caption — Credit: Emerging Voices for Global Health 2018, (permission given)

Emerging Voices

Join the group

Emerging Voices for Global Health (EV4GH) is a network of young and emerging health-systems researchers, leaders, health activists and/or other change agents, with emphasis on those living and working in the global south. EV4GH catalyses, empowers and connects diverse voices with the capabilities and drive to challenge and address current and future health systems and policy issues at all levels with an equity lens.

EV4GH’s flagship activity is the bi-annual venture, linked to the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, encompassing an innovative programme of blended learning and peer support with exposure to the global health systems community. After the symposium, EV4GH also provides the space for collaboration and continued contribution in the EV4GH alumni led network. EV4GH as a Thematic Working Group (TWG) comprises both EV alumni members who underwent the flagship training programme and other young health system researchers, policy makers, health activists and/or other change agents who want to join the TWG.

Over time, the program has grown to include participants from all WHO regions and set up partnerships with institutions from different countries. A Secretariat, currently hosted by the Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru (IPH) but in transition, supports the network and programme. Since 2010, seven editions of EV4GH have been linked to a global health event, mainly the Global Symposia on Health Systems Research. The EV4GH network comprises over 250 EV Alumni from nearly 50 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas, as well as about 250 non-alumni members.

Objectives

Facilitate, support and transform young researchers, decision-makers and professionals into global health advocates and local change-agents and facilitate/contribute to positive change at global, regional, national and local levels.
Engage in inter-Symposia events open to all young health policy and systems research (HPSR) researchers and boost synergies between EV alumni from different cohorts.
Collaborate with other young global health groups with the aim to strengthen the young researchers network.

Key activities

The EV4GH TWG activities include the flagship EV4GH blended learning training programme, leading up to a pre-conference just before the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, as well as organizing EV4GH TWG events during and after the symposium, such as business lunches, organized sessions, webinars, young researcher workshops and Google Group discussions, among others. The EV4GH alumni publish on a regular basis, both as part of their own PhDs and contributing to global health and HPSR blogs, including the International Health Policies and BMJ blogs, among others. EV4GH also helps EV alumni to find their place in the broader HSG community: several EV4GH alumni have taken up key roles in other HSG TWGs in recent years. EV alumni are active in regional HSG chapters and regional HPSR networks.

News and views

Access the latest blog posts and news items from the EV4GH TWG.

Sara Ardila-Gómez

Governance Board Chair and representing the Region of the Americas

Charles Ssemugabo

Governance Board Co-Chair and representing the African Region

Tatiana Paduraru

Governance Board Co-Chair and representing the European Region

Kristof Decoster

Governance Board member, Institute of Tropical Medicine liaison

Radhika Arora

Governance Board memberand representing the South-East Asian Region

Jean Paul Dossou

Governance Board member and representing the African Region

Yinzi Jin

Governance Board member and representing the Western Pacific Region

Omar Asfour

Governance Board member and representing the Eastern Mediterranean Region

Goran Zangana

Governance Board member, Dubai Co-ordinator

Prashanth N S

Governance Board member, Institute of Public Health, India liaison

Sara Ardila-Gómez

Governance Board Chair and representing the Region of the Americas

Sara is a psychologist, with a MA in Social and Community Psychology and a PhD in Community Mental Health. She was born in Colombia and lives in Argentina. She is currently working in different research projects about the psychiatric reform in Argentina and Latin America, with special attention to the mental health users’ movement.

@sara-ardila-gómez-94485017/

Charles Ssemugabo

Governance Board Co-Chair and representing the African Region

Charles Ssemugabo is currently a Research Associate at Makerere University of Public Health, Kampala, Uganda in the Department of Disease Control and Environmental Health. He is a Public Health Specialist with undergraduate training in Environmental Health and post-graduate training in Public Health. For the past six years he has been working on strengthening community health workers programmes in rural Uganda.

@cssemugabo8

@charles-ssemugabo-00991365/

Tatiana Paduraru

Governance Board Co-Chair and representing the European Region

Dr Paduraru is serving within SEEHN Secretariat, an intergovernmental organization of nine Member States focused on public health policy in the South Eastern Europe Region. First degree in dermatology was followed by MD in Health Management & Law, at CNAM, France. Currently, she is a MBA candidate at Sheffield University. The career path mainly spent with the Ministry of Health in Moldova and Republic of Georgia.

@tatiana-paduraru-b355a932/

Kristof Decoster

Governance Board member, Institute of Tropical Medicine liaison

Kristof Decoster has a background in political science and has been working at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp since October 2007. He currently focuses on the International Health Policies newsletter and network, and has been involved in Emerging Voices since the start of the program. He’s the liaison with ITM in the current EV governance team.

@KristofDecoste1

Radhika Arora

Governance Board memberand representing the South-East Asian Region

Radhika Arora’s initial academic training was in broadcast journalism, followed by a Master of Public Health degree. She is presently working with Oxford Policy Management in Delhi on their work on frontline health workers. She also works on project-related knowledge management activities at OPM. Radhika has been actively engaged with the EV4GH program as a co-coordinator for the alumni task force over the past few years, and looks forward to taking this role forward in future.

@Radhika_Arora

Jean Paul Dossou

Governance Board member and representing the African Region

Jean-Paul (EV2012) is a medical doctor and public heath scientist from Benin. He is currently involved in a PhD program and is jointly affiliated to ITM and CERRHUD. He currently chairs the West-African Network of Emerging Leaders in health policy and systems. His current research interests are related to sexual and reproductive health mainly from the health policy and system research and practice perspectives. He passionate about health system thinking and other methodologies and approaches to design, study and evaluate complex interventions and policies, from initiation and implementation to impact. “Collective Intelligence” and “Collaborative Governance” drive his professional creativity for better health.

