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Sixth Health Systems Research Global Symposium Promoting African adolescents’ full potential through ‘accelerator
Sixth Health Systems Research Global Symposium
Characteristic of most meetings held in 2020 given COVID-19 restrictions, the Health Systems Research Global Symposium scheduled to be held in Dubai in November 2020, took place on-line. Held in three phases over a few months, it was widely attended by people from across the world, with the virtual platform providing challenges as well as opportunities for engagement. This included opening up the space to many who may not have been able to access the conference in-person, thus increasing access to new and exciting knowledge and research in the field of health systems research. The theme ‘Re-imagining health systems for better health and social justice’ was addressed through three sub-themes: engaging political forces; engaging social, economic and environmental forces; and engaging technological and data driven innovations.
SOPH at the Symposium
The School of Public Health (SOPH) was actively engaged in both planning, and presenting at the symposium – with Prof Asha George, as chair of Health Systems Global (HSG), playing an important co-ordinating and oversight role.
As chair, Asha opened the conference, alongside Emerging Voices for Global Health, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (WHO Director General) and Director General of the Dubai Health Authority, His Excellency Humaid Al Qutami. Oral presentations and panel discussions were prerecorded and streamed in the various phases and subthemes. SOPH researchers participated as follows: • Ida Okeyo presented on the policy adoption and implementation challenges of the South African intersectoral policy on the First Thousand Days of
Childhood. • Ida Okeyo and Tanya Jacobs presented on what can be learnt about power and politics in policy processes by using discourse analysis. • Asha George facilitated a panel discussion on gender gaps in digital health, and presented on overcoming blind spots and biases to seize opportunities and responsibilities for transforming health systems. • Sulakshana Nandi presented on addressing the failures of publicly-funded health insurance schemes in India – particularly the role of power, social institutions and the political economy of health care. • Manya van Ryneveld presented a 25-year review of human resources for health in South Africa, alongside a panel discussing power and contestation in the governance of the health workforce.
SOPH doctoral and post-doctoral students and researchers were involved in a number of organised and skills-building sessions, often working collaboratively with other institutions. These focused on a range of health policy and systems research areas. One of the organised sessions was the memorable debate that focused on resolving the long-standing argument regarding which factors really influence health policy processes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Hosted by the Alliance’s Health Policy Analysis Fellows, it included Ida Okeyo from the SOPH.
Along with colleagues from India and the USA, the SOPH hosted a skills-building session, drawing on case studies from PhD students from the School, the University of Cape Town and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. This offered an introduction to the innovative discourse and historical analysis approaches for analysing power and politics.
The SOPH’s Dr Hazel Bradley moderated a skillsbuilding session that showcased four experts’ presentations of different methodologies used to measure medicines quality and use. This focused on applying newly acquired knowledge about study design, data analysis and interpretation for decisionmaking to promote medicines quality and efficient medicines use. Hazel also helped to co-ordinate a skills-building session on core challenges of medicines in universal health care, addressed from a health system and policy perceptive. This explored examples from four countries/regions – Mexico, Kenya, Moldova and the Asian region – each being at a different stage of scaling up health and medicine coverage.
SOPH researchers also presented posters covering a range of topics such as maternal health policy implementation experiences (Enyi Etiaba), continuum of care for maternal health (Mamothena Mothupi), social determinants of alcohol consumption during pregnancy (Michelle de Jong), addressing foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (Babatope Adebiyi), clinical leadership in health systems (Solange MIanda), and human resource management (Verona Mathews). Innovative presentations included live sessions in which researchers presented their topics to virtual audiences.
The participation of SOPH staff and students in the Symposium was made possible through a number of HSG scholarships, as well as scholarships from the Countdown 2030 sub-grant held by the SOPH.
Community
The sense of community that HSG provides to health systems researchers all over the world was felt strongly throughout the conference, despite having to host an event of this size virtually. The exchange of knowledge, experience and insights was inspiring and substantial and the Symposium delivered an excellent platform that will continue to build and catalyse this global community.
Two SOPH doctoral students participated in the 4th Symposium on Global Health Policy Research, held alongside the Health Systems Research Global Symposium: • Waasila Jassat presented on the implementation of policy on the decentralised drug-resistant TB programme in South Africa in a panel: ‘A policy lens on complex health and social welfare problems’; and • Tanya Jacobs presented a gender analysis of adolescent health policy in South Africa in a panel: ‘Who is heard and silenced in health policy making’.
Health Systems Global (HSG) has a number of thematic working groups which facilitate ongoing research and conversations on a range of themes and issues. The Medicines in Health Systems Thematic Working Group (MiHS TWG) is one of these. From October 2019, SOPH’s Dr Hazel Bradley has been a co-ordinator in the MiHS TWG and, together with three other members of the leadership team, organised the following activities. Webinars: Three webinars were held during 2020, each followed by a blog that was uploaded on the website and disseminated to the members. The topics were: • Patent pool, falsifications and shortages: What COVID-19 teaches us about medicines access during a pandemic. • Access to medicines in a global pandemic: Spotlight on South Africa, Bolivia and Nigeria. • Repeated household and facility phone interviews to measure medicines’ availability and price: Methodology and feasibility.
Newsletters: Three newsletters were disseminated. As members were invited to contribute, they featured short discussions of topical themes from Bolivia and Nigeria. Website: A new website was developed: https://healthsystemsglobal.org/thematic-groups/medicines/ Sessions at the 2020 Symposium: Two sessions were organised and presented: • Skills-building session: Health systems research methods to study medicines quality and use. • Organised session: Quo vadis? Medicines in universal health coverage.
