Learning from Front-line Health Workers in the Climate Change Era

Learning from Frontline Health Workers in the Climate Change Era

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Writing

By Julie Jacobson, Alan Brooks, Charlotte Mbuh, and Reda Sadki The escalating threats of climate change cast long shadows over global health, including increases in disease epidemics, profound impacts on mental health, disruptions to health infrastructure, and alterations in the severity and geographical distribution of diseases. Mitigating the impact of such shadows on communities will test the resilience of health infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and especially challenge frontline health workers. The need for effective and cost-efficient public health interventions, such as immunization, will evolve and grow. Health workers, approximately 70% of which are women, that provide immunization and other health services will be trusted local resources to the communities they serve, further amplifying their centrality in resilient health systems. Listening to and building upon the experiences and insights of frontline health workers as they live with and increasingly work to address the manifestations of climate change on …

What does the changing nature of knowledge mean for global health?

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Learning strategy

Charlotte Mbuh and I will be welcoming Julie Jacobson, one of the founders of Bridges to Development, for our 15-minute Global Health Symposium about neglected needs of women’s health, and specifically the upcoming Female Genital Schistosomiasis (FGS) workshop being organized by the FAST package, a group of international and country partners. Join the Symposium on Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. (If you miss the live stream, the recording is immediately available afterward, via these same links.) During the Ebola crisis response of 2014-2015, I sweet-talked Panu Saaristo into doing the first “15-minute global health symposium”, giving him just 6 minutes for an update about the complex work he was leading. (You can read about it here.) I still remember every point of his presentation and the emotion associated with it, as he described how Red Cross volunteers were risking their own lives to help families bury their dead safely. It turns …