New ways to learn and lead HPV vaccination

AI podcast explores surprising insights from health workers about HPV vaccination

Global health

This is an AI podcast featuring two hosts discussing an article by Reda Sadki titled “New Ways to Learn and Lead HPV Vaccination: Bridging Planning and Implementation Gaps.” The conversational format involves the AI hosts taking turns explaining key points and sharing insights about Sadki’s work on HPV vaccination strategies. While the conversation is AI-generated, everything is based on the published article and insights from the experiences of thousands of health workers participating in Teach to Reach. The Geneva Learning Foundation’s approach Throughout the podcast, the hosts explore how the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has developed a five-step process to improve HPV vaccination implementation through their “Teach to Reach” program. This process involves: The hosts emphasize that this approach represents a shift from traditional top-down strategies to one that values the collective intelligence of over 16,000 global health workers who implement these programs. Surprising findings The AI hosts discuss several …

New ways to learn and lead HPV vaccination Bridging planning and implementation gaps

New ways to learn and lead HPV vaccination: Bridging planning and implementation gaps

Global health

This article is based on my presentation at the 2nd National Conference on Adult Immunization and Allied Medicine of the Indian Society for Adult Immunization (ISAI), Science City, Kolkata, on 15 February 2025. The implementation challenge The global landscape of HPV vaccination and cervical cancer prevention reveals a mix of progress and persistent challenges. While 144 countries have introduced HPV vaccines nationally and vaccination has shown remarkable efficacy in reducing cervical cancer incidence, significant disparities persist, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Evidence suggests that challenges in implementing and sustaining HPV vaccination programs in developing countries are significantly influenced by gaps between planning at national level and execution at local levels. Multiple studies confirm this disconnect as a primary barrier to effective HPV vaccination programmes. Traditional approaches to knowledge development in global health often rely on expert committee models characterized by hierarchical knowledge flows, formal meeting processes, and bounded timelines. …

Supporting Ukrainian children: New peer learning platform to rapidly expand and scale the network of practitioners across Europe

Supporting Ukrainian children: New peer learning platform to rapidly expand and scale the network of practitioners across Europe

Global health

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) are launching PFA Connect, a new platform for education, social work, and health professionals who support children from Ukraine. The platform builds on a new peer learning network launched by IFRC and TGLF in 2024 that is already reaching more than 2,000 practitioners from 27 European countries. This network responds to a critical need: while traditional training provides essential foundations, professionals benefit most from exchanging practical solutions with peers facing similar challenges. “I felt like I was part of a community of like-minded people who care about children’s mental health,” shares Halyna Fedoryshyn, an education professional from Ukraine who earned her first PFA certificate in 2024. “I had the opportunity to expand my social contacts with professionals outside of Ukraine,” . “PFA” refers to Psychological first aid (PFA), a practical way to support …

Peer learning in immunisation programmes

Peer learning in immunization programmes

and Global health

The path to strengthening immunization systems requires innovative technical assistance approaches to learning and capacity building. A recent correspondence in The Lancet proposes peer learning in immunization programmes as a crucial mechanism for achieving the goals of the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030), arguing for “an intentional, well coordinated, fit-for-purpose, data-driven, and government-led immunisation peer-learning plan of action.” This proposal merits careful examination, particularly as immunization programmes face complex challenges in reaching 2030 goals. Learn more: 50 years of the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) Beyond traditional knowledge exchange The Lancet commentary identifies several key rationales for peer learning in immunization. These insights point toward an important truth: traditional approaches to knowledge sharing – whether through technical guidelines, formal training, or policy exchange – remain necessary but increasingly insufficient for today’s challenges. The question becomes not just how to share what we know, but how to systematically generate new knowledge about …

The cost of inaction Quantifying the impact of climate change on health

The cost of inaction: Quantifying the impact of climate change on health

Global health

This World Bank report ‘The Cost of Inaction: Quantifying the Impact of Climate Change on Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries’ presents new analysis of climate change impacts on health systems and outcomes in the regions that are bearing the brunt of these impacts. Key analytical insights to quantify climate change impacts on health The report makes three contributions to our understanding of climate-health interactions: First, it quantifies the massive scale of climate change impacts on health, projecting 4.1-5.2 billion climate-related disease cases and 14.5-15.6 million deaths in LMICs by 2050. This represents a significant advancement over previous estimates, which the report demonstrates were substantial underestimates. Second, it illuminates the profound economic consequences, calculating costs of $8.6-20.8 trillion by 2050 (0.7-1.3% of LMIC GDP). The report employs both Value of Statistical Life and Years of Life Lost approaches to provide a range of economic impact estimates. Third, it reveals stark …

