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Tag: local action

  • A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action

    A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action

    The theme of International Education Day 2025, “AI and education: Preserving human agency in a world of automation,” invites critical examination of how artificial intelligence might enhance rather than replace human capabilities in learning and leadership. Global health education offers a compelling context for exploring this question, as mounting challenges from climate change to persistent inequities demand new approaches to building collective capability.

    The promise of connected communities

    Recent experiences like the Teach to Reach initiative demonstrate the potential of structured peer learning networks. The platform has connected over 60,000 health workers, primarily government workers from districts and facilities across 82 countries, including those serving in conflict zones, remote rural areas, and urban settlements. For example, their exchanges about climate change impacts on community health point the way toward more distributed forms of knowledge creation in global health. 

    Analysis of these networks suggests possibilities for integrating artificial intelligence not merely as tools but as active partners in learning and action. However, realizing this potential requires careful attention to how AI capabilities might enhance rather than disrupt the human connections that drive current success.

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) partnership could provide crucial support for tackling mounting challenges. More importantly, they could help pioneer new approaches to learning and action that genuinely serve community needs while advancing our understanding of how human and machine intelligence might work together in service of global health.

    Understanding Artificial Intelligence (AI) as partner, not tool

    The distinction between AI tools and AI partners merits careful examination. Early AI applications in global health primarily automate existing processes – analyzing data, delivering content, or providing recommendations. While valuable, this tool-based approach maintains clear separation between human and machine capabilities.

    AI partnership suggests a different relationship, where artificial intelligence participates actively in learning networks alongside human practitioners. This could mean AI systems that:

    • Engage in dialogue with health workers about local observations
    • Help validate emerging insights through pattern analysis
    • Support adaptation of solutions across contexts
    • Facilitate connections between practitioners facing similar challenges

    The key difference lies in moving from algorithmic recommendations to collaborative intelligence that combines human wisdom with machine capabilities.

    A framework for AI partnership in global health

    Analysis of current peer learning networks suggests several dimensions where AI partnership could enhance collective capabilities:

    • Knowledge creation: Current peer learning networks enable health workers to share observations and experiences across borders. AI partners could enrich this process by engaging in dialogue about patterns and connections, while preserving the central role of human judgment in validating insights.
    • Learning process: Teach to Reach demonstrates how structured peer learning accelerates knowledge sharing and adaptation. AI could participate in these networks by contributing additional perspectives, supporting rapid synthesis of experiences, and helping identify promising practices.
    • Local leadership: Health workers develop and implement solutions based on deep understanding of community needs. AI partnership could enhance decision-making by exploring options, modeling potential outcomes, and validating approaches while maintaining human agency.
    • Network formation: Digital platforms currently enable lateral connections between health workers across regions. AI could actively facilitate network development by identifying valuable connections and supporting knowledge flow across boundaries.
    • Implementation support: Peer review and structured feedback drive current learning-to-action cycles. AI partners could engage in ongoing dialogue about implementation challenges while preserving the essential role of human judgment in local contexts.
    • Evidence generation: Networks document experiences and outcomes through structured processes. AI collaboration could help develop and test hypotheses about effective practices while maintaining focus on locally-relevant evidence.

    Applications across three global health challenges

    This framework suggests new possibilities for addressing persistent challenges.

    1. Immunization systems

    Current global immunization goals face significant obstacles in reaching zero-dose children and strengthening routine services. AI partnership could enhance efforts by:

    • Supporting microplanning by mediating dialogue about local barriers
    • Facilitating rapid learning about successful engagement strategies
    • Enabling coordinated action across health system levels
    • Modeling potential impacts of different intervention approaches

    2. Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs)

    The fight against NTDs suffers from critical information gaps and weak coordination at local levels. Many communities, including health workers, lack basic knowledge about these diseases. AI partnership could help address these gaps through:

    • Facilitating knowledge flow between affected communities
    • Supporting coordination of control efforts
    • Enabling rapid validation of successful approaches
    • Strengthening surveillance and response networks

