Global Health Equity
In March, Legacy members convened for a discussion on accelerating global health equity through collaboration. The conversation was led by a panel of global health experts including Ophelia Dahl—Co-founder and Chair of the Board of Partners in Health; Raj Panjabi—CEO and Co-Founder of Last Mile Health; Phuoc Le—Co-founder of HEAL Initiative.
If interested, you can find video of the full conversation here. Some noteworthy moments from the conversation:
- There are lessons not taught in medical education that are critical for this work: the will to do good does not equate the skills to do good; how to achieve this work is unpredictably challenging when you don’t have the right tools; possible need for a physician-entrepreneur track in medical school
- There is no pill to solve the disease of poverty (24:05 in video)
- If an idea can’t be measured, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t count—our metrics have to catch up with the complexity of the situation (26:30)
- The means of having sharper, deeper, metrics and key performance indicators are important, but we will harm the world if we forget that those are means not ends
- When an organization can’t solve a problem, because the problem is perhaps not in the mission statement, that isn’t the time not to help, but to find out who among your friends and partners can (29:20)
- It doesn’t matter how good a nonprofit is, it can never get big enough that it can change a system on its own (33:40)
- Phuoc has noted “bidirectionality” is a recent trend in collaboration (37:15)
- Always partner with an indigenous group – shift the locus of power to the true experts who live in and know their community
- A big challenge to collaboration often ends up being control (41:00)
- To better drive collaboration with funders: add measurement that tracks collaboration, shift from a mentality of resource scarcity to resource abundance (51:00)
- There can be funder collaboration as well as institutional collaboration
- Caution: remember to identify the opportunity cost of choosing to collaborate; it is often significant and might outweigh the benefit of collaboration
- When these patients get well, one of the first things they ask for is a job—health, education, jobs (58:00)
If you are interested in learning more…
- Bending the Arc, a film about Partners in Health’s 30-year journey
- Raj Panjabi, Last Mile Health, was awarded the 2017 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and ranked #28 World’s Greatest Leaders by Fortune