Health at COP29

Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis

Global health

Health workers are already being transformed by climate change. COP29 stakeholders can either support this transformation to strengthen health systems, or risk watching the health workforce collapse under mounting pressures. The World Health Organization’s “COP29 Special Report on Climate Change and Health: Health is the Argument for Climate Action“ highlights the health sector’s role in climate action. Health professionals are eyewitnesses and first responders to climate impacts on people and communities firsthand – from escalating respiratory diseases to spreading infections and increasing humanitarian disasters. The report positions health workers as “trusted members of society” who are “uniquely positioned” to champion climate action. The context is stark: WHO projects a global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030, with six million in climate-vulnerable sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, our communities and healthcare systems already bear the costs of climate change through increasing disease burdens and system strain. Health workers are responding, because …

Teach to Reach network of organizational leaders

Teach to Reach’s new leadership network connects health organizations tackling common challenges

Global health

The Geneva Learning Foundation is launching REACH (Relate, Engage, Act, Connect, Help), a new initiative to connect leaders of health organizations who are solving similar problems in different countries. Launching November 6, 2024 REACH responds to an unexpected outcome of Teach to Reach, a peer learning platform that–in less than four years–has already documented over 10,000 local solutions and experiences to health challenges by connecting more than 60,000 participants across 77 countries. When organizations began formally participating in Teach to Reach in June 2024, many leaders discovered they were tackling similar challenges. A digital immunization tracking system in Rwanda sparked interest from several African countries. A community engagement approach to vaccine hesitancy in Nigeria resonated with teams in Kenya and Zimbabwe. These spontaneous connections led to the creation of REACH. What is Teach to Reach? “Teach to Reach is a place where you learn in the most formidable way. You’re …

Teach to Reach 11 briefing for partners

Ahead of Teach to Reach 11, organizational leaders share experience of ‘what works’ for health

Global health

Over 730 organizations have already confirmed their participation in Teach to Reach 11, a peer learning platform, network, and community for health workers facilitated by the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF). This announcement came during TGLF’s first partnership briefing held on 16 October 2024. Voir la présentation aux partenaires en français… Teach to Reach, which connects health professionals across borders, is expanding its focus on local partnerships for its upcoming 11th edition, scheduled for 5-6 December 2024. Why does this matter? The initiative’s reach is substantial. Teach to Reach 10, held in June 2024, attracted 21,398 participants from over 70 countries. Notably, 80% of participants were from district and facility levels. Each participant is now being encouraged to involve their organization – and to invite staff, volunteers, and community members to join. “I plan to involve women from every province. We made a small committee. So our network is represented“ at …

Why health leaders who are critical thinkers choose rote learning for others-small

Why health leaders who are critical thinkers choose rote learning for others

Global health

Many health leaders are highly analytical, adaptive learners who thrive on solving complex problems in dynamic, real-world contexts. Their expertise is grounded in years of field experience, where they have honed their ability to rapidly generate insights, test ideas, and innovate solutions in collaboration with diverse stakeholders. In January 2021, as countries were beginning to introduce new COVID-19 vaccines, Kate O’Brien, who leads WHO’s immunization efforts, connected global learning to local action: “For COVID-19 vaccines […] there are just too many lessons that are being learned, especially according to different vaccine platforms, different communities of prioritization that need to be vaccinated. So [everyone]  has got to be able to scale, has got to be able to deal with complexity, has got to be able to do personal, local innovation to actually overcome the challenges.” In an Insights Live session with the Geneva Learning Foundation in 2022, she made a compelling …

What Have We Learned That Is Critical in Understanding Leadership Perceptions and Leader-Performance Relations?

What is the relationship between leadership and performance?