    3. Climate change and health

    Health workers’ observations of climate impacts on community health provide crucial early warning of emerging threats. AI partnership could enhance response capability by:

    • Engaging in dialogue about changing disease patterns
    • Supporting rapid sharing of adaptation strategies
    • Facilitating coordinated action across regions
    • Modeling potential impacts of interventions

    Pandemic preparedness beyond early warning

    The experience of digital health networks during recent disease outbreaks reveals both the power of distributed response capabilities and the potential for enhancement through AI partnership. When COVID-19 emerged, networks of health workers demonstrated remarkable ability to rapidly share insights and adapt practices. For example, the Geneva Learning Foundation’s COVID-19 Peer Hub connected over 6,000 frontline health professionals who collectively generated and implemented recovery strategies at rates seven times faster than isolated efforts.

    This networked response capability suggests new possibilities for pandemic preparedness that combines human and machine intelligence. Heightened preparedness could emerge from the interaction between health workers, communities, and AI partners engaged in continuous learning and adaptation.

    Current pandemic preparedness emphasizes early detection through formal surveillance. However, health workers in local communities often observe concerning patterns before these register in official systems.

    AI partnership could enhance this distributed sensing capability while maintaining its grounding in local realities. Rather than simply analyzing reports, AI systems could engage in ongoing dialogue with health workers about their observations, helping to:

    • Explore possible patterns and connections
    • Test hypotheses about emerging threats
    • Model potential trajectories
    • Identify similar experiences across regions

    The key lies in combining human judgment about local significance with AI capabilities for pattern recognition across larger scales.

    The focus remains on accelerating locally-led learning rather than imposing standardized solutions.

    Perhaps most importantly, AI partnership could enhance the collective intelligence that emerges when practitioners work together to implement solutions. Current networks enable health workers to share implementation experiences and adapt strategies to local contexts. Adding AI capabilities could support this through:

    • Ongoing dialogue about implementation challenges
    • Analysis of patterns in successful adaptation
    • Support for rapid testing of modifications
    • Facilitation of cross-context learning

    Success requires maintaining human agency in implementation while leveraging machine capabilities to strengthen collective problem-solving.

    This networked vision of pandemic preparedness, enhanced through AI partnership, represents a fundamental shift from current approaches. Rather than attempting to predict and control outbreaks through centralized systems, it suggests building distributed capabilities for continuous learning and adaptation. The experience of existing health worker networks provides a foundation for this transformation, while artificial intelligence offers new possibilities for strengthening collective response capabilities.

    Investment for innovation

    Realizing this vision requires strategic investment in:

    • Network development: Supporting growth of peer learning platforms that accelerate local action while maintaining focus on human connection.
    • AI partnership innovation: Developing systems designed to participate in learning networks while preserving human agency.
    • Implementation research: Studying how AI partnership affects collective capabilities and health outcomes.
    • Capacity strengthening: Building health worker capabilities to effectively collaborate with AI while maintaining critical judgment.

    Looking forward

    The transformation of global health learning requires moving beyond both conventional practices of technical assistance and simple automation. Experience with peer learning networks demonstrates what becomes possible when health workers connect to share knowledge and drive change.

    Adding artificial intelligence as partners in these networks – rather than replacements for human connection – could enhance collective capabilities to protect community health. However, success requires careful attention to maintaining human agency while leveraging technology to strengthen rather than supplant local leadership.

    7 key principles for AI partnership

    1. Maintain human agency in decision-making
    2. Support rather than replace local leadership
    3. Enhance collective intelligence
    4. Enable rapid learning and adaptation
    5. Preserve context sensitivity
    6. Facilitate knowledge flow across boundaries
    7. Build sustainable learning systems

    Listen to an AI-generated podcast about this article

    🤖 This podcast was generated by AI, discussing Reda Sadki’s 24 January 2025 article “A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action”. While the conversation is AI-generated, the framework and examples discussed are based on the published article.

