Global Learning II: Builds Skills and Introduces New Ideas to Advance Equity

The Equity Initiative’s Global Learning II module is designed to help Fellows further develop the leadership skills and innovative ideas needed to mobilize stakeholders toward a common goal. Global Learning II was held June 1-8 in Salem and at Harvard University. Among the key takeaways from Global Learning II sessions were the following:

• Adaptive leadership challenges changemakers to look beyond immediate problems and identify root causes, and then mobilize stakeholders to address them. Leaders can use public narrative to build support and call for actions. Changemakers also need to craft an effective strategy for negotiation, one that takes into account the variety of concerns stakeholders bring to the table and finds shared ground.
• Providers of effective community-level care are open to new models for delivering service: convenient centers that provide a range of services (primary, specialty, and mental health services), co-locating health care centers in school settings, and giving voice to the underserved.
• Fellows engaged in thought-provoking discussions with invited lecturers on health systems and health reform to learn how other countries and communities respond to health equity concerns; scale up successful primary health care models; the linkages between health care and human rights; and the rise of informal workers.

Guided reflection is a key part of the Equity Initiative experience, and ample time was built into the program week for Fellows to talk about what they observed, how it relates to their own work, and how it might help them further advance their own equity goals.

Learning from the Global Learning I and II sessions will give Fellows new insights as they begin to develop their Year 2 group project ideas to advance health equity.