Sixth Health Systems Research Global Symposium Characteristic of most meetings held in 2020 given COVID-19 restrictions, the Health Systems Research Global Symposium scheduled to be held in Dubai in November 2020, took place on-line. Held in three phases over a few months, it was widely attended by people from across the world, with the virtual platform providing challenges as well as opportunities for engagement. This included opening up the space to many who may not have been able to access the conference in-person, thus increasing access to new and exciting knowledge and research in the field of health systems research. The theme ‘Re-imagining health systems for better health and social justice’ was addressed through three sub-themes: engaging political forces; engaging social, economic and environmental forces; and engaging technological and data driven innovations.
SOPH at the Symposium The School of Public Health (SOPH) was actively engaged in both planning, and presenting at the symposium – with Prof Asha George, as chair of Health Systems Global (HSG), playing an important co-ordinating and oversight role. As chair, Asha opened the conference, alongside Emerging Voices for Global Health, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (WHO Director General) and Director General of the Dubai Health Authority, His Excellency Humaid Al Qutami. Oral presentations and panel discussions were prerecorded and streamed in the various phases and subthemes. SOPH researchers participated as follows: •
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Ida Okeyo presented on the policy adoption and implementation challenges of the South African intersectoral policy on the First Thousand Days of Childhood. Ida Okeyo and Tanya Jacobs presented on what can be learnt about power and politics in policy processes by using discourse analysis. Asha George facilitated a panel discussion on gender gaps in digital health, and presented on overcoming blind spots and biases to seize opportunities and responsibilities for transforming health systems. Sulakshana Nandi presented on addressing the failures of publicly-funded health insurance schemes in India – particularly the role of power, social institutions and the political economy of health care.
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Manya van Ryneveld presented a 25-year review of human resources for health in South Africa, alongside a panel discussing power and contestation in the governance of the health workforce.
SOPH doctoral and post-doctoral students and researchers were involved in a number of organised and skills-building sessions, often working collaboratively with other institutions. These focused on a range of health policy and systems research areas. One of the organised sessions was the memorable debate that focused on resolving the long-standing argument regarding which factors really influence health policy processes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Hosted by the Alliance’s Health Policy Analysis Fellows, it included Ida Okeyo from the SOPH. Along with colleagues from India and the USA, the SOPH hosted a skills-building session, drawing on case studies from PhD students from the School, the University of Cape Town and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. This offered an introduction to the innovative discourse and historical analysis approaches for analysing power and politics. The SOPH’s Dr Hazel Bradley moderated a skillsbuilding session that showcased four experts’ presentations of different methodologies used to measure medicines quality and use. This focused on applying newly acquired knowledge about study design, data analysis and interpretation for decisionmaking to promote medicines quality and efficient medicines use. Hazel also helped to co-ordinate a skills-building session on core challenges of medicines in universal health care, addressed from a health system and policy perceptive. This explored examples from four countries/regions – Mexico, Kenya, Moldova and the Asian region – each being at a different stage of scaling up health and medicine coverage.