    Framework: AI partnership for learning and local action in global health

    DimensionCurrent StateAI as ToolsAI as PartnersPotential Impact
    Knowledge creationHealth workers share observations and experiences through peer networksAI analyzes patterns in shared dataAI engages in dialogue with health workers, asking questions, suggesting connections, validating insightsNew forms of collective intelligence combining human and machine capabilities
    Learning processStructured peer learning through digital platforms and networksAI delivers content and analyzes performanceAI participates in peer learning networks, contributes insights, supports adaptationAccelerated learning through human-AI collaboration
    Local leadershipHealth workers develop and implement solutions for community challengesAI provides recommendations based on data analysisAI works alongside local leaders to explore options, model scenarios, validate approachesEnhanced decision-making combining local wisdom with AI capabilities
    Network formationLateral connections between health workers across regionsAI matches similar profiles or challengesAI actively facilitates network development, identifies valuable connectionsMore effective knowledge networks leveraging both human and machine intelligence
    Implementation supportPeer review and structured feedback on action plansAI checks plans against best practicesAI engages in iterative dialogue about implementation challenges and solutionsImproved implementation through combined human-AI problem-solving
    Evidence generationDocumentation of experiences and outcomes through structured processesAI analyzes implementation dataAI collaborates with health workers to develop and test hypotheses about what worksNew approaches to generating practice-based evidence

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

  • Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis

    Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis

    Health workers are already being transformed by climate change. COP29 stakeholders can either support this transformation to strengthen health systems, or risk watching the health workforce collapse under mounting pressures.

    The World Health Organization’s “COP29 Special Report on Climate Change and Health: Health is the Argument for Climate Action“ highlights the health sector’s role in climate action.

    Health professionals are eyewitnesses and first responders to climate impacts on people and communities firsthand – from escalating respiratory diseases to spreading infections and increasing humanitarian disasters.

    The report positions health workers as “trusted members of society” who are “uniquely positioned” to champion climate action.

    The context is stark: WHO projects a global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030, with six million in climate-vulnerable sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, our communities and healthcare systems already bear the costs of climate change through increasing disease burdens and system strain.

    Health workers are responding, because they have to. Their daily engagement with climate-affected communities offers insights that can strengthen both health systems and climate response – if we learn to listen.

    A “fit-for-purpose” workforce requires rethinking learning and leadership

    WHO’s report acknowledges that “scale-up and increased investments are necessary to build a well-distributed, fit-for-purpose workforce that can meet accelerating needs, especially in already vulnerable settings.” The report emphasizes that “governments and partners must prioritize access to decent jobs, resources, and support to deliver high-quality, climate-resilient health services.” This includes ensuring “essential protective equipment, supplies, fair compensation, and safe working conditions such as adequate personnel numbers, skills mix, and supervisory capacity.”

    Resources, skills, and supervision are building blocks of every health system.

    They are necessary but likely to be insufficient.

    Such investments could be maximized through cost-effective, scalable peer learning networks that enable rapid knowledge sharing and solution development – as well as their locally-led implementation.

    The WHO report calls for “community-led initiatives that harness local knowledge and practices.”

    Our analyses – formed by listening to and learning from thousands of health professionals participating in the Teach to Reach peer learning platform – suggest that the expertise developed by health professionals through daily engagement with communities facing climate impacts is key to problem-solving, to implementing local solutions, and to ensure that communities are part and parcel of such solutions.

    Why move beyond seeing health workers as implementers of policies or recipients of training?

    We stand to gain much more if their leadership is recognized, nurtured, and supported.

    This is a notion of leadership that diverges from convention: if health workers have leadership potential, it is because they are uniquely positioned to turn what they know – because they are there every day – into action.

    Peer learning has the potential to significantly accelerate progress toward country and global goals for climate change and health.

    By making connections, a health professional expands the horizon of what they are able to know.

    At the Geneva Learning Foundation, we have seen that such leadership emerges when health workers are empowered to:

    • share and validate their experiential knowledge;
    • develop, test, and implement solutions with the communities they serve, using local resources;
    • connect with peers facing similar challenges; and
    • inform policy based on ground-level realities.