Global health, Leadership, Theory

In their article “What Have We Learned That Is Critical in Understanding Leadership Perceptions and Leader-Performance Relations?”, Robert G. Lord and Jessica E. Dinh review research on leadership perceptions and performance, and provide research-based principles that can provide new directions for future leadership theory and research. What is leadership?  Leadership is tricky to define. The authors state: “Leadership is an art that has significant impact on individuals, groups, organizations, and societies”. It is not just about one person telling everyone else what to do. Leadership happens in the connections between people – it is something that grows between a leader and followers, almost like a partnership. And it usually does not involve just one leader either. There can be leadership shared across a whole team or organization. The big question is: how does all this connecting and partnering actually get a team to perform well? That is what researchers are …

Health worker voices and agenda at COP28

Before, during, and after COP28: Climate crisis and health, through the eyes of health workers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America 

Events, Global health

Samuel Chukwuemeka Obasi, a health professional from Nigeria: “Going back home to the community where I grew up as a child, I was shocked to see that most of the rivers we used to swim and fish in have all dried up, and those that are still there have become very shallow so that you can easily walk through a river you required a boat to cross in years past.” In July 2023, more than 1200 health workers from 68 countries shared their experiences of changes in climate and health, at a unique event designed to shed light on the realities of climate impacts on the health of the communities they serve. Before, during and after COP28, we are sharing health workers’ observations and insights. Follow The Geneva Learning Foundation to learn how climate change is affecting health in multiple ways: On 1 December 2023, TGLF will be publishing a …

Honoring health professionals as leaders of change

Honoring health professionals as leaders of change

Global health

We honor everyone who is joining the Special Event “From community to planet: Health professionals on the frontlines of climate change”: health staff from immunization and other areas of health – environmental health and One Health, but also those who fight neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), HIV, and other ailments. We also honor allies, including human rights advocates, those working to decolonize global health, fighting for gender and racial equity as well as economic justice. Since 2016, the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has supported a global peer learning network and platform, built by and for immunization staff from all over the world. This is because we believe that practitioner-led peer education is a powerful philosophy for change in the Digital Age.  In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 80 million children under one were placed at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases such as diphtheria, measles and polio as COVID-19 disrupted immunization service as worldwide. …

Young Egyptian doctor Mai Abdalla leadership innovation teamwork

Listen to the Ninth Dialogue for Learning, Leadership, and Impact

Writing

The Geneva Learning foundation’s Dialogue connects a diverse group of learning leaders from all over the world who are tackling complex learning, leadership, and impact challenges. We explore the significance of leadership for the future of our societies, explore lessons learned and successes, and problem-solve real-world challenges and dilemmas submitted by Contributors of the Dialogue. In the Geneva Learning Foundation’s Ninth Dialogue for Learning & Leadership, we start with Dr. Mai Abdalla. After studying global health security in at Yosei University South Korea and both public health and pharmaceutical science in her own country, Egypt. By the time she turned 30, Dr Abdalla had already worked with the Ministry of Health, UN agencies, and the African Union Commission. The accomplishments of her professional life are just the starting point, as we want to explore where and how did she learn to do what she does now? What has shaped her …

Leaders among us

Listening for leadership

Leadership

On 30 May 2021, Convenors Karen Watkins and Reda Sadki were joined by eight Key Contributors: Nancy Dixon, Bryan Hopkins, Barbara Moser-Mercer, Renee Rogers, Catherine Russ, Esther Wojcicki, Laura Bierema, and Emanuele Capobianco. This was the third Dialogue convened by The Geneva Learning Foundation for learning, leadership, and impact. Each Key Contributor has a fascinating, singular leadership journey. This trajectory may have a collective dimension, of movements, of belonging, or of affiliation that have and continue to shape it. Even when this is so, it is also profoundly personal and individual. It is also a process of accretion – although we tend to recall quantum leaps in significant learning. For some, there may be discomfort with calling oneself a ‘leader’, given the conflation between leadership and authority, leadership and management, leadership and perceived value in society. Then, there is the moment of coming to consciousness, about the significance of leadership. …

On learning, leadership, and impact: a new kind of dialogue to tackle the challenges that threaten our societies

Leadership, Writing

The Geneva Learning Foundation’s new Dialogue is an invitation-only global conversation exploring learning, leadership, and impact. Our aim is to explore new ways to connect individuals who are tackling the challenges that threaten our societies. In the past, one observation has been that conversations around learning and leadership tend to happen between nearly-identical peers. One of the bets we are making is that to progress our understanding on leadership, diversity is a necessary condition. And, indeed, I am struck by the radical diversity of the Dialogue’s participants so far. My conviction is that such improbable connections could create new possibilities for facilitated dialogue to surface new insights into the nature of leadership in the Digital Age. Below are three examples, connecting a disease control student from Ghana, an engineer working on a water pipeline in Libya, and an NGO worker from New Zealand.