pm

REPORT

 

Short background on the People's Health Movement– PHM (Alexis Benos). Many people in Europe are somehow linked to the PHM, but the majority of them work in the South of the world and not as much in the EU itself.

Narendra Gupta clarifies the three main activities that PHM is carrying out worldwide at the moment:

  • campaigning for the right to health care
     
  • IPHU
     
  • publication of the Global Health Watch (two reports already published; third in process)
     

Basic PHM documents: People's Charter For Health; The Cuenca Declaration. A draft for a right to health bill has been elaborated, but many aspects need to be still defined before it is made available. More information at www.phmovement.org.

After a brief self introduction (see attached file “Berlin_PHM meeting_participants.xls” for contacts' details), each participant stated his/her expectations for the meeting and for networking, as well as his/her potential contributions. These statements are summarized in the following table:

EXPECTATIONS

 

 
CONTRIBUTIONS

 

 
  • Find issues and work together on them (e.g. education but also others)
     
  • Network on global health (GH) teaching
     
  • Know (or learn more about) PHM and PHM Europe
     
  • Develop new ideas around the issue of “global health”
     
  • Find out how the UK network for Global Health Education (GHE) can exchange and share experiences with similar networks across Europe
     
  • Get the students into the discussion on GH and GHE
     
  • See what we have in common
     
  • Networking for the right to health in the EU
     
  • Work on international publications in the GH field
     
  • Exchange local experiences
     
  • Experts and people work together locally on global health issues
     
  • Networking in the EU
     
  • Get GHE into the medical curricula and share experiences
     
  • Find out about grievances that people might have and that are not addressed in the fragmented GH governance
     
  • Open space where young people and experts/senior activists can interact
     
  • Discuss with non-medicals on health issues
     
  • Find a way to work with the PHM at the European level
     
  • Work on advocacy to the EU
     
  • Participation of PHM (Europe) to the Conference in Brasilia
     
  • Gather people of PHM EU
     
  • Exchange with PHM Asia, Africa, South America etc. for mutual learning
     
  • Put PHM Europe on the rail, rooting it locally 
     
  • Get new ideas and inspiration
     
  • PHM Europe as a place to discuss education, research and practice in GH, develop interactions among academics and civil society in order to move from knowledge to action
     
  • Experience on issues related to drug policies in the EU
     
  • Enthusiasm, commitment, experience in GHE
     
  • Link up people and organizations in the UK
     
  • Links to people in London and in South America for GHE
     
  • Epidemiological expertise for research
     
  • Connections with students' networks in the EU and internationally
     
  • Exchange and sharing of local experiences
     
  • Academic experience on social security (political sciences perspective)
     
  • Experience and knowledge on GH issues
     
  • Help in building networks in the EU, helping to put PHM ideas in the public debate
     
  • Links with a broader platform in Belgium (social movements, trade unions, NGOs...)
     
  • Experience in working on the right to health + EU trade policies and their impact on health
     
  • GandHI experience (GHE for German medical students)
     
  • Academic experience + teaching
     
  • Experience on drug policies
     
  • Primary health care experience
     

After a plenary discussion, the group split into three working groups in order to address the main issues that had emerged:

  • GLOBAL HEALTH EDUCATION (GHE)
    • share experiences, perspectives, materials, training opportunities, academic resources, projects... fulfil the “responsibility” of being academics
       
    • possibly agree on a common curriculum for GHE (separate courses or integration in the curriculum?)
       
    • issues we agree on: 
      • GH is NOT Tropical Medicine (...but what exactly is GH?)
         
      • GHE should be student-centred
         
      • GHE should involve fields other than the medical one
         
      • GHE should involve civil society
         
    • ideas to be developed/implemented:
      • summer school (or other kind of common training program that we could jointly develop) on GH
         
      • “adopt” a scientific journal, possibly open access, in order to publish papers on GHE (options: Globalization and Health; International Health)
         
      • write an open letter to Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, in order to ask for help in opening a transparent debate on a GHE agenda
         
      • hold a specific session on GHE during the next meeting of this PHM EU network
         
    • feedback to be circulated as soon as possible and next immediate steps:
      • the document “European Academic Alliance for Global Health – Preparatory Meeting, 10.03.2010” will be circulated among the whole group, in order to receive comments; Oliver Johnson, who is in touch with a couple of people from the Alliance, will reach them in order to start a dialogue, present our network and understand whether there is a chance for further collaboration (if possible, some representatives of the Alliance will be invited to our next meeting)
         
  • GLOBAL HEALTH ACTION IN EUROPE (“local structures”)
    • working with people in local structures
       
    • ensuring long-term projects
       
    • for which goals do we need “new” medical ethics + health education?
      • re-empowerment
         
      • turning professionals from service providers to community workers (and vice-versa)
         
      • exchange of experiences and models (north/south)
         
      • develop non-commercial models
         
  • NETWORKING ACROSS EUROPE (“communication-networking-advocacy”)
    • social networking needed, not just email list
       
    • idea: create a platform (Elgg – open source social networking platform) + web space for exchanging information and for debate; people and organizations can create their profile and participate to the debate, suggest issues for advocacy, etc.
       
    • in each country there should be a “focal point”, in order to do gate keeping and avoid that too many people access the platform (restrict to PHM affiliates?)
       
    • English will be the common language, at least in the beginning
       
    • Sebastian (Heidelberg) and Ardigò (Bologna) will further develop these concept ideas and present a prototype platform to the group
       

Afterwards, the three groups met again and a person from each group reported to the plenary. We then decided that the group from Bologna should be in charge of sending a report of the meeting and administering the mailing list in this first phase. Andreas Wulf will explore the possibility of a next meeting in Berlin at the beginning of December. Everybody agrees that we should meet again quite soon, possibly having more time to discuss in depth the issues that we started identifying and that are of common interest.

NOTE: people who want to receive more information can write to the following address: csi.unibo[at]gmail.com