    Working with a global community of community-based health workers, we co-developed the Teach to Reach platform, community, and network to listen and learn at scale. Unlike traditional training programs, Teach to Reach creates a peer learning ecosystem where:

    • Health workers from over 70 countries connect directly to share experiences.
    • Solutions are crowdsourced from those closest to the challenges.
    • Knowledge flows horizontally rather than just vertically.
    • Local innovations are rapidly shared and adapted across contexts.

    For example, in June 2024, over 21,000 health professionals participated in Teach to Reach 10, generating hundreds of real-world stories and insights about climate change impacts on health.

    The platform has proven particularly valuable in fragile contexts and resource-limited settings, where traditional capacity building approaches often struggle to reach or engage health workers effectively.

    This approach does not replace formal institutions or traditional scientific methods – instead, it creates new pathways for knowledge to flow rapidly between communities, while building the collective capacity needed to respond to accelerating climate impacts on health.

    Already, this demonstrates the untapped potential for health workers to contribute to our collective understanding and response.

    But we do not stop there.

    As we count down to Teach to Reach 11, participants are now sharing how they have actually used and applied this peer knowledge to make progress against their local challenges.

    They cannot do it alone.

    This is why we ask global partners to join and contribute to this emergent, locally-led leadership for change.

    How different is this ‘ask’ from that of global partners asking health workers to contribute to the climate change and health agenda?

    WHO’s COP29 report makes a powerful case that “community-led initiatives that harness local knowledge and practices in both climate action and health strategies are fundamental for creating interventions that are both culturally appropriate and effective.”

    Furthermore, it recognizes that “these initiatives ensure that climate and health solutions are tailored to the specific needs and realities of those most impacted by climate change but also grounded in their lived realities.”

    What framework for collaboration?

    The path forward requires what the report describes as “cooperation across sectors, stakeholders and rights-holders – governmental institutions, local authorities, local leaders including religious authorities and traditional medicine practitioners, NGOs, businesses, the health community, Indigenous Peoples as well as local communities.”

    Our experience with Teach to Reach demonstrates how such cooperation can be facilitated at scale through digital platforms that enable peer learning and knowledge sharing. Key elements include:

    • a structured yet flexible framework for sharing experiences and insights;
    • direct connections between health workers at all levels of the system;
    • rapid feedback loops between local implementation and broader learning;
    • support for health workers to document and share their innovations; and
    • mechanisms to validate and spread effective local solutions.

    WHO’s recognition that health workers have “a moral, professional and public responsibility to protect and promote health, which includes advocating for climate action, leveraging prevention for climate mitigation and cost savings, and safeguarding healthy environments” sets a clear mandate.

    This WHO report highlights the need for new ways of supporting community-led learning and action to:

    1. support the rapid sharing of local solutions;
    2. build health worker capacity through peer learning;
    3. connect communities facing similar challenges; and
    4. enable health workers to lead change in their communities

    Reference

    Neira, M. et al. (2024) COP 29 Special Report on Climate Change and Health: Health is the Argument for Climate Action. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

  • Can Teach to Reach help your organization?

    Can Teach to Reach help your organization?

    Teach to Reach stands as a unique nexus in the global health landscape, offering unprecedented opportunities for diverse stakeholders to engage, learn, and drive meaningful change.

    With over 60,000 participants from more than 90 countries, this platform, network, and community bring together a mix of frontline health workers, policymakers, and key decision-makers.

    At Teach to Reach, research institutions and academic researchers engage health workers to translate their findings into policy and practice

    For research institutions and academic partners, Teach to Reach provides a site for knowledge translation.

    It provides direct access to practitioners and policymakers at all levels, enabling researchers to share findings with those best positioned to apply them in real-world settings.

    The platform’s interactive features, such as “Teach to Reach Questions,” allow for rapid data collection and feedback, helping bridge the gap between research and practice.

    At Teach to Reach, global agencies can listen and learn with local communities

    Global health organizations can leverage Teach to Reach to gain invaluable insights into unmet needs of local communities.

