RACS Global Health working in partnership for the Pacific Island Program

In April 2022, the RACS Global Health Department and Fellow Dr Liz McLeod had the opportunity to join the Pacific Island Program (PIP) Phase 2 Workshop in Suva, Fiji. Fellows and partner organisations also joined this workshop online. The purpose of this workshop was to join the three PIP partners— RACS, Fiji National University (FNU) and South Pacific Community (SPC) and donor agency DFAT—in planning discussions for the next four-year phase (2022–2026) of the critical program. The PIP sits within the broader DFAT Pacific Regional Clinical Services and Health Workforce Improvement Program, which aims to contribute to the high-level goal: ‘health care in Pacific island countries is affordable, appropriate to local needs, of good quality and accessible’. The PIP is one of the three streams implemented under this regional project. The other components are managed by FNU and the SPC. PIP’s program objective is ‘to strengthen and consolidate specialised clinical service delivery in the Pacific region’. The PIP is implemented across 11 Pacific Island Countries (PICs) with a total population of 2.4 million people—the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia (Micronesia), Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

The PIP program goals are: • Prioritised Pacific specialised clinical service professionals have improved competencies • Pacific Island countries receive quality visiting medical teams that meet their priority clinical and training needs • Pacific Ministries of Health better identify and prioritise specialised clinical service and training needs, to inform Ministry of Health planning • Pacific specialised clinical education institutions and Pacific professional clinical organisations have better educational resources.

An independent mid-term review was conducted remotely by the Nossal Institute from May to August 2020. It included a review of program documents and broader literature, 35 key informant interviews, and online surveys completed by 48 Visiting Medical Team members and 31 Pacific Island clinicians.

Findings included that RACS should continue to support remote capacity building activities and develop more remote clinical professional development training models in collaboration with Pacific professional clinical organisations. RACS was also recommended to consider opportunities for the PIP to support Ministry of Healthled planning for the development of: