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. 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 into curricula, and measured through standardized tests. This systematization shapes not just content but the entire …

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 …

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 leadership network to connect local, national, and international 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 pedagogy of Teach to Reach

What is the pedagogy of Teach to Reach?

Global 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 …

Teach to Reach 10 Experiences shared

Experiences shared at Teach to Reach 10

Global health

Before, during, and after Teach to Reach on 20-21 June 2024, 21,398 health workers across the Global South—from veteran national managers to newly-trained community health workers—shared their unfiltered, frontline experiences of delivering care in an increasingly complex world. Ahead of Teach to Reach 11, The Geneva Learning Foundation has just released the English-language collection of “Experiences shared“. A second collection of experiences shared by French-speaking participants is also available. This remarkable collection captures over 600 experiences that health workers shared, in their own words, offering rare, ground-level perspectives on how global health challenges manifest in communities. Themes and topics explored in this collection: Through questions that probe specific moments rather than seeking generalizations, these accounts detail personal encounters with everything from climate change’s effects on malaria transmission to the challenges of integrating immunization with other health services. Health workers share candid stories of their successes, failures, and innovations: using WhatsApp …

Psychological First Aid in Support of Children Affected by the Humanitarian Crisis in Ukraine: the Experiences of Children, Caregivers and Helpers

Support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: Bridging practice and learning through the sharing of experience

Global health

“Do you have an experience supporting children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine that you would like to share with colleagues? Tell us what happened and how it turned out. Be specific and detailed so that we can understand your story.” This was one of the questions that applicants to the Certificate peer learning programme on Psychological First Aid (PFA) in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine could choose to answer. If you are reading this, you may be one of the education, health, or social work professionals who answered questions like these. You may also be a policy maker or organizational leader asking yourself how children from Ukraine and the people who work with them can be better supported. The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), in collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and with support from the European …