Update on an exciting program for Vancouver
The program for the Fourth Global Symposium for Health Systems Research is starting to take shape.
Organized session abstract submissions for the 2016 Symposium proved to be extremely competitive, attracting 336 abstracts from 39 countries, including a small number submitted in French and Spanish. Abstracts covered all of the symposium themes, with “Implementing improvement and innovation” and “Enhancing health system resilience” the most popular.
Thanks to the efforts of the 227-member scientific committee, covering a diverse range of expertise and language backgrounds, all abstracts were reviewed and independently scored by at least three reviewers. Abstracts with an average combined score at or above a threshold corresponding to “good” were allocated to TWG-coordinated Curating Groups, formed around symposium themes, to recommend a final set of submissions for their theme, proportionate to the submissions per theme. These recommendations were then reviewed by the Symposium Program Working Group for duplicate presenters and overall mix of sessions across themes. Ultimately, 54 organized sessions have been accepted, and some abstracts, originally submitted as organized sessions, were allocated to skills building and multimedia streams.
In total we expect 100-105 abstract-driven parallel sessions in the Symposium program, of which 54 have already been determined, and the remaining will be developed based on individual abstract submissions, which closed on 20th March. This approach assures that the program is informed by both organized sessions and individual abstracts, and that it is responsive to the diverse community HSG encompasses. Additional sessions organized and led by HSG thematic working groups, multi-media sessions, skills-building sessions and a small number of “late breakers” will complete the parallel session part of the program.
Capacity building of HSR researchers is one of the organizational priorities of HSG. The organized session review experience has led to a decision to organize skill-building webinars for young researchers in the run-up to the 2018 Fifth Global Symposium on HSR symposium to help them advance their abstract development skills, better explain how the abstract selection works and facilitate a greater number of highly competitive abstract submissions, particularly submissions directly from low and middle income country institutions.
Reminder of key dates:
- Multimedia abstract submission closes on 28th April
- Satellite session submission closes on 1st June
- Registration opens on 31st March
