Envisioning a Global Health Partnership Movement

“A universal truth: No health without a workforce” was the rallying cry of the flagship report commissioned by the Global Health Workforce Alliance Secretariat and the World Health Organization [1] and one which must be embraced if the aspiration for universal health coverage is ever to be realised [2]. One in seven people will never see a qualified health worker in their lives. The world will be short of 12.9 million health-care workers by 2035. The figures speak for themselves. It has never been clearer that there has to be a major global effort to recruit, educate and train health workers. As the international development community prepare for the delivery of the next set of development goals, focus must include a meaningful revitalisation of the concept of partnership and a shift from short-term global interests to strengthening systems in low and middleincome countries. The Sustainable Development Goals call on new forms of partnership that speak to co-development rather than traditional models of international development mutuality, co-learning and a recognition that we gain as much as we give by working through partnerships. It is time for donors and governments to look beyond monetary contributions to also consider what resources, expertise and technology that, if shared, could result in mutual benefit. In this sense, health partnerships offer a vision of the way in which learning and knowledge-exchange will take place in the future. Among those engaged in global health, there is growing interest in long-term, formalised partnerships or links between health delivery and health education institutions such as hospitals, universities and professional associations. These partnerships are often developed by institutions with complementary objectives and are typically, but not exclusively, made up of health professionals from high-resource settings who volunteer their time and expertise to deliver health workforce strengthening or related projects. In many cases, partnerships are a two-way exchange of experience, skills and expertise from a highincome institution aiming to build the capacity of a low-income counterpart. However, multi-country and, increasingly, south-to-south partnership arrangements also exist. The themes, specialisms and methods of delivery of projects are broad, ranging from training and capacity building for in-service staff, providing practical skills, e-learning, online mentoring, continuing professional development, to facilitating research, professional standards and curriculum development to strengthen preservice training. We initiated this special series to explore these peerto-peer collaborations and to start to build an accessible and shared knowledge base on their ability to offer an effective framework for sharing expertise internationally. It’s not just about development and capacity building; the series will underscore the additional benefits, challenges, and opportunities of taking multi-national partnership approaches. We anticipate that as the series evolves, it will become clearer where the gaps in our knowledge and evidence base exist and how we might address these. We were very pleased to discover that our initial call for papers generated interest from all over the world and that a great diversity of health specialties and approaches are represented. This series is intended to be an ongoing collection of evidence, reflections, and challenges to the health partnership approach. In this issue we begin with six articles and introduce some of the key questions for future exploration. Over the past five years, the Health Partnership Scheme (HPS), a UK government-funded programme, has allowed for a variety of projects in different contexts and technical areas to be supported with appropriate levels of funding the specifics of delivery are identified at the institutional level. Over 40,000 health workers have availed of training course places in over 29 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Middle East, through the voluntary engagement of more than 1,500 professionals from the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and the involvement of more than 200 UK and Correspondence: [email protected] Tropical Health & Education Trust (THET), London, UK