ACHEST in the 7th Annual Global Health Conference in the USA

African Centre for Global Health and Social Transformation’s Dr. Elsie Kiguli-Malwadde, Director of Health Workforce, Education and Development attended the 7th Annual Global health conference in San Francisco in the USA.

The meeting that took place from the 9th -11th of June 2016 was convened by Consortium of Universities for Global Health in conjunction with the University of California, San Francesca. The meeting that was overly attended by 1800 participants had conferences, plenary sessions, satellite sessions and social and small interest group breakouts.

Dr. Elsie Kiguli-Malwadde representing the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) and The Network: Towards Unity for Health participated in a panel discussion as a panelist. The title of her discussion was: “Networks for Impact on Global Health: Reciprocity, Equitability, and the Sharing of Best Practices.” The purpose of this session was to explore the benefits, challenges, and opportunities to networking by a range of global health stakeholders.

The other presenters made presentations on:” Making the case for planetary health: why and how.” Presentations were made on four specific areas that included; Education, Research, Public Policy, Environment and Economics; looking at health effects from environmental changes, ocean acidification, land degradation, pollution, and biodiversity loss and how these pose definite serious challenges. This was based on the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet report on planetary health.

The general consensus from the discussions was that collaboration through networks has profound benefit in building capacity to address the challenges of health systems strengthening.