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454 results for “redasadki”

  1. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Comparative analysis of workforce development models in the global malaria elimination agenda

    The stagnation in global malaria mortality reduction has forced a re-evaluation of the tools and strategies currently deployed in high-burden countries.

    While biological challenges such as insecticide resistance and parasite mutations are well-documented, a critical bottleneck remains the capacity of the human workforce to implement technical strategies with precision.

    The transition from control to elimination requires a fundamental shift in workforce development.

    It demands moving beyond the passive transmission of technical knowledge toward models that recognize the value of the health worker.

    People who work for health, especially those who engage directly with communities, are likely to possess unique insights into local transmission dynamics and community behavior.

    This analysis reviews four predominant capacity-building architectures currently active in the malaria landscape.

    These initiatives are assessed based on their ability to scale to the district and community levels, their cost-effectiveness, and their capacity to validate and utilize the tacit knowledge held by local staff.

    Malaria learning model 1. The academic massive open online course model

    The most prominent example of the digital transmission model is the MalariaX series offered by Harvard University.

    This initiative utilizes the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) format to democratize access to high-level scientific knowledge.

    Strengths

    The primary strength of this model is the unparalleled quality of its technical content.

    It provides participants in low-resource settings with direct access to global experts and the latest scientific evidence regarding vector biology, epidemiology, and immunology.

    The digital format allows for infinite scalability in terms of access.

    Anyone with an internet connection can technically access the material.

    This eliminates the geographical barriers that often exclude peripheral health workers from elite training.

    Limitations

    The model suffers from the “know-do” gap.

    While it effectively transmits theoretical knowledge, it lacks a structural mechanism to ensure this knowledge is applied to local realities.

    The pedagogy relies heavily on passive consumption of video lectures which reinforces the hierarchy of “expert” versus “learner.”

    It fails to account for the specific needs of local health workers who must adapt global scientific principles to context-specific challenges, such as unexpected climate shifts or community resistance.

    The assessment mechanisms verify knowledge retention rather than the ability to navigate these local complexities.

    Consequently, it undervalues the learner’s own experience and offers no channel for the “global expert” to learn from the “local expert” who is managing the disease daily.

    Malaria learning model 2. The normative cascade training model

    The World Health Organization (WHO) and national malaria programs typically rely on the cascade model to disseminate new guidelines.

    This approach involves training a core group of master trainers at the national level who then train regional officers, who in turn train district and facility staff.

    Strengths

    This model ensures strong alignment with national policy and global normative guidance.

    It maintains a clear chain of command and reinforces the authority of the Ministry of Health.

    It is particularly effective for standardization, such as ensuring that a specific treatment protocol for severe malaria is introduced uniformly across the health system.

    Weaknesses

    The cascade model is plagued by the dilution of quality as training moves down the chain.

    Information is frequently distorted or simplified by the time it reaches the community health worker.

    Structurally, it treats the health worker as a passive vessel to be filled with instructions rather than a thinking professional who understands the local ecosystem.

    It is also prohibitively expensive and logistically heavy.

    It often relies on per diems that distort participant motivation and create a “training aristocracy” where access is determined by seniority rather than need.

    Crucially, this model often interprets local adaptation as non-compliance.

    It fails to recognize that frontline workers often deviate from protocols not out of ignorance but out of necessity, driven by supply chain ruptures or specific community demands that only they understand.

    Malaria learning model 3. The fellowship model

    Initiatives such as the African Leadership and Management Training for Impact in Malaria Eradication (ALAMIME) represent the fellowship model.

    These programs target high-potential program managers for intensive, long-term leadership development, often in partnership with universities.

    Strengths

    This model addresses the critical “soft skills” gap identified in malaria elimination policy reviews.

    It moves beyond technical biology to teach management, advocacy, and financial planning.

    By focusing on African leadership, it actively works to decolonize the expertise hierarchy and fosters strong regional ownership.

    The cohort-based approach builds deep professional bonds among future leaders of national malaria programs.

    Weaknesses

    The fundamental limitation is scalability and exclusivity.

    These programs are resource-intensive and reach a small number of individuals per year.

    While they produce high-quality leaders at the top, they cannot reach the critical mass of district and community personnel required to execute malaria strategies.

    This reinforces a top-heavy leadership structure that ignores the need for “micro-leadership” at the facility level.

    It overlooks the reality that a district nurse or community health worker must also exercise leadership and diplomacy every day to secure community trust.

    By focusing on the elite, this model inadvertently devalues the significance of the leadership required at the last mile.

    Malaria learning model 4. The field epidemiology training program model

    The Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) functions as a learning-by-doing apprenticeship.

    Residents work within the health system to investigate outbreaks and analyze surveillance data under the mentorship of experienced epidemiologists.

    Strengths

    This model closely aligns learning with work.

    It is an “applied” model where the output of the training is often a tangible public health product.

    It effectively builds data literacy and analytical capacity.

    It grounds the learner in the reality of the field rather than the theory of the classroom.

    Weaknesses

    Like the fellowship model, the FETP is difficult to scale due to the requirement for intense, one-on-one mentorship.

    It is a high-cost intervention per learner.

    Furthermore, the rigorous focus on surveillance and epidemiology often overshadows the operational implementation challenges faced by generalist health workers.

    While it produces excellent surveillance officers, it does not necessarily equip the broader workforce to utilize their own data for local decision-making.

    It often extracts data for central analysis rather than empowering local staff to interpret the trends they witness daily.

    This failure to devolve analytical power ignores the fact that local workers are often the first to notice anomalies, such as climate-driven shifts in vector behavior, long before they appear in national databases.

    Four recommendations to strengthen malaria learning and capacity-building

    The current landscape of malaria capacity building reveals a functional and epistemic schism.

    The academic and normative models excel at defining what needs to be done but fail to support the workforce in how to do it within their specific constraints.

    The fellowship and apprenticeship models build deep capacity but are structurally incapable of reaching the volume of workers necessary for elimination.

    A significant gap exists for a model that combines the scalability of digital platforms with the implementation rigor of the apprenticeship approach.

    To achieve malaria elimination, future initiatives need to:

    1. Move beyond knowledge verification to value validation.
    2. Recognize that local health workers are not the problem to be fixed but the owners of the solution.
    3. Utilize the existing workforce rather than parallel structures.
    4. Replace financial incentives with the professional motivation that comes from having one’s local knowledge recognized and used to solve the problems they face every day.

