Movement for Immunization Agenda IA2030

Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030): grounding action in local realities to reach the unreached

Global health

Three years after the launch of Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030), WHO’s 154th Executive Board meeting provided a sobering picture of how the COVID-19 pandemic reversed decades of progress in expanding global immunization coverage and controlling vaccine-preventable diseases. In response, the World Health Organization is calling for action “grounded in local realities”. Growing evidence supports fresh approaches that do exactly that. Tom Newton-Lewis is part of the community of researchers and practitioners who have observed that “health systems are complex and adaptive” and, they say, that explains why top-down control rarely succeeds. However, top-down control and directive management appear to have been key to how immunization programmes achieved impressive results in previous decades. Hence, it may be challenging for the current generation of global immunization leaders to consider that enabling approaches that leverage intrinsic motivation, foster collective responsibility, and empower teams – especially for local staff – are the ones needed now. One …

A shared lens around sensemaking in learning analytics

Making sense of sensemaking

Theory

In her article “A Shared Lens for Sensemaking in Learning Analytics”, Sasha Poquet argues that the field of learning analytics lacks a shared conceptual language to describe the process of sensemaking around educational data. She reviews prominent theories of sensemaking, delineating tensions between assumptions in dominant paradigms. Poquet then demonstrates the eclectic use of sensemaking frameworks across empirical learning analytics research. For instance, studies frequently conflate noticing dashboard information with interpreting its significance. To advance systematic inquiry, she calls for revisiting epistemic assumptions to reconcile tensions between cognitive and sociocultural traditions. Adopting a transactional perspective, Poquet suggests activity theory, conceptualizations of perceived situational definitions, and ecological affordance perception can jointly illuminate subjective and objective facets of sensemaking. This preliminary framework spotlights the interplay of internal worldviews, external systemic contexts, and emergent perceptual processes in appropriating analytics. The implications span research and practice. The proposed constructs enable precise characterization of variability …

IA2030 Movement HPV vaccination national EPI consultation

Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030): National EPI leaders from 31 countries share experience of HPV vaccination

Global health

What difference can peer-led learning and action make for national EPI planners seeking new strategies to support HPV vaccine introduction or reintroduction? The stakes are high: HPV vaccination efforts, if successful, will avert 3.4 million deaths by 2030. On Friday, EPI focal points for HPV and other national-level MOH colleagues from 31 countries convened under the banner of the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030), which connects over 60,000 primarily sub-national health staff worldwide. What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030)? This time, it was national HPV vaccination focal points and other national EPI planners who joined to share experience between countries of ‘what works’ (and how). They also discussed how the Geneva Learning Foundation’s unique peer learning-to-action pathway could help them overcome barriers they are facing to ensure that local communities understand and support the benefits of this vaccine. Such a pathway can complement existing, top-down forms …

What learning science underpins peer learning for Global Health?

What learning science underpins peer learning for Global Health?

Events, Global health

Watch Reda Sadki’s presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Symposium on 19 October 2023 Most significant learning that contributes to improved performance takes place outside of formal training. It occurs through informal and incidental forms of learning between peers. Effective use of peer learning requires realizing how much we can learn from each other (peer learning), experiencing the power of defying distance to solve problems together (remote learning), and feeling a growing sense of belonging to a community (social learning), emergent across country borders and health system levels (networked learning). At the ASTMH annual meeting Symposium organized by Julie Jacobson, two TGLF Alumnae, María Monzón from Argentina and Ruth Allotey from Ghana, will be sharing their analyses and reflections of how they turned peer learning into action, results, and impact. In his presentation, Reda Sadki, president of The Geneva Learning Foundation …

Collective Intelligence Cambridge Digital Education Futures Initiative

The COVID-19 Peer Hub as an example of Collective Intelligence (CI) in practice

Global health, The Geneva Learning Foundation

A new article by colleagues at the Cambridge Digital Education Futures Initiative (DEFI) illustrates academic understanding of Collective Intelligence (CI) through the COVID-19 Peer Hub, a peer learning initiative organized by over 6,000 frontline health workers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with support from The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), in response to the initial shock of the pandemic on immunization services that placed 80 million children at risk of missing lifesaving vaccines. Learn more about the COVID-19 Peer Hub… From the abstract: Collective Intelligence (CI) is important for groups that seek to address shared problems. CI in human groups can be mediated by educational technologies. The current paper presents a framework to support design thinking in relation to CI educational technologies. Our Collective Intelligence framework is grounded in an organismic-contextualist developmental perspective that orients enquiry to the design of increasingly complex and integrated CI systems that support coordinated group …

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. …

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

Learning from Frontline Health Workers in the Climate Change Era

Global 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 is a rubric and why you should use it in global health education-small

What is a “rubric” and why use rubrics in global health education?

Global health, Learning, Learning design, Theory

Rubrics are well-established, evidence-based tools in education, but largely unknown in global health. At the Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), the rubric is a key tool that we use – as part of a comprehensive package of interventions – to transform high-cost, low-volume training dependent on the limited availability of global experts into scalable peer learning to improve access, quality, and outcomes. The more prosaic definition of the rubric – reduced from any pedagogical questioning – is “a type of scoring guide that assesses and articulates specific components and expectations for an assignment” (Source). The rubric is a practical solution to a number of complex issues that prevent effective teaching and learning in global health. Developing a rubric provides a practical method for turning complex content and expertise into a learning process in which learners will learn primarily from each other. Hence, making sense of a rubric requires recognizing and appreciating the value of peer learning. This may be …

What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 IA2030

What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030)?

Global health

The Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) and the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 represent two interconnected but distinct aspects of a global effort to enhance immunization coverage and impact. What is Immunization Agenda 2030? Immunization Agenda 2030 or “IA2030” is a global strategy endorsed by the World Health Assembly, aiming to maximize the lifesaving impact of vaccines over the decade from 2021 to 2030. Watch the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) inaugural lecture by Anne Lindstrand (WHO) and Robin Nandy (UNICEF) What is the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030? The Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030, on the other hand, is a collaborative, community-driven effort to operationalize the goals of IA2030 at the local and national – and to foster double-loop learning for international partners. It emerged in response to the Director-General’s call for a “groundswell of support” for immunization and combines a network, platform, and community of action. The Movement focuses on turning …