    With half of the participants working in districts and local facilities, and many in challenging contexts such as armed conflict zones (1 in 5) or remote rural areas (>60%), partners can engage with ground-level perspectives that inform development, strategies, and programme design.

    This direct engagement with frontline workers offers a unique window into the realities of diverse health systems.

    At Teach to Global, global actors help elevate the voices and leadership of local actors

    For those looking to make a tangible impact on global health equity, Teach to Reach’s scholarship programme offers a compelling opportunity.

    Scholarship sponsors support health workers from low and middle-income countries to participate in Teach to Reach.

    This investment not only builds individual capacity but strengthens health systems by recognizing and amplifying health worker voices and expertise.

    Facilitate meaningful dialogue on critical issues

    Global health stakeholders find in Teach to Reach a platform that facilitates meaningful dialogue on critical issues.

    The diverse participant base, including national policymakers and heads of national programmes, creates an environment ripe for new kinds of inclusive dialogue that can shape national and global strategies and frameworks.

    Become a Teach to Reach sponsor

    This mix of participants offers partners a unique opportunity to engage with key decision-makers in an interactive, collaborative setting.

    Some partners also become sponsors by contributing to the costs.

    For example, partners can sponsor scholarships for health workers to support their participation in Teach to Reach.

    This is just one of the ways in which partners can help sustain Teach to Reach as a platform, network, and community.

    For private sector organizations, sponsoring Teach to Reach aligns seamlessly with corporate social responsibility goals in global health.

    By this platform, organizations can articulate their concrete commitment to strengthening health systems, showing their support to health workers, and promoting health equity.

    This engagement goes beyond traditional philanthropy, offering sponsors a way to showcase their dedication to improving global health outcomes while enhancing their reputation in the field.

    In essence, Teach to Reach offers a multifaceted value proposition for partners.

    It is a place to listen and learn, to share and collaborate, to influence and be influenced.

    Whether an organization’s goals revolve around research impact, market insights, policy influence, or social responsibility, Teach to Reach provides a unique, efficient, and impactful site to engage.

    By joining this community, partners do not just support a platform – they become part of a movement that is reshaping how we approach global health challenges, one connection at a time.

  • How will we turn a climate change and health resolution at the World Health Assembly into local action?

    How will we turn a climate change and health resolution at the World Health Assembly into local action?

    This video was prepared by the World Health Organization with voices of health workers speaking at the Special Event “From community to planet” hosted by The Geneva Learning Foundation.

    The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has developed a new model that could help address the urgent challenge of climate change impacts on health by empowering and connecting health workers who serve communities on the receiving end of those impacts.

    This model leverages TGLF’s track record of facilitating large-scale peer learning networks to generate locally-grounded evidence, elevate community voices, and drive policy change.

    A key strength of TGLF’s approach is its ability to rapidly connect diverse networks of health workers across geographic and health system boundaries.

    For example, in March 2020, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, TGLF worked with a group of 600 of its alumni – primarily government staff working in local communities of Africa, Asia, and Latin America – to develop the Ideas Engine.

    Within two weeks, the Ideas Engine had connected over 6,000 immunization staff from 90 countries to share strategies for maintaining essential services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Within just 10 days, participants contributed 1,235 ideas and practices.

    They then developed and implemented recovery plans, learning from and supporting each other. 

    Within three months, over a third of participants reported successfully implementing their plans, informed by these crowdsourced insights.

    This illustrates how peer learning – a tenet of TGLF’s model – can facilitate and accelerate problem-solving.

    The Ideas Engine became a core component of TGLF’s model for turning knowledge into action, results, and impact.

    TGLF has also demonstrated the model’s effectiveness in informing global health policy initiatives.

    Working with the Wellcome Trust, TGLF mobilized – in the first year – over 8,000 health professionals from 99 low- and middle-income countries to take ownership of the goals of the Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) strategy.

    This participatory approach generated over 500,000 data points in just four months, providing IA2030 stakeholders with valuable, contextually-grounded evidence to inform decision-making.

    Fostering a culture of continuous learning and adaptation among health workers lays the groundwork for a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable approach to global health in the face of accelerating climate change.

