The Global Symposium is organised every two years by Health Systems Global. This hybrid event, from 31 October to 4 November 2022 will be held online and in Bogota, Colombia. It is an opportunity for researchers and practitioners involved in health systems and policy to convene and exchange valuable insights and experience on strengthening health systems.

This year, three of KIT’s advisors, Harry Coleman, Kimberley Meijers and Olivier Onvlee will be participating and presenting their work.

The Symposium comes at a time of great challenges to health systems and policy globally. Organisations world over are trying to reconcile the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing vaccine apartheid, deal with epistemic injustices in knowledge production, and find ways to finance development that can address the global crises of climate breakdown and future pandemics.

This year, the theme is Health Systems Performance in the Political Agenda: Sharing lessons for current and future global challenges. This theme has four sub-themes. (For more information on the themes see here). According to the organisers, they aim to explore how to deal with the structural issues that all health systems face.

Results and findings of our work

KIT will be participating in a number of presentations and through posters and panels. The posters include the results of our work facilitating a co-creation process for the Dutch Global Health Alliance on a future global health policy in the Netherlands, through a poster titled ‘What should a national global health policy look like in 2022? Voices from civil society on a new Dutch global health policy’. And the other poster presents the findings from a scoping review of evidence for  Human Resources for Health policies in conflict-affected settings.

Kimberley will present the application of a new ‘Rapid Improvement Model for Knowledge Translation (CRIM-KT) for Better Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR)’ within the context of Share-Net International, the Knowledge Platform on SRHR hosted by KIT. She will also share Share-net’s experiences with knowledge translation and capacity strengthening in Bangladesh, Burundi, Indonesia and Jordan. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates a broader global need for the rapid translation of knowledge into policy and practice. The principles of the CRIM-KT can be further developed and applied in fields other than SRHR to strengthen knowledge translation processes.

Harry will be presenting the results of a household survey on healthcare access and utilisation in South Sudan, as part of KIT’s role as an operational research partner for the Health Pooled Fund consortium. This is part of a larger session on enhancing equity and access in healthcare provision models.

And, Olivier will be taking part in a panel representing KIT’s involvement in the PERFORM2scale project entitled ‘The power and politics of scaling-up a health systems intervention: lessons from Uganda, Ghana and Malawi’. The panel will reflect on the individual and institutional incentives that support scale up, and discuss lessons from effective scale-up approaches.

For more information on the Symposium, see https://healthsystemsresearch.org/hsr2022/.

Or follow Harry (@HLSColeman), Kimberley (@meijers_kim/@ShareNetIntl) and Olivier’s (@Onvlee) journey at the conference on Twitter or through our social media channels.