Dear Colleague,
It's been almost a year since the Commission report was published in The Lancet and we are extremely pleased with how its messages are spreading, reaching very diverse audiences.
One of us (Julio Frenk) was invited to give a keynote to share the findings of our report at a Global Summit in New York City to come up with strategies and next steps for investing in the healthcare workforce. Fellow Commissioner Tim Evans cited challenges in health professional education in Bangladesh within the context of social determinants at the WHO World Health Conference in Rio de Janeiro, also in October. And in the United States, challenges sparked by healthcare reform in matching the education of the healthcare workforce to the needs of local populations were the focus of a one-day conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (see stories below).
Making major, transformative changes in the training of all health professionals is not an easy undertaking! But we are encouraged by the concrete actions that are also taking place.
We've just signed two new sub-contracts with partners whose initiatives will add significantly to the momentum of reform:
Led by Dr. Bernie Jones, the InterAcademy Foundation of the InterAcademy Medical Panel (IAMP) will provide a platform for more dissemination and adaptation of the Commission report recommendations in regions with especially large numbers of low- and middle-income countries. IAMP has a global network of 71 national medical and science academies. The project will offer a few competitive planning grants and will be calling for proposals in May 2012.
The other sub-contract is with the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) for establishing "innovative collaboratives" that are part of their global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education. This is being spearheaded by Patrick Kelley, who is director of the Board on Global Health and African Science Academy Development at IOM and also one of the report Commissioners. Two other Commissioners - Afaf Meleis and Jordan Cohen - have accepted to serve as the Forum's co-chairs. We've received some very interesting proposals for the four university-based innovation collaboratives (they were due November 1) and will be selecting one in the U.S. or Canada, one in Latin America or the Caribbean, one in Africa, and one is Asia.
Through broader engagement of countries and health professionals, we hope to produce more translations of the Commission Report, hold launch events in areas we haven't reached, and form more regional and global partnerships and networking groups.
We're on the agenda to provide an update on all follow-up activities at the 2011 Global Health Conference in Montreal, Canada, 13-15 November. Other recent news is highlighted below and you'll find more news, upcoming events, and follow-up activities on our website.
Best regards,
Julio Frenk, Dean, Harvard School of Public Health and Commission Co-chair
Lincoln Chen, President, China Medical Board and Commission Co-chair