    References

    General context & the “know-do” gap

    Model 1: The academic MOOC model (MalariaX)

    Model 2: The normative cascade model and incentives

    Model 3: The fellowship model (ALAMIME)

    • ALAMIME. African Leadership and Management Training for Impact in Malaria Eradication. Makerere University School of Public Health.
      https://alamime.musph.ac.ug/
    • Couper, I., Ray, S., Blaauw, D., et al. (2018). Curriculum and training needs of mid-level health workers in Africa: a situational review from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. BMC Health Services Research, 18(1), 553.
      https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-3362-9

    Model 4: The Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP)

    Strategic recommendations and value validation

    #globalHealth #globalMalariaEliminationAgenda #HRH #learningCulture #learningStrategy #malaria #workforceDevelopment
    #workforcedevelopment #malaria #learningstrategy #learningculture #hrh #globalmalariaeliminationagenda
  2. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Comparative analysis of workforce development models in the global malaria elimination agenda

    The stagnation in global malaria mortality reduction has forced a re-evaluation of the tools and strategies currently deployed in high-burden countries.

    While biological challenges such as insecticide resistance and parasite mutations are well-documented, a critical bottleneck remains the capacity of the human workforce to implement technical strategies with precision.

    The transition from control to elimination requires a fundamental shift in workforce development.

    It demands moving beyond the passive transmission of technical knowledge toward models that recognize the value of the health worker.

    People who work for health, especially those who engage directly with communities, are likely to possess unique insights into local transmission dynamics and community behavior.

    This analysis reviews four predominant capacity-building architectures currently active in the malaria landscape.

    These initiatives are assessed based on their ability to scale to the district and community levels, their cost-effectiveness, and their capacity to validate and utilize the tacit knowledge held by local staff.

    Malaria learning model 1. The academic massive open online course model

    The most prominent example of the digital transmission model is the MalariaX series offered by Harvard University.

    This initiative utilizes the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) format to democratize access to high-level scientific knowledge.

    Strengths

    The primary strength of this model is the unparalleled quality of its technical content.

    It provides participants in low-resource settings with direct access to global experts and the latest scientific evidence regarding vector biology, epidemiology, and immunology.

    The digital format allows for infinite scalability in terms of access.

    Anyone with an internet connection can technically access the material.

    This eliminates the geographical barriers that often exclude peripheral health workers from elite training.

    Limitations

    The model suffers from the “know-do” gap.

    While it effectively transmits theoretical knowledge, it lacks a structural mechanism to ensure this knowledge is applied to local realities.

    The pedagogy relies heavily on passive consumption of video lectures which reinforces the hierarchy of “expert” versus “learner.”

    It fails to account for the specific needs of local health workers who must adapt global scientific principles to context-specific challenges, such as unexpected climate shifts or community resistance.

    The assessment mechanisms verify knowledge retention rather than the ability to navigate these local complexities.

    Consequently, it undervalues the learner’s own experience and offers no channel for the “global expert” to learn from the “local expert” who is managing the disease daily.

    Malaria learning model 2. The normative cascade training model

    The World Health Organization (WHO) and national malaria programs typically rely on the cascade model to disseminate new guidelines.

    This approach involves training a core group of master trainers at the national level who then train regional officers, who in turn train district and facility staff.

    Strengths

    This model ensures strong alignment with national policy and global normative guidance.

    It maintains a clear chain of command and reinforces the authority of the Ministry of Health.

    It is particularly effective for standardization, such as ensuring that a specific treatment protocol for severe malaria is introduced uniformly across the health system.

    Weaknesses

    The cascade model is plagued by the dilution of quality as training moves down the chain.

    Information is frequently distorted or simplified by the time it reaches the community health worker.

    Structurally, it treats the health worker as a passive vessel to be filled with instructions rather than a thinking professional who understands the local ecosystem.

    It is also prohibitively expensive and logistically heavy.

    It often relies on per diems that distort participant motivation and create a “training aristocracy” where access is determined by seniority rather than need.

    Crucially, this model often interprets local adaptation as non-compliance.

    It fails to recognize that frontline workers often deviate from protocols not out of ignorance but out of necessity, driven by supply chain ruptures or specific community demands that only they understand.

    Malaria learning model 3. The fellowship model

    Initiatives such as the African Leadership and Management Training for Impact in Malaria Eradication (ALAMIME) represent the fellowship model.

    These programs target high-potential program managers for intensive, long-term leadership development, often in partnership with universities.

    Strengths

    This model addresses the critical “soft skills” gap identified in malaria elimination policy reviews.

    It moves beyond technical biology to teach management, advocacy, and financial planning.

    By focusing on African leadership, it actively works to decolonize the expertise hierarchy and fosters strong regional ownership.

    The cohort-based approach builds deep professional bonds among future leaders of national malaria programs.

    Weaknesses

    The fundamental limitation is scalability and exclusivity.

    These programs are resource-intensive and reach a small number of individuals per year.

    While they produce high-quality leaders at the top, they cannot reach the critical mass of district and community personnel required to execute malaria strategies.

    This reinforces a top-heavy leadership structure that ignores the need for “micro-leadership” at the facility level.

    It overlooks the reality that a district nurse or community health worker must also exercise leadership and diplomacy every day to secure community trust.

    By focusing on the elite, this model inadvertently devalues the significance of the leadership required at the last mile.

    Malaria learning model 4. The field epidemiology training program model

    The Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) functions as a learning-by-doing apprenticeship.

    Residents work within the health system to investigate outbreaks and analyze surveillance data under the mentorship of experienced epidemiologists.

    Strengths

    This model closely aligns learning with work.

    It is an “applied” model where the output of the training is often a tangible public health product.

    It effectively builds data literacy and analytical capacity.

    It grounds the learner in the reality of the field rather than the theory of the classroom.

    Weaknesses

    Like the fellowship model, the FETP is difficult to scale due to the requirement for intense, one-on-one mentorship.

    It is a high-cost intervention per learner.

    Furthermore, the rigorous focus on surveillance and epidemiology often overshadows the operational implementation challenges faced by generalist health workers.

    While it produces excellent surveillance officers, it does not necessarily equip the broader workforce to utilize their own data for local decision-making.

    It often extracts data for central analysis rather than empowering local staff to interpret the trends they witness daily.

    This failure to devolve analytical power ignores the fact that local workers are often the first to notice anomalies, such as climate-driven shifts in vector behavior, long before they appear in national databases.

    Four recommendations to strengthen malaria learning and capacity-building

    The current landscape of malaria capacity building reveals a functional and epistemic schism.

    The academic and normative models excel at defining what needs to be done but fail to support the workforce in how to do it within their specific constraints.

    The fellowship and apprenticeship models build deep capacity but are structurally incapable of reaching the volume of workers necessary for elimination.

    A significant gap exists for a model that combines the scalability of digital platforms with the implementation rigor of the apprenticeship approach.

    To achieve malaria elimination, future initiatives need to:

    1. Move beyond knowledge verification to value validation.
    2. Recognize that local health workers are not the problem to be fixed but the owners of the solution.
    3. Utilize the existing workforce rather than parallel structures.
    4. Replace financial incentives with the professional motivation that comes from having one’s local knowledge recognized and used to solve the problems they face every day.

