Sunday afternoon sessions: Canadian capacities in global health

Capacity Building for Healthy Communities – Dia Sanou, Jill Allison, Jalpa Shah, Rabia Bana

I was so inspired by the initiative and dedication of the panellist in the Capacity Building for Health Communities session. It was moving to see some of the great work being done at the local level. The projects that were presented ranged from training institutes for public health agriculture to a community clinic providing maternal health services to HIV/AIDS awareness among high right populations. It was helpful to hear about the varying implement strategies and some of their ‘lessons learned’ from their field work experiences.

One of the limitations of grass-roots programs is their long-term ability to sustain without external funding and support. Throughout the session a couple of the presenters discussed the challenges they faced trying to work with local health authorities and Ministries of Health to integrate the program into the health system. One project however engaged the Ministry of Health from the onset of the initiative. In this case, the Ministry of health was able to use the results of the study to help inform decision making. Where feasible, it’s useful to engage the decision maker from the onset as it gives the researcher the opportunity to learn which factors are important in the decision making process and can attempt to capture this in their data collection.

I was very intrigued by the group of student who presented from the University of Toronto’s Students for International Development (weblink for SID: http://www.sidcanada.org/). Each student presented on a specific capacity building project which they implemented as interns in Maragoli, Kenya. What I liked most about this program is that each student implemented a project with a difference focus, but all in the same community. I thought this was a great way to integrate a horizontal approach to research and health system strengthening. 

By: Megan Duncan