What is networked learning

What is networked learning?

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Networked learning happens when people learn through connections with others facing similar challenges. Think about how market traders learn their business – not through formal classes, but by connecting with other traders, sharing tips, and learning from each other’s experiences. This natural way of learning through relationships is what networked learning tries to support. 5 key features of networked learning: Why networked learning matters for health work: Health systems are full of isolated practitioners who could benefit from each other’s knowledge: Networked learning connects these isolated pockets of knowledge, allowing good ideas to spread and adapt across different contexts. Unlike traditional training that pulls people away from their work for workshops, networked learning happens through ongoing connections that support everyday problem-solving. When health workers participate in networked learning, they gain access to a community of practice that continues to provide support long after formal training ends. Networked learning doesn’t replace …

Complex problems

What is a complex problem?

Reda SadkiGlobal health

What is a complex problem and what do we need to tackle it? Problems can be simple or complex. Simple problems have a clear first step, a known answer, and steps you can follow to get the answer. Complex problems do not have a single right answer. They have many possible answers or no answer at all. What makes complex problems really hard is that they can change over time. They have lots of different pieces that connect in unexpected ways. When you try to solve them, one piece changes another piece, which changes another piece. It is hard to see all the effects of your actions. When you do something to help, later on the problem might get worse anyway. You have to keep adapting your ideas. To solve really hard problems, you need to be able to: The most important things are being flexible, watching how every change …

A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action

A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action

Reda SadkiGlobal health

The theme of International Education Day 2025, “AI and education: Preserving human agency in a world of automation,” invites critical examination of how artificial intelligence might enhance rather than replace human capabilities in learning and leadership. Global health education offers a compelling context for exploring this question, as mounting challenges from climate change to persistent inequities demand new approaches to building collective capability. The promise of connected communities Recent experiences like the Teach to Reach initiative demonstrate the potential of structured peer learning networks. The platform has connected over 60,000 health workers, primarily government workers from districts and facilities across 82 countries, including those serving in conflict zones, remote rural areas, and urban settlements. For example, their exchanges about climate change impacts on community health point the way toward more distributed forms of knowledge creation in global health.  Analysis of these networks suggests possibilities for integrating artificial intelligence not merely …

Why answer Teach to Reach Questions-small

Why answer Teach to Reach Questions?

Reda SadkiGlobal health

Have you ever wished you could talk to another health worker who has faced the same challenges as you? Someone who found a way to keep helping people, even when things seemed impossible? That’s exactly the kind of active learning that Teach to Reach Questions make possible. They make peer learning easy for everyone who works for health. What are Teach to Reach Questions? Once you join Teach to Reach (what is it?), you’ll receive questions about real-world challenges that matter to health professionals. How does it work? What’s different about these questions? Unlike typical surveys that just collect data, Teach to Reach Questions are active learning that: See what we give back to the community. Get the English-language collection of Experiences shared from Teach to Reach 10. The new compendium includes over 600 health worker experiences about immunisation, climate change, malaria, NTDs, and digital health. A second collection of …

The pedagogy of Teach to Reach

What is the pedagogy of Teach to Reach?

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Learning strategy, Theory

In a rural health center in Kenya, a community health worker develops an innovative approach to reaching families who have been hesitant about vaccination. Meanwhile, in a Brazilian city, a nurse has gotten everyone involved – including families and communities – onboard to integrate information about HPV vaccination into cervical cancer screening. These valuable insights might once have remained isolated, their potential impact limited to their immediate contexts. But through Teach to Reach – a peer learning platform, network, and community hosted by The Geneva Learning Foundation – these experiences become part of a larger tapestry of knowledge that transforms how health workers learn and adapt their practices worldwide. Since January 2021, the event series has grown to connect over 21,000 health professionals from more than 70 countries, reaching its tenth edition with 21,398 participants in June 2024. Scale matters, but this level of engagement begs the question: how and why does it …

Brevity’s burden The executive summary trap in global health

Brevity’s burden: The executive summary trap in global health

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Learning strategy

It was James Gleick who noted in his book “Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything” the societal shift towards valuing speed over depth: “We have become a quick-reflexed, multitasking, channel-flipping, fast-forwarding species. We don’t completely understand it, and we’re not altogether happy about it.” In global health, there’s a growing tendency to demand ever-shorter summaries of complex information. “Can you condense this into four pages?” “Is there an executive summary?” These requests, while stemming from real time constraints, reveal fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of knowledge and learning. Worse, they contribute to perpetuating existing global health inequities. Here is why – and a few ideas of what we can do about it. We lose more than time in the race to brevity The push for shortened summaries is understandable on the surface. Some clinical researchers, for example, undeniably face increasing time pressures. Many are swamped due to underlying structural issues, …

Community-based monitoring for immunization

Integrating community-based monitoring (CBM) into a comprehensive learning-to-action model

Reda SadkiGlobal health

According to Gavi, “community-based monitoring” or “CBM” is a process where service users collect data on various aspects of health service provision to monitor program implementation, identify gaps, and collaboratively develop solutions with providers. By engaging service users, CBM aims to foster greater accountability and responsiveness to local needs. The Geneva Learning Foundation’s innovative learning-to-action model offers a compelling framework within which CBM could be applied to immunization challenges. The model’s comprehensive design creates an enabling environment for effectively integrating diverse monitoring data sources – and this could include community perspectives. Health workers as trusted community advisers… and members of the community A distinctive feature of TGLF’s model is its emphasis on health workers’ role as trusted advisors to the communities they serve. The model recognizes that local health staff are not merely service providers, but often deeply embedded community members with intimate knowledge of local realities. For example, in …

Heini Utenen OpenWHO confusion about methods and learner preferences

Why asking learners what they want is a recipe for confusion

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Theory

A survey of learners on a large, authoritative global health learning platform has me pondering once again the perils of relying too heavily on learner preferences when designing educational experiences. One survey question intended to ask learners for their preferred learning method. The list of options provided includes a range of items. (Some would make the point that the list conflates learning resources and learning methods, but let us leave that aside for now.) Respondents’ top choices (source) were videos, slides, and downloadable documents. At first glance, this seems perfectly reasonable. After all, should we not give learners what they want? As it happens, the main resources offered by this platform are videos, slides, and other downloadable documents. (If we asked learners who participate in our peer learning programmes for their preference, they would likely say that they prefer… peer learning.) Beyond this availability bias, there is a more significant …

Learn health, but beware of the behaviorist trap

Reda SadkiGlobal health, Theory

The global health community has long grappled with the challenge of providing effective, scalable training to health workers, particularly in resource-constrained settings. In recent years, digital learning platforms have emerged as a potential solution, promising to deliver accessible, engaging, and impactful training at scale. Imagine a digital platform intended to train health workers at scale. Their theory of change rests on a few key assumptions: On the surface, this seems sensible. Mobile optimization recognizes health workers’ technological realities. Multimedia content seems more engaging than pure text. Assessments appear to verify learning. Incentives promise to drive uptake. Scale feels synonymous with success. While well-intentioned, such a platform risks falling into the trap of a behaviorist learning agenda. This is an approach that, despite its prevalence, is a pedagogical dead-end with limited potential for driving meaningful, sustained improvements in health worker performance and health outcomes. It is a paradigm that views learners …

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

Reda SadkiGlobal 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 …