@jdossou80

Yinzi Jin

Governance Board member and representing the Western Pacific Region

Dr Yinzi Jin is an assistant professor and associate researcher of the Department of Global Health at Peking University School of Public Health. Dr Jin received her PhD in health systems and policy from Peking University China Center for Health Development Studies in June 2018. Dr Jin completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Global Health at Peking University School of Public Health in June 2020. Dr Jin’s research areas include global health governance, health system and policy, and implementation strategies of prevention and control for chronic non-communicable diseases.

@音子-金-632b23a1/

Omar Asfour

Governance Board member and representing the Eastern Mediterranean Region

Omar is a medical doctor, a public health specialist, and a humanitarian practitioner. He has worked with and consulted for leading international organizations, such as International Rescue Committee, International Medical Corps, and Humanity and Inclusion. He has been engaged in Syria’s humanitarian action since 2014 through various capacities, including programs’ management, applied research, humanitarian coordination, and technical consulting. Omar received his Medical Degree from the Jordanian University for Science and Technology. He holds a Master of Laws (LLM) in Medical Law and Ethics from the University of Edinburgh, Masters of Public Health (MPH) from Emory University.

@omar-asfour-38742869/

Goran Zangana

Governance Board member, Dubai Co-ordinator

Dr Goran Zangana is a medical doctor from Iraq with experience in acute medicine, public health, epidemiology, health policy and health systems in conflict-affected settings. Dr Zangana is co-founder of a Health Policy Research Organisation. He is an active researcher at the Middle East Research Institute in Erbil of Kurdistan region of Iraq. He has done a PhD at the University of Edinburgh on the politics of introducing the basic packages of health service in the conflict-setting of Iraq. He is currently the Program Manager for the Health and Humanitarian Advancement Network (HUMAN) network in Iraq. He is a member of the advisory committee of the Fragile and Conflict-affected settings thematic working group of Health Systems Global and currently the local coordinator of Face to Face training for the Emerging Voices for Global Health participating in the Global Symposium on Health Systems and Policy Research in Dubai 2020.

@goran-abdulla-sabir-zangana-37084b30/

Prashanth N S

Governance Board member, Institute of Public Health, India liaison

Prashanth is a medical doctor with a specialisation in public health. For his PhD, he studied organisational change in a local health system setting. He is involved in teaching face-to-face and e-learning courses on health management, health policy and systems research methods. He has an interest in strengthening primary health care and works with wildlife scientists and ecologists on topics related to the interface between health and environment. In his free time, he is a passionate birdwatcher, wikipedia editor, social media enthusiast and a closet-naturalist.

@prashanthns

Publications and resources

“Together we move a mountain”: celebrating a decade of the Emerging Voices for Global Health network

P.N. Srinivas, D.K. Henriksson, V.S. Gordeev, et al

In this editorial, alumni and members of the EV4GH globally representative elected governance entity share a brief historical overview of the network and subsequently summarise reflections of 31 alumni across all six cohorts till date.

Some Labour Day ruminations on “Work”

S. Contractor

Last year, when Labour Day rolled around at the height of summer, I wrote about how we were witnessing one of the most horrific migrations of workers across India, and the draconian, despairing changes that were taking place in labour policies. While that was largely the result of apathetic and hasty policy decisions and political one-upmanship, this year I feel like a more personal rumination as I watch the pandemic rage on – with India now as the “epicenter”.

Planetary Health is a Movement now: Reflections from the 2021 Planetary Health Annual Meeting

C. Ssemugabo

The first of its kind, the São Paulo Declaration on Planetary Health outlines actions necessary to achieve the Great Transition, a comprehensive shift in how human beings interact with each other and Nature. The declaration follows a week-long virtual Planetary Health Week that ran from April 26-30, 2021. The virtual event saw an increase in participation compared to previous years, with over 5,000 participants from 120 countries this year. During the planetary health week, I reflected on the perspective changes that will be necessary, if we are to achieve the Great Transition. These are shared in this blog post.

“Critically Examining Decolonization: The Field of Global Health”: some conference reflections

D. Santhanam, G. Punchhi, Y. Jonathan, et al

The conference “Critically Examining Decolonization: The Field of Global Health” (February 20, 2021) was born out of a desire to interrogate current discourses of decolonization. Many similar conferences in North America have not yet situated the land on which they have taken place by examining the settler-colonial dynamics of power. As Hurwitz & Bourque write on settler colonialism, “land, not labor, is key. In this system, Indigenous Peoples are literally replaced by settlers.” Through a keynote, two panels, a workshop and a Q&A session, we sought to examine the ways in which colonial power has shaped global health discourse and the interaction between settler and global colonialism. Furthermore, we hoped to imagine how medical learners and professionals can disrupt these power structures.

Towards post-pandemic protest preparedness

O.O. Badejo

Large-scale anti-government protests and collective aggression against leadership and government systems have increased in almost every region of the world since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With more than 30 significant demonstrations in 26 countries targeting COVID-19 restrictions, the year 2020 was aptly described as “the year of protests”.

Delhi Dispatch: Zooming into rooms

R. Arora

In this blog post, Radhika Arora provides her reflections on living and working in Delhi during the pandemic.