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…