FEMHealth researchers formed two panels at the Second Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, held in Beijing, China from the 30th October to the 3rd November 2012. The conference was attended by more than 1,700 people from over 100 countries...
FEMHealth researchers presented the Policy Effects Mapping tool and early results from the field, and the Community of Practice concept and experiences to date. In addition, FEMHealth researchers presented within other panels and also presented posters.
CoP panel
On the 2nd November, FEMHealth presented a panel of four presentations, chaired by Sophie Witter. These focussed on: (1) the Community of Practice concept and early experiences of facilitating one (Allison Kelley); (2) a framework for monitoring and evaluating CoPs (Maria Bertone); (3) monitoring data on members and their activities (Bruno Meessen) and (4) early findings on the value-added for members - the anthropologists’ perspective (Isabelle Lange).
POEM
On the 3rd November, the Policy Effects Mapping tool was explained and illustrated. The development of the tool, it objectives and methods were outlined by Fabienne Richard. This was followed by some illustrative early findings in relation to service organisation in Benin (Jean-Paul Dossou), community support for referral transport in Mali (Brahima Diallo) and financial impact on facilities in Benin (Sophie Witter and Patrick Ilboudo).
Other presentations
POEM was also explained and discussed in a panel on ‘Testing methodologies to assess the health systems impact of disease control’ by Bruno Marchal on the 1st November. Bruno also ran a workshop on realist evaluation on the 3rd November.
Posters
Out of 500 posters, a FEMHealth researcher was selected to be one of only nine winners – congratulations to Fabienne Richard for her poster on ‘Quality caesarean section in Burkina Faso: A health system approach’.
http://www.hsr-symposium.org/index.php/programme-/poster-competition
Emerging voices
Our own Jean-Paul Dossou from Benin was selected as an Emerging Voice, receiving intensive training in the run-up to the conference, and presenting within a FEMHealth panel but also to the wider conference.
Uptake and follow up
The Beijing statement which was issued at the end of the conference highlighted some issues emphasised by FEMHealth. For example, on page 3, it states that ‘Knowledge translation should be facilitated by developing communities of practice and trust between researchers, practitioners and policymakers’.
(http://www.hsr-symposium.org/images/stories/downloads/beijing%20_statement.pdf)