Lessons from The Centre for Health Systems Strengthening; Health Diplomacy

Connecting Citizens to Science

Hello Listeners! In this episode we are joined by the Centre for Health Systems Strengthening at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, also known as CHESS. In this first episode of a two-part mini-series focusing on health systems strengthening, we talk about health diplomacy and why it is needed.

We hear from Dr. Joanna Raven and Dr. Kerry Millington, who have both been working in global health for over 20 years and are passionate about embedding both health systems strengthening approaches and community knowledge into political commitments and policy reforms.

Bringing a perspective from the fields of maternal and child health, lung health and tuberculosis, Dr Uzochukwu Egere co-hosts this episode where we discuss health diplomacy as a new field for academics and healthcare professionals. One that is about making connections, sharing intel and learning how the United Nations and other High-Level Meetings work, so we can effectively share evidence quickly in often extremely short windows of opportunity, so policy makers can listen and act.

Dr Uzochukwu Egere - Senior Research Associate, Emergency Obstetric and Quality of Care Unit, Department of International Public Health (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine)

Uzo is a paediatrician and public health researcher with extensive experience in multidisciplinary global health research. His research interest is in implementation research and health systems strengthening to tackle inequities in the fields of Maternal and Child health, Lung health and Tuberculosis. Uzo’s work focuses on health and health systems challenges relevant to low-and middle-income settings and facilitates interactions between researchers and consumers of research outputs (the community) to ensure timely policy change, uptake of interventions, and universal health coverage.

Dr Joanna Raven - Reader in health systems, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Jo has worked in global health for more than 25 years, focusing on strengthening health systems. Jo is a researcher with a passion for co-designing and implementing health system research with local stakeholders including community members, health workers, health managers and decision makers. As a health worker herself, Jo’s work focuses on supporting the health workforce to deliver people-centred care that is of good quality and leaves no one behind.

Dr Kerry Millington – Research Uptake Manager, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Kerry has been working in global health for over 20 years with a keen focus on ending the tuberculosis epidemic. A key part of her work is developing trusted relationships with range of stakeholders to work in partnership, in collaboration and in a coordinated way ensuring the academic and health professional voice credibly informs decisions that impact on health. This can range from co-creating research ideas to influencing policy and political commitments. A key stakeholder to engage with is the voice of TB survivors and advocates to accelerate action for those in most need of innovations in TB care and prevention to transform lives.

Research programme links:

ReBUILD for Resilience - Research on health systems in fragile contexts

PERFORM2scale – Scaling up PERFORM

ReDRESS - Strengthening people-centred health systems for people affected by severe stigmatising skin diseases in Liberia

LIGHT - Aims to support policy and practice in transforming gendered pathways to health for people with TB in urban settings

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The podcast covers wide ranging topics such as NTD’s, NCD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to community engagement and power dynamics.   

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