Donald A. Schön The new scholarship requires a new epistemology

Knowing-in-action: Bridging the theory-practice divide in global health

Global health

The gap between theoretical knowledge and practical implementation remains one of the most persistent challenges in global health. This divide manifests in multiple ways: research that fails to address practitioners’ urgent needs, innovations from the field that never inform formal evidence systems, and capacity building approaches that cannot meet the massive scale of learning required. Donald Schön’s seminal 1995 analysis of the “dilemma of rigor or relevance” in professional practice offers crucial insights for “knowing-in-action“. It can help us understand why transforming global health requires new ways of knowing – a new epistemology. Listen to this article below. Subscribe to The Geneva Learning Foundation’s podcast for more audio content. Schön’s analysis: The dilemma of rigor or relevance Schön begins by examining how knowledge becomes institutionalized through education. Using elementary school mathematics as an example, he describes how knowledge is broken into discrete units (“math facts”), organized into progressive modules, assembled …

Teach to Reach Health workers are sharing how they protected their communities when extreme weather hit

You are not alone: Health workers are sharing how they protected their communities when extreme weather hit

Global health

Today, The Geneva Learning Foundation launched a new set of “Teach to Reach Questions” focused on how health workers protect community health during extreme weather events. This initiative comes at a crucial time, as world leaders at COP29 discuss climate change’s mounting impacts on health. As climate change intensifies extreme weather events worldwide, health workers are often the first to respond when disasters strike their communities. Their experiences – whether facing floods, droughts, heatwaves, or storms – contain vital lessons that could help others prepare for and respond to similar challenges. Read the eyewitness report: From community to planet: Health professionals on the frontlines of climate change, Online. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10204660 Why ask health workers about floods, droughts, and heatwaves? “Traditional surveys often ask for general information or statistics,” explains Charlotte Mbuh of The Geneva Learning Foundation. “Teach to Reach Questions are different. We ask health workers to share …

Why answer Teach to Reach Questions-small

Why answer Teach to Reach Questions?

Global 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 …

ASTMH 2024 How can we reliably spread evidence-based practices at the speed and scale modern health challenges demand

How can we reliably spread evidence-based practices at the speed and scale modern health challenges demand?

Global health

At a symposium of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Meeting, I explored how peer learning could help us tackle five critical challenges that limit effectiveness in global health. For epidemiologists working on implementation science, peer learning provides a new path for solving one of global health’s most persistent challenges: how to reliably spread evidence-based practices at the speed and scale modern health challenges demand. The evidence suggests we should view peer learning not just as a training approach, but as a mechanism for viral spread of effective practices through health systems. How do we get to attribution? Of course, an epidemiologist will want to know if and how improved health outcomes can be attributed to peer learning interventions. The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) addresses this fundamental challenge in implementation science – proving attribution – through a three-stage process that combines quantitative indicators with qualitative validation. …

Anecdote or lived experience reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems

Anecdote or lived experience: reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems

Global health

A health worker in rural Kenya notices that malaria cases are appearing earlier in the season than usual. A nurse in Bangladesh observes that certain neighborhoods are experiencing more heat-related illnesses despite similar temperatures. These observations often remain trapped in the realm of “anecdotal evidence.”  The dominant epistemological framework in public health traditionally dismisses such knowledge as unreliable, subjective, and of limited scientific value. This dismissal stems from a deeply-rooted global health paradigm that privileges quantitative data, randomized controlled trials, and statistical significance over the nuanced, contextual understanding that emerges from direct experience. The phrase “it’s just anecdotal” has become a subtle but powerful way of delegitimizing knowledge that does not conform to established scientific methodologies. Yet this epistemological stance creates a significant blind spot in our understanding of how climate change affects health at the community level. Climate change manifests in complex, locally specific ways that often elude traditional …