    Applying this model to the climate and health nexus, TGLF supported 4,700 health workers from 68 countries in 2023 to share observations of changes in climate and health in the communities they serve.

    Over 1,200 observations highlighted the diverse and severe consequences already being experienced.

    See what we learned: Investing in the health workforce is vital to tackle climate change: A new report shares insights from over 1,200 on the frontline

    This demonstrates the feasibility of rapidly generating a new kind of evidence base on local climate-health realities.

    Furthermore, if we assume that each health worker could reduce the climate-related health burden for those they serve by a modest five percent, a million health workers connected to and learning from each other could make a significant dent in climate-attributable disease and death. 

    This illustrates the model’s potential to achieve population-level impact, beyond sharing knowledge and strengthening capacity.

    At Teach to Reach 10 on 20-21 June 2024, over 20,000 health workers will be sharing experience of their responses to the impacts of climate change on health. Learn more…

    It is important to note that TGLF’s approach differs from models that work through health professional associations in several key ways.

    First, it directly engages health workers across all levels of the health system, not just those in leadership positions.

    Second, it focuses on peer learning and locally-led action, rather than top-down dissemination of information.

    Third, it leverages digital technologies to connect health workers across geographies and hierarchies, enabling rapid exchange of insights and innovations at the point of need.

    Finally, it embeds participatory and citizen science methods to ensure solutions are grounded in community needs and that everyone can contribute to climate and health science.

    TGLF’s model offers a complementary pathway to address current global priorities of generating novel evidence on climate-health impacts in ways that are directly relevant and useful to communities facing them.

    This model can help fill critical evidence gaps, identify locally-adapted solutions, and build momentum for transformative change.

    TGLF’s track record in mobilizing collective intelligence to drive impact in global health crises suggest transferability to the climate and health agenda.

    As the world grapples with the accelerating health threats posed by climate change, investing in health workers as agents of resilience has never been more urgent or important.

  • Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action

    Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action

    As world leaders gathered for the COP28 climate conference, the Geneva Learning Foundation called for the insights of health workers on the frontlines of climate and health to be heard amidst the global dialogue.

    Ahead of Teach to Reach 10, a new eyewitness report analyses 219 new insights shared by 122 health professionals – primarily those working in local communities across Africa, Asia and Latin America – to two critical questions: How is climate change affecting the health of the communities you serve right now? And what actions must world leaders take to help you protect the people in your care?

    (Teach to Reach is a regular peer learning event. The tenth edition on 20-21 June 2024 is expected to gather over 20,000 community-based health workers to share experience of climate change impacts on health. Request your invitation here.)

    Their answers paint a picture of the accelerating health crisis unfolding in the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions. Community nurses, doctors, midwives and public health officers detail how volatile weather patterns are driving up malnutrition, infectious disease, mental illness, and more – while simultaneously battering health systems and blocking patient access to care.

    Yet woven throughout are also threads of resilience, ingenuity and hope. Health advocates are not just passively observing the impacts of climate change, but actively responding – often with scarce resources. From spearheading tree-planting initiatives to strengthening infectious disease surveillance to promoting climate literacy, they are innovating locally-tailored solutions.

    Importantly, respondents emphasize that climate impacts cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather as one facet of the interlocking crises of environmental destruction, poverty, and health inequity. Their insights make clear that climate action and community health are two sides of the same coin – and that neither will be achieved without deep investment in local health workforces and systems.

    Rooted in direct lived experience and charged with moral urgency, these frontline voices offer a stirring reminder that climate change is not some distant specter, but a life-and-death challenge already at the doorsteps of the global poor. As this new collection of insights implores, it’s high time their perspectives moved from the margins to the center of the climate debate.

    As Charlotte Mbuh of The Geneva Learning Foundation explains: “We hope that the chorus of voices will grow to strengthen the case for  why and how investment in human resources for health is likely to be a ‘best buy’ for community-focused efforts to build the climate resilience of public health systems.”

    Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., & Steed, I. (2024). Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action (1.0). The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11194918