    References

    General context & the “know-do” gap

    Model 1: The academic MOOC model (MalariaX)

    Model 2: The normative cascade model and incentives

    Model 3: The fellowship model (ALAMIME)

    • ALAMIME. African Leadership and Management Training for Impact in Malaria Eradication. Makerere University School of Public Health.
      https://alamime.musph.ac.ug/
    • Couper, I., Ray, S., Blaauw, D., et al. (2018). Curriculum and training needs of mid-level health workers in Africa: a situational review from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. BMC Health Services Research, 18(1), 553.
      https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-3362-9

    Model 4: The Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP)

    Strategic recommendations and value validation

    #globalHealth #globalMalariaEliminationAgenda #HRH #learningCulture #learningStrategy #malaria #workforceDevelopment
    #globalhealth #globalmalariaeliminationagenda #hrh #learningculture #learningstrategy #malaria
  3. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    The future of hybrid engagement: accelerated action to tackle global threats

    How can we use the new physics of digital connections to save lives? What is the future of hybrid engagement?

    The ultimate test of any digital architecture is whether it can deliver results in the real world. In the context of global health, the challenge is bridging the “know-do gap.” This is the chasm between high-level strategies written in Geneva or Seattle and the messy reality of a health clinic in a conflict zone. Traditional capacity-building often relies on the “transmission” of knowledge from experts to novices. This approach assumes that a lack of knowledge is the primary barrier to action. However, evidence suggests the binding constraint is often a lack of social scaffolding. Without the trust and shared context that physical presence historically provided, knowledge fails to travel. The Geneva Learning Foundation has developed an implementation engine that solves this not by building better courses, but by reconstructing the sociology of connection. This engine operates through a “Full Learning Cycle” that integrates three patterns: mobilization, analysis, and action. Each phase is designed to engineer specific psychological effects—social presence, swift trust, and digital accompaniment—that distance usually destroys.

    Mobilization: validating social presence

    The cycle begins with programs like “Teach to Reach,” which mobilize thousands of practitioners to share their own tacit knowledge. In the first article of this series, we explored how remote partners often feel like abstract entities rather than real people. Teach to Reach counters this “illusion of non-existence” by validating the lived experience of the frontline worker. When a nurse in rural Nigeria shares a story of overcoming vaccine hesitancy, she is no longer a name in a database; she becomes a sentient peer. This act of sharing creates the “social presence” required for trust. It signals that the practitioner is an “insider”—a creator of knowledge rather than just a recipient of aid. This manufactures the status and recognition that was previously available only to those who could travel to global conferences.

    Analysis: engineering high-bandwidth interaction

    The second phase, the “Peer Learning Exercise,” guides participants through a structured analysis of a complex problem. This phase addresses the loss of “propinquity,” or physical nearness. In a physical workshop, trust is built through the high-bandwidth exchange of ideas. To replicate this digitally, the Foundation uses “recursive feedback” loops. Participants do not just consume content; they must review and critique the work of their peers using structured rubrics. This forces a “mutual directionality” where participants engage deeply with another human’s cognition. By struggling through a problem together, they generate the “swift trust” essential for collaboration. The digital platform becomes a virtual hallway, facilitating the deep, interpersonal “bumps” that move relationships from transactional to transformational.

    Action: from surveillance to accompaniment

    Finally, and most crucially, the “Impact Accelerator” supports continuous action in the professional’s daily work. This phase operationalizes the shift from “remote management” to “digital accompaniment”. Traditional remote management creates distance through surveillance, asking “Have you done the work?”. The Accelerator inverts this. Participants set weekly goals and report back to their peers, creating a rhythm of high-frequency, low-stakes contact. This mimics the psychological closeness of a mentor walking alongside a partner. It keeps the relationship in a “simmering” state of readiness, providing the “electronic propinquity” that sustains motivation over time. The reporting mechanism is not about bureaucratic compliance; it is about professional solidarity.

    The metrics of connection

    The results of this architecture are quantifiable. A comparative study from January 2020 demonstrated that participants in this structured peer support model were seven times more likely to report credible implementation of their plans compared to a control group. Furthermore, this model delivers capacity building at approximately 90 percent lower cost than conventional face-to-face technical assistance. By removing the reliance on travel and per diems, the model selects for intrinsic motivation. It identifies the “positive outliers” who are genuinely committed to their mission. This architecture democratizes the “insider” status, allowing a health worker in a remote district to access the social validation and professional network previously reserved for the elite. By shifting from surveillance to solidarity, we build a more resilient system of global cooperation. The future of hybrid engagement lies in creating this “Hybrid Intimacy,” where digital tools are used to forge bonds as real and at least as effective as those formed in the physical world.

    A new peer learning programme for those leading change across distance

    Distance is no longer a barrier to partnership. It is the condition for a new kind of “augmented reality” where collaboration can be more inclusive and effective than in the physical world. The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Certificate peer learning programme in Artificial Intelligence includes a tactical primer to master the essentials of digital, remote work and partnering with both humans and machines as co-workers. The primer serves as the stepping stone to a broader strategic transformation, where you will learn to build communities of action that scale expertise and deliver results faster. By rejecting the “digital dualism” that treats online interaction as a deficit, you will turn the necessity of working apart into a decisive organizational advantage. Get The Geneva Learning Foundation’s AI framework now. You will then receive the invitation to join the primer on the essentials of partnering and work in the Age of AI.

    References

      • Lampel, J. and Meyer, A.D. (2008) ‘Field-Configuring Events as Structuring Mechanisms: How Conferences, Ceremonies, and Trade Shows Constitute New Technologies, Industries, and Markets’, Journal of Management Studies, 45(6), pp. 1025–1035. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2008.00797.x
      • Jarvenpaa, S.L. and Leidner, D.E. (1999) ‘Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams’, Organization Science, 10(6), pp. 791–815. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.10.6.791
      • Jones I, Sadki R, Brooks A, Gasse F, Mbuh C, Zha M, et al. IA2030 Movement Year 1 report. Consultative engagement through a digitally enabled peer learning platform. The Geneva Learning Foundation; 2022. Available from: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7119648.
      • Sadki, R., 2025. PFA Accelerator: across Europe, practitioners learn from each other to strengthen support to children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21155.
      • Watkins, K.E., Bhattarai, A., 2019. Analysis of the Impact Accelerator Launch Pad Individual Acceleration Reports in July 2019. University of Georgia at Athens, Athens, United States.

    About the installation

    The Signal Between Us © The Geneva Learning Foundation 2026. This installation stages two opposing forms held apart yet bound by a dense, vibrating core. The white masses suggest distinct spaces, faces, or systems, while the suspended central structure pulses like a shared frequency, translating distance into connection. Fragmented, uneven, and charged with tension, it evokes the work of hybrid engagement: aligning what is separate without erasing difference. The piece suggests that action does not arise from uniformity, but from the ability to synchronize across divides, where meaning, trust, and momentum are carried through the signals we learn to sustain together. #digitalArchitecture #FullLearningCycle #globalThreats #hybridEngagement #propinquity #remoteWork #socialPresence #SocialPresenceTheory #TeachToReach #TheGenevaLearningFoundation
    #thegenevalearningfoundation #teachtoreach #socialpresencetheory #socialpresence #remotework #propinquity
  4. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    The future of hybrid engagement: accelerated action to tackle global threats

    How can we use the new physics of digital connections to save lives? What is the future of hybrid engagement?

    The ultimate test of any digital architecture is whether it can deliver results in the real world. In the context of global health, the challenge is bridging the “know-do gap.” This is the chasm between high-level strategies written in Geneva or Seattle and the messy reality of a health clinic in a conflict zone. Traditional capacity-building often relies on the “transmission” of knowledge from experts to novices. This approach assumes that a lack of knowledge is the primary barrier to action. However, evidence suggests the binding constraint is often a lack of social scaffolding. Without the trust and shared context that physical presence historically provided, knowledge fails to travel. The Geneva Learning Foundation has developed an implementation engine that solves this not by building better courses, but by reconstructing the sociology of connection. This engine operates through a “Full Learning Cycle” that integrates three patterns: mobilization, analysis, and action. Each phase is designed to engineer specific psychological effects—social presence, swift trust, and digital accompaniment—that distance usually destroys.

    Mobilization: validating social presence

    The cycle begins with programs like “Teach to Reach,” which mobilize thousands of practitioners to share their own tacit knowledge. In the first article of this series, we explored how remote partners often feel like abstract entities rather than real people. Teach to Reach counters this “illusion of non-existence” by validating the lived experience of the frontline worker. When a nurse in rural Nigeria shares a story of overcoming vaccine hesitancy, she is no longer a name in a database; she becomes a sentient peer. This act of sharing creates the “social presence” required for trust. It signals that the practitioner is an “insider”—a creator of knowledge rather than just a recipient of aid. This manufactures the status and recognition that was previously available only to those who could travel to global conferences.

    Analysis: engineering high-bandwidth interaction

    The second phase, the “Peer Learning Exercise,” guides participants through a structured analysis of a complex problem. This phase addresses the loss of “propinquity,” or physical nearness. In a physical workshop, trust is built through the high-bandwidth exchange of ideas. To replicate this digitally, the Foundation uses “recursive feedback” loops. Participants do not just consume content; they must review and critique the work of their peers using structured rubrics. This forces a “mutual directionality” where participants engage deeply with another human’s cognition. By struggling through a problem together, they generate the “swift trust” essential for collaboration. The digital platform becomes a virtual hallway, facilitating the deep, interpersonal “bumps” that move relationships from transactional to transformational.

    Action: from surveillance to accompaniment

    Finally, and most crucially, the “Impact Accelerator” supports continuous action in the professional’s daily work. This phase operationalizes the shift from “remote management” to “digital accompaniment”. Traditional remote management creates distance through surveillance, asking “Have you done the work?”. The Accelerator inverts this. Participants set weekly goals and report back to their peers, creating a rhythm of high-frequency, low-stakes contact. This mimics the psychological closeness of a mentor walking alongside a partner. It keeps the relationship in a “simmering” state of readiness, providing the “electronic propinquity” that sustains motivation over time. The reporting mechanism is not about bureaucratic compliance; it is about professional solidarity.

    The metrics of connection

    The results of this architecture are quantifiable. A comparative study from January 2020 demonstrated that participants in this structured peer support model were seven times more likely to report credible implementation of their plans compared to a control group. Furthermore, this model delivers capacity building at approximately 90 percent lower cost than conventional face-to-face technical assistance. By removing the reliance on travel and per diems, the model selects for intrinsic motivation. It identifies the “positive outliers” who are genuinely committed to their mission. This architecture democratizes the “insider” status, allowing a health worker in a remote district to access the social validation and professional network previously reserved for the elite. By shifting from surveillance to solidarity, we build a more resilient system of global cooperation. The future of hybrid engagement lies in creating this “Hybrid Intimacy,” where digital tools are used to forge bonds as real and at least as effective as those formed in the physical world.

    A new peer learning programme for those leading change across distance

    Distance is no longer a barrier to partnership. It is the condition for a new kind of “augmented reality” where collaboration can be more inclusive and effective than in the physical world. The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Certificate peer learning programme in Artificial Intelligence includes a tactical primer to master the essentials of digital, remote work and partnering with both humans and machines as co-workers. The primer serves as the stepping stone to a broader strategic transformation, where you will learn to build communities of action that scale expertise and deliver results faster. By rejecting the “digital dualism” that treats online interaction as a deficit, you will turn the necessity of working apart into a decisive organizational advantage. Get The Geneva Learning Foundation’s AI framework now. You will then receive the invitation to join the primer on the essentials of partnering and work in the Age of AI.

    References

      • Lampel, J. and Meyer, A.D. (2008) ‘Field-Configuring Events as Structuring Mechanisms: How Conferences, Ceremonies, and Trade Shows Constitute New Technologies, Industries, and Markets’, Journal of Management Studies, 45(6), pp. 1025–1035. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2008.00797.x
      • Jarvenpaa, S.L. and Leidner, D.E. (1999) ‘Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams’, Organization Science, 10(6), pp. 791–815. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.10.6.791
      • Jones I, Sadki R, Brooks A, Gasse F, Mbuh C, Zha M, et al. IA2030 Movement Year 1 report. Consultative engagement through a digitally enabled peer learning platform. The Geneva Learning Foundation; 2022. Available from: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7119648.
      • Sadki, R., 2025. PFA Accelerator: across Europe, practitioners learn from each other to strengthen support to children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21155.
      • Watkins, K.E., Bhattarai, A., 2019. Analysis of the Impact Accelerator Launch Pad Individual Acceleration Reports in July 2019. University of Georgia at Athens, Athens, United States.

    About the installation

    The Signal Between Us © The Geneva Learning Foundation 2026. This installation stages two opposing forms held apart yet bound by a dense, vibrating core. The white masses suggest distinct spaces, faces, or systems, while the suspended central structure pulses like a shared frequency, translating distance into connection. Fragmented, uneven, and charged with tension, it evokes the work of hybrid engagement: aligning what is separate without erasing difference. The piece suggests that action does not arise from uniformity, but from the ability to synchronize across divides, where meaning, trust, and momentum are carried through the signals we learn to sustain together. #digitalArchitecture #FullLearningCycle #globalThreats #hybridEngagement #propinquity #remoteWork #socialPresence #SocialPresenceTheory #TeachToReach #TheGenevaLearningFoundation
    #digitalarchitecture #fulllearningcycle #globalthreats #hybridengagement #propinquity #remotework
  5. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Implementation science for planetary health

    Remarks about implementation science for planetary health by Reda Sadki, Executive Director, The Geneva Learning Foundation at the Centre for Planetary Health’s research corner meeting, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) on December 17, 2025.

    Pauline Paterson (LSHTM): We are really delighted to welcome Reda Sadki. Reda is the Executive Director of the Geneva Learning Foundation, a non-profit research organization developing new epistemological and methodological approaches for complex global health challenges. Welcome, Reda.

    Reda Sadki (TGLF): Warm greetings from Geneva, Switzerland. I am very pleased to share with you what we have been learning about climate change and health – in particular, how we can move from ground truth to local action on a global scale.

    Since 2021, we have been running an initiative called Teach to Reach, led by community-based health professionals from all over the world. It connects people across countries and job roles, supporting the journey from local insight to global health initiative.

    The scale of this network has grown significantly. In March 2021, we started with 2,604 participants. By December 2024, at the eleventh meeting of Teach to Reach, we had 24,610 health workers participating.

    Who are they? Most work in health facilities and districts. Half work for government and half for civil society organizations.

    Where are they? They serve in the most fragile contexts: 62% work in remote rural areas; 47% with the urban poor; 25% with refugees or internally displaced populations. And one in five work in areas of active armed conflict.

    Alongside these individuals, we are nurturing the REACH Network, a coalition of more than 4,000 locally-led organizations. This is the backdrop for how we think about leadership as the key to driving change in climate and health.

    The “dark matter” of implementation science

    As a community working on climate change and health, we are strong – and getting stronger – on diagnosis. But we must be candid: we are weak on delivery. The science keeps getting better, but there is a gap when it comes to translating science into action.

    When it comes to formal research, we see what I call the ”dark matter”, a blind spot around hyperlocal adaptation and how implementation actually happens at the local level.

    This dark matter includes environmental, behavioral, and systemic signals that formal research might miss: social and economic disruption, hidden mental health burdens in communities with no formal services, community coping mechanisms, and subtle changes in vector behaviors.

    Now, I know that for many of you trained in epidemiology, the word “anecdote” sets off alarm bells. We are taught to devalue it for good reason: it is prone to recall bias, selection bias, and lacks denominators. A nurse in Bangladesh noticing “more heatstroke” is a signal, not a prevalence study. We are not claiming it is.

    However, we have two ways to answer the questions these signals raise. We can carry out long-term, rigorous academic studies over decades. Or – given that we are past several climate tipping points – we can recognize that aggregate patterns formed by thousands of these signals offer a speed and granularity that traditional studies cannot match. This functions as a massive, distributed sentinel surveillance system. It may be “imperfect” compared to a controlled trial, but is it riskier than the alternative? The alternative is often waiting years for definitive answers while communities suffer damage that may make those findings moot.

    This requires a new epistemology. Our hypothesis is that we can build a system where an anecdote becomes an eyewitness report. A health worker, traditionally seen as a “knowledge recipient” presumed ignorant of climate science, becomes a “knowledge creator”. They know things about local impacts that no one else knows, simply because they are there every day.

    In July 2023, Charlotte Mbuh, TGLF’s director who started over a decade ago as a sub-national health worker from Cameroon, stood at COP28 and said:

    ”What we know, we know because we are here every day. We are already managing the impacts of climate change on health. We are doing the best we can, but we need your support.”

    Read Charlotte Mbuh’s full statement at COP28: Climate change is a threat to the health of the communities we serve: health workers speak out at COP28

    Turning experience into evidence: the global climate change and health survey

    To operationalize this, we built a living laboratory powered by a global human sensor network.

    In 2025, in partnership with Grand Challenges Canada and a group of 50 global funders (including Gates, Wellcome, and Rockefeller), we conducted what I have been told is the largest-ever climate and health survey, and the one with the highest level of responses from local communities in the most climate-vulnerable regions

    We received responses from 6,436 health workers, primarily from the sub-national level. Because of the trust we have built over years, the Teach to Reach network contributed over 60% of these responses, ensuring we heard from the most climate-vulnerable regions.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67nYqq-hP0

    Most importantly for funders, we asked about barriers to action. The top barriers were not just resource shortages, but structural issues.

    Pending their formal publications, I am not yet able to share results.

    These findings are signals. They generate hypotheses. Here are three examples of hypotheses grounded in health worker experirences:

    • Geh Raphaela Agwa, a midwife from Cameroon, told us: “During this unfavourable weather period, people who can paddle canoes come in and help…”. Could community-led transport solutions improve maternal health access during floods?
    • Solace Jewel Morgan, a disease control officer in Ghana, told us: “The dry season… results in dust particles known as harmatan. This leads to a high incidence of respiratory illnesses… encourage… free distribution of personal protective masks.” Could prophylactic mask distribution reduces respiratory morbidity during the harmatan season?
    • Victoire Odia, a nurse from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), told us that during extreme weather events, maternity “stays were paid for by the women’s group solidarity fund.” Could micro-financing networks increase facility-based deliveries in climate-vulnerable areas?

    Of course, we must distinguish between generating a hypothesis and validating an intervention. We do not claim every local idea is safe or effective immediately. But we do claim that listening is the prerequisite to testing them.

    From insight to impact: the Accelerator model for implementation science

    We do not just extract data. We give it back to the community to prompt action. Since 2016, we have developed an “Accelerator” system that moves from listening to implementation. It works on a simple rhythm: participants set a specific, practical goal on Monday, and on Friday, they report on what happened, receiving feedback from peers.

    This brings us to a critical tension: the balance between context and content. Critics might argue that prioritizing “context over content” carries risks. What if health workers implement unproven or suboptimal strategies? That is a valid concern. However, we see this mechanism not as a way to bypass evidence, but as the most effective tool to operationalize it.

    In The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Accelerator, every participant commits to work toward their countries’ goals, and to do so by using the best available global knowledge.

    Learn more: What is The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator?

    This actually supports effective adoption and use of global guidelines, which otherwise may linger on shelves.

    In fact, we have shown in the past that this mechanism increases adherence to proven protocols (e.g., WHO guidelines on heat stress or malaria control). That is one important reason why it is a powerful implementation science tool. It transforms adherence from a wish expressed in the capital city into a reality in local communities.

    Furthermore, if national planners and international experts are willing to listen, they may hear back ways to improve and strengthen the global standards, as well as gain new insights into the “how” of local implementation that defies easy generalization.

    When we compared this model to conventional technical assistance or “cascade training,” the results were stark :

    1. Speed: Implementation was 7x faster.
    2. Cost: The cost was 90% lower.
    3. Sustainability: In a Ministry of Health initiative in Côte d’Ivoire, 82% of participants continued using the model without further support. 78% explicitly stated they needed no further external assistance.

    These results give us confidence. We are not starting from zero. We are building on prior work in immunization and other areas of work where supporting implementation led to exactly these kinds of validated outcomes.

    Here are two examples of local solutions in action.

    • Côte d’Ivoire: Communities identified stagnant water as a malaria risk and organized youth-led cleanup committees to clear gutters. This resulted in a drastic, locally measured drop in malaria cases.
    • Cameroon: In response to frequent floods, communities voluntarily cleaned gutters to ensure water did not stagnate, directly impacting disease vectors.

    No one in the capital city – and certainly no one in Geneva or Seattle – knew about these initiatives.

    This leads to our most ambitious projection. If we can grow this network from 80,000 to 1 million health workers by 2030, we estimate we could save 7 million lives through simple, locally resourced projects, at a cost of less than $2 per life.

    I acknowledge this is an aggressive claim. It is a “back-of-the-envelope” calculation based on our pilot data. It assumes that local projects remain effective at scale and that we can attribute outcomes to the network. But I ask you: if there is even a glimmer of a chance that this is true – that we can save lives at a fraction of the cost of traditional interventions – isn’t it worth investing in the rigorous research to find out?

    Discussion

    Do you think MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are dead?

    Reda Sadki: MOOCs have become primarily marketing tools for higher education. From a pedagogical perspective, they remain transmissive, expert to learner. I do not see how that model can deliver against complex problems. We need a two-way street. We need new ways to organize the production and circulation of knowledge.

    Thank you, Reda. I noticed in your results that food security is a major concern. Have you identified local actions focusing on food, given the challenges of working with healthcare workers who might not see this as their primary remit?

    Reda Sadki: That is a critical question. Food insecurity is one of the most worrying consequences we are tracking. We often see a mismatch where local actors tasked with, say, immunization, do not see nutrition as their lane. However, at the community level, the approach is naturally integrated – the health worker knows the vet, who knows the farmers. Those connections exist.

    We are currently preparing a major insights report that includes a specific chapter on food security. We are also designing an accelerator specifically around this topic to bring together the right set of partners, because the consequences we are documenting are dire.

    You mentioned that 78% of participants eventually said “no thank you” to further support. Ideally, shouldn’t these peer networks become self-sustaining, bypassing Geneva or London entirely?

    Reda Sadki: That is the goal. We have shown that more than half of each cohort stays in touch to continue leading local action. However, as long as resources and decision-making power remain concentrated in global centers, we cannot just “flip a switch”. We need to build bridges that facilitate that transformation. The goal is autonomy, but the reality requires us to actively dismantle the dependencies that current funding structures create.

    Are there new capabilities that we in academia need to develop urgently to support this?

    Reda Sadki: It is about moving away from being the “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side”. For example, in our recent work, global partners and experts joined Teach to Reach sessions not to present the latest guidelines, but to listen to the challenges local practitioners faced. They then had to figure out how their expertise could be useful in response to those specific needs.

    For researchers inside academic institutions, this can be difficult. It requires starting not with a research question, but with a willingness to listen to the needs of local actors and let the research questions emerge from that reality. We know this challenges the incentive structures of academia, but we are open to partnering with researchers willing to work in this emergent, demand-driven way.

    It is a fascinating dilemma – we want to be guided by needs, but funding requires pre-set hypotheses. Reda, this has been truly impressive. Thank you for sharing these refreshing perspectives.

    Reda Sadki: Thank you. We look forward to exploring how we can collaborate. Best wishes for the holidays and the new year.

    References

    1. Sadki, R., 2025. WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21322
    2. Sadki, R., 2024. Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
    3. Sadki, R., 2024. Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
    4. Sadki, R., 2024. Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. https://doi.org/10.59350/nv6f2-svp12
    5. Sanchez, J.J., Gitau, E., Sadki, R., et al., 2025. The climate crisis and human health: identifying grand challenges through participatory research. The Lancet Global Health 13, e199–e200. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(25)00003-8
    6. Jones I, Mbuh C, Sadki R, Eller K, Rhoda D. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report [Internet]. The Geneva Learning Foundation; 2023. https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10204660

    Images: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

    #CharlotteMbuh #climateAndHealth #epistemology #globalHealth #ImpactAccelerator #implementationResearch #LSHTM #MassiveOpenOnlineCourses #PaulinePaterson #peerLearning #TeachToReach #TheGenevaLearningFoundation
    #thegenevalearningfoundation #teachtoreach #peerlearning #paulinepaterson #massiveopenonlinecourses #lshtm
  6. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Implementation science for planetary health

    Remarks about implementation science for planetary health by Reda Sadki, Executive Director, The Geneva Learning Foundation at the Centre for Planetary Health’s research corner meeting, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) on December 17, 2025.

    Pauline Paterson (LSHTM): We are really delighted to welcome Reda Sadki. Reda is the Executive Director of the Geneva Learning Foundation, a non-profit research organization developing new epistemological and methodological approaches for complex global health challenges. Welcome, Reda.

    Reda Sadki (TGLF): Warm greetings from Geneva, Switzerland. I am very pleased to share with you what we have been learning about climate change and health – in particular, how we can move from ground truth to local action on a global scale.

    Since 2021, we have been running an initiative called Teach to Reach, led by community-based health professionals from all over the world. It connects people across countries and job roles, supporting the journey from local insight to global health initiative.

    The scale of this network has grown significantly. In March 2021, we started with 2,604 participants. By December 2024, at the eleventh meeting of Teach to Reach, we had 24,610 health workers participating.

    Who are they? Most work in health facilities and districts. Half work for government and half for civil society organizations.

    Where are they? They serve in the most fragile contexts: 62% work in remote rural areas; 47% with the urban poor; 25% with refugees or internally displaced populations. And one in five work in areas of active armed conflict.

    Alongside these individuals, we are nurturing the REACH Network, a coalition of more than 4,000 locally-led organizations. This is the backdrop for how we think about leadership as the key to driving change in climate and health.

    The “dark matter” of implementation science

    As a community working on climate change and health, we are strong – and getting stronger – on diagnosis. But we must be candid: we are weak on delivery. The science keeps getting better, but there is a gap when it comes to translating science into action.

    When it comes to formal research, we see what I call the ”dark matter”, a blind spot around hyperlocal adaptation and how implementation actually happens at the local level.

    This dark matter includes environmental, behavioral, and systemic signals that formal research might miss: social and economic disruption, hidden mental health burdens in communities with no formal services, community coping mechanisms, and subtle changes in vector behaviors.

    Now, I know that for many of you trained in epidemiology, the word “anecdote” sets off alarm bells. We are taught to devalue it for good reason: it is prone to recall bias, selection bias, and lacks denominators. A nurse in Bangladesh noticing “more heatstroke” is a signal, not a prevalence study. We are not claiming it is.

    However, we have two ways to answer the questions these signals raise. We can carry out long-term, rigorous academic studies over decades. Or – given that we are past several climate tipping points – we can recognize that aggregate patterns formed by thousands of these signals offer a speed and granularity that traditional studies cannot match. This functions as a massive, distributed sentinel surveillance system. It may be “imperfect” compared to a controlled trial, but is it riskier than the alternative? The alternative is often waiting years for definitive answers while communities suffer damage that may make those findings moot.

    This requires a new epistemology. Our hypothesis is that we can build a system where an anecdote becomes an eyewitness report. A health worker, traditionally seen as a “knowledge recipient” presumed ignorant of climate science, becomes a “knowledge creator”. They know things about local impacts that no one else knows, simply because they are there every day.

    In July 2023, Charlotte Mbuh, TGLF’s director who started over a decade ago as a sub-national health worker from Cameroon, stood at COP28 and said:

    ”What we know, we know because we are here every day. We are already managing the impacts of climate change on health. We are doing the best we can, but we need your support.”

    Read Charlotte Mbuh’s full statement at COP28: Climate change is a threat to the health of the communities we serve: health workers speak out at COP28

    Turning experience into evidence: the global climate change and health survey

    To operationalize this, we built a living laboratory powered by a global human sensor network.

    In 2025, in partnership with Grand Challenges Canada and a group of 50 global funders (including Gates, Wellcome, and Rockefeller), we conducted what I have been told is the largest-ever climate and health survey, and the one with the highest level of responses from local communities in the most climate-vulnerable regions

    We received responses from 6,436 health workers, primarily from the sub-national level. Because of the trust we have built over years, the Teach to Reach network contributed over 60% of these responses, ensuring we heard from the most climate-vulnerable regions.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67nYqq-hP0

    Most importantly for funders, we asked about barriers to action. The top barriers were not just resource shortages, but structural issues.

    Pending their formal publications, I am not yet able to share results.

    These findings are signals. They generate hypotheses. Here are three examples of hypotheses grounded in health worker experirences:

    • Geh Raphaela Agwa, a midwife from Cameroon, told us: “During this unfavourable weather period, people who can paddle canoes come in and help…”. Could community-led transport solutions improve maternal health access during floods?
    • Solace Jewel Morgan, a disease control officer in Ghana, told us: “The dry season… results in dust particles known as harmatan. This leads to a high incidence of respiratory illnesses… encourage… free distribution of personal protective masks.” Could prophylactic mask distribution reduces respiratory morbidity during the harmatan season?
    • Victoire Odia, a nurse from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), told us that during extreme weather events, maternity “stays were paid for by the women’s group solidarity fund.” Could micro-financing networks increase facility-based deliveries in climate-vulnerable areas?

    Of course, we must distinguish between generating a hypothesis and validating an intervention. We do not claim every local idea is safe or effective immediately. But we do claim that listening is the prerequisite to testing them.

    From insight to impact: the Accelerator model for implementation science

    We do not just extract data. We give it back to the community to prompt action. Since 2016, we have developed an “Accelerator” system that moves from listening to implementation. It works on a simple rhythm: participants set a specific, practical goal on Monday, and on Friday, they report on what happened, receiving feedback from peers.

    This brings us to a critical tension: the balance between context and content. Critics might argue that prioritizing “context over content” carries risks. What if health workers implement unproven or suboptimal strategies? That is a valid concern. However, we see this mechanism not as a way to bypass evidence, but as the most effective tool to operationalize it.

    In The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Accelerator, every participant commits to work toward their countries’ goals, and to do so by using the best available global knowledge.

    Learn more: What is The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator?

    This actually supports effective adoption and use of global guidelines, which otherwise may linger on shelves.

    In fact, we have shown in the past that this mechanism increases adherence to proven protocols (e.g., WHO guidelines on heat stress or malaria control). That is one important reason why it is a powerful implementation science tool. It transforms adherence from a wish expressed in the capital city into a reality in local communities.

    Furthermore, if national planners and international experts are willing to listen, they may hear back ways to improve and strengthen the global standards, as well as gain new insights into the “how” of local implementation that defies easy generalization.

    When we compared this model to conventional technical assistance or “cascade training,” the results were stark :

    1. Speed: Implementation was 7x faster.
    2. Cost: The cost was 90% lower.
    3. Sustainability: In a Ministry of Health initiative in Côte d’Ivoire, 82% of participants continued using the model without further support. 78% explicitly stated they needed no further external assistance.

    These results give us confidence. We are not starting from zero. We are building on prior work in immunization and other areas of work where supporting implementation led to exactly these kinds of validated outcomes.

    Here are two examples of local solutions in action.

    • Côte d’Ivoire: Communities identified stagnant water as a malaria risk and organized youth-led cleanup committees to clear gutters. This resulted in a drastic, locally measured drop in malaria cases.
    • Cameroon: In response to frequent floods, communities voluntarily cleaned gutters to ensure water did not stagnate, directly impacting disease vectors.

    No one in the capital city – and certainly no one in Geneva or Seattle – knew about these initiatives.

    This leads to our most ambitious projection. If we can grow this network from 80,000 to 1 million health workers by 2030, we estimate we could save 7 million lives through simple, locally resourced projects, at a cost of less than $2 per life.

    I acknowledge this is an aggressive claim. It is a “back-of-the-envelope” calculation based on our pilot data. It assumes that local projects remain effective at scale and that we can attribute outcomes to the network. But I ask you: if there is even a glimmer of a chance that this is true – that we can save lives at a fraction of the cost of traditional interventions – isn’t it worth investing in the rigorous research to find out?

    Discussion

    Do you think MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are dead?

    Reda Sadki: MOOCs have become primarily marketing tools for higher education. From a pedagogical perspective, they remain transmissive, expert to learner. I do not see how that model can deliver against complex problems. We need a two-way street. We need new ways to organize the production and circulation of knowledge.

    Thank you, Reda. I noticed in your results that food security is a major concern. Have you identified local actions focusing on food, given the challenges of working with healthcare workers who might not see this as their primary remit?

    Reda Sadki: That is a critical question. Food insecurity is one of the most worrying consequences we are tracking. We often see a mismatch where local actors tasked with, say, immunization, do not see nutrition as their lane. However, at the community level, the approach is naturally integrated – the health worker knows the vet, who knows the farmers. Those connections exist.

    We are currently preparing a major insights report that includes a specific chapter on food security. We are also designing an accelerator specifically around this topic to bring together the right set of partners, because the consequences we are documenting are dire.

    You mentioned that 78% of participants eventually said “no thank you” to further support. Ideally, shouldn’t these peer networks become self-sustaining, bypassing Geneva or London entirely?

    Reda Sadki: That is the goal. We have shown that more than half of each cohort stays in touch to continue leading local action. However, as long as resources and decision-making power remain concentrated in global centers, we cannot just “flip a switch”. We need to build bridges that facilitate that transformation. The goal is autonomy, but the reality requires us to actively dismantle the dependencies that current funding structures create.

    Are there new capabilities that we in academia need to develop urgently to support this?

    Reda Sadki: It is about moving away from being the “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side”. For example, in our recent work, global partners and experts joined Teach to Reach sessions not to present the latest guidelines, but to listen to the challenges local practitioners faced. They then had to figure out how their expertise could be useful in response to those specific needs.

    For researchers inside academic institutions, this can be difficult. It requires starting not with a research question, but with a willingness to listen to the needs of local actors and let the research questions emerge from that reality. We know this challenges the incentive structures of academia, but we are open to partnering with researchers willing to work in this emergent, demand-driven way.

    It is a fascinating dilemma – we want to be guided by needs, but funding requires pre-set hypotheses. Reda, this has been truly impressive. Thank you for sharing these refreshing perspectives.

    Reda Sadki: Thank you. We look forward to exploring how we can collaborate. Best wishes for the holidays and the new year.

    References

    1. Sadki, R., 2025. WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21322
    2. Sadki, R., 2024. Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
    3. Sadki, R., 2024. Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
    4. Sadki, R., 2024. Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. https://doi.org/10.59350/nv6f2-svp12
    5. Sanchez, J.J., Gitau, E., Sadki, R., et al., 2025. The climate crisis and human health: identifying grand challenges through participatory research. The Lancet Global Health 13, e199–e200. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(25)00003-8
    6. Jones I, Mbuh C, Sadki R, Eller K, Rhoda D. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report [Internet]. The Geneva Learning Foundation; 2023. https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10204660

    Images: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

    #CharlotteMbuh #climateAndHealth #epistemology #globalHealth #ImpactAccelerator #implementationResearch #LSHTM #MassiveOpenOnlineCourses #PaulinePaterson #peerLearning #TeachToReach #TheGenevaLearningFoundation
    #charlottembuh #climateandhealth #epistemology #globalhealth #impactaccelerator #implementationresearch
  7. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Beyond outputs, a scalable model for documenting child MHPSS outcomes in a crisis: remarks by Reda Sadki at the 18th European Public Health Conference

    On November 12, 2025, the 18th European Public Health Conference hosted a symposium organized by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The session, “The heart of resilience: lessons from mental health support for children and young people affected by conflict in Ukraine,” explored the large-scale mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) initiative developed by the IFRC with support from the European Commission.

    The panel was moderated by Dr Aneta Trgachevska, who coordinated this initiative at the IFRC Regional Office for Europe. She was joined by four panelists: Emelie Rohdén and Ivan Kryvenko from the Swedish Red Cross Youth, Martina Dugonjić, a primary school teacher from Croatia, and Reda Sadki, Executive Director of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF).

    As part of the IFRC-led initiative, TGLF developed the first Certificate peer learning programme on Psychological First Aid (PFA) in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. In his remarks, Mr. Sadki explains how this model’s success has led to its transformation from a time-limited project into a self-sustaining digital network proven to improve children’s health and well-being outcomes. Following the completion of the EU4Health project, the Geneva Learning Foundation has committed to supporting this community-driven system for five additional years, until 2030.

    The following remarks from Reda Sadki have been edited for clarity and coherence from the panel transcript and expanded with examples from the project’s insights reports.

    Aneta Trgachevska: Reda, we heard that enabling environments and peer-to-peer support and learning are very important. The Geneva Learning Foundation has developed a huge and diverse set of tools within the project to support professionals working with children displaced from Ukraine. Can you tell me from your perspective, working with these professionals, what you have noticed? What are the challenges and needs, and how have they managed with this environment and situation?

    Reda Sadki: Thank you, Aneta. At The Geneva Learning Foundation, we research, develop, and implement large-scale peer learning systems that really drive change, all the way to health outcomes that can be attributed to the activities involved.

    We took on this challenge with IFRC of reaching outside the Red Cross networks to support people who work in education, social work, and health. These are three complementary, but potentially very different groups. The common thread was that they were all involved in supporting Ukrainian children.

    How did we start? I think what brought us together with the IFRC was a shared culture of listening and of paying attention to the needs of communities. Rather than presuming, we used that listening to build initiatives.

    What that meant is that before launching a peer learning programme, we asked questions. We asked questions about your situation, about your context. What we had within less than four weeks was 873 context-specific descriptions of challenges faced by practitioners, in Ukraine and throughout Europe.

    And those 873 descriptions told us a powerful story. The challenges were not abstract. They were immediate and acute: pervasive anxiety and fear, especially in response to air raid sirens; children showing sudden aggression or complete withdrawal; and the profound social isolation of being displaced.

    We made some pretty radical changes very quickly based on this listening. The first was language. We had assumed most people would be professionals outside of Ukraine who are supporting displayed children. Our data showed the opposite: 76 percent of participants were in Ukraine itself, and 77 percent preferred to learn in Ukrainian. So, we changed our plan immediately and launched in Ukrainian from day one. That was the most obvious, but one of the most significant, changes.

    The second thing we found was the profound sense of professional isolation. The feedback we received was overwhelming on this point. More than any tool, what these practitioners valued was connection. It was the most important thing to them. We heard it in their own words. One participant from Ukraine wrote: “It is very important to know that I am not alone with these problems.”. An English-speaking colleague wrote, “It was so helpful to hear that other teachers are facing the same challenges. It makes you feel less alone.” This sense of community, we found, is a powerful antidote to burnout.

    We also found was a significant knowledge-to-action gap. Our focus was on Psychological First Aid for children. There is already excellent technical training. But we realized that in some cases, people had been through formal training but had struggled to connect that with application. They wondered, “How do I take that and actually put it to use?”

    Our data confirmed this. When we analyzed their plans, we saw a strong preference for practical, concrete support.

    Aneta Trgachevska: I really think it is important to have these tools, training, and capacity building, so that the frontline responders that are on the ground can provide adequate and timely, quality Psychological First Aid and mental health support to children.

    Reda Sadki: Alongside the knowledge and skills, what I heard from my fellow panelists is also about emotion and connection.

    The challenge we took on is that we are looking at how to connect people who may not have anyone to talk to. Who would rather be on a squawky Zoom call than being human together with fellow humans in a physical space? No one, I think. But in some cases, you do not have a choice. It is the only way to connect.

    The main result is that alongside the amazing MHPSS infrastructure of the Red Cross, we contributed to building a digital infrastructure that helps people connect.

    The first main result is a self-sustaining network. What that looks like is that staff and volunteers from 331 organizations, 76 percent of them from Ukraine, participated in the programme. These partners include large non-governmental organizations and small, locally-led groups working close to the front lines. Together, these organizations represent approximately 10,000 staff and volunteers that are supporting 1 million Ukrainian children.

    The network is owned by its members. People volunteered to serve as European PFA focal points in their local area. Pretty much overnight, we found ourselves with 91 very dedicated volunteer leaders from Ukraine and 12 European countries.

    Alongside that, we had 20 organizations that joined as formal programme partners. And these partnerships were tailored to their real-world needs. For example, Posmishka UA, one of the largest non-governmental organizations in Ukraine, sent 400