HSR 2016: Advocating resilient and responsive health systems
From November 14 to 18, 2016, Vancouver, Canada’s garden city, played host to a global community of researchers, public health specialists, civil societies, media, implementers, digital experts, representatives of government and international organizations, who gathered at the Vancouver civic center and Simon Frasier University (SFU) to discuss, brainstorm and to chat the way forward on “Resilient and responsive health services, ‘the theme of this year’s edition of the ‘Global Symposium of Health System Research’.
WANEL at HSR2016
Members of WANEL were well represented at HSR2016. At the pre-conference session organized by the Emerging Voices of Global Health, WANEL was part of the audience and actively participated in the poster presentation. Celine Defor made a presentation on the ‘Review of West African HPSR literature: observing trends in evidence generation from 1990-2015’ as keen students and other participants inquired about various aspects of her presentation and the reasons for which the research was conducted as well as the result it has generated.
At the HSR symposium, a satellite session organized by WANEL members was dedicated to exploring the empirical and experiential from the point of view of implementers and researchers in West Africa. Two panels featured the perspectives of emerging practitioners, policymakers and researchers on what it means to do health policy and systems work in West Africa. The session was exciting and inspiring, and brought into relief the issues, challenges, motivations and dreams of the next generation of future leaders in the region. Among the panelist were Virgil Lokossou, Henry Uro-Chukwu, Fatou Kebe, Kadio Kadidatou, Jean-Paul Dossou and Seye Abimbola. Aku Kwamie chaired the session while Vanessa Offiong moderated.
Team WANEL also had poster and e-poster presentations at the symposium’s market place.
Poster presentations were made by Mary Amoakoh-Coleman, Augustina Koduah, Seye Abimbola, Roger Atinga, Matilda Aberese-Ako and Vigil Lokossou. Others who had poster presentions were Kadio Kadidatou, Abdallah Ibrahim, Kojo Anniah, Fatou Kebe, Celine Defor, Aissa Diarra, Hannah Brown-Amoakoh, Jean-Paul Dossou and Aku Kwamie. Abdoulaye Guindo, Vitalis Bawontuo, Enyi Etiaba and Felix Abrahim Obi had e-poster sessions.
Aku Kwamie was part of the satellite session – ‘African Region’s experience on health policy dialogues for resilient and responsive health systems’ hosted by the World Health Organization.
Augustina Koduah, Mary Amoakoh-Coleman and Gifty Ofori Ansah were part of the organized session – ‘Encouraging power and politics in promoting health and public value’.
Matilda Aberese-Ako chaired the oral session – ‘Implementing improvement and innovation in health service and systems’ in which, Henry Uro-Chukwu was one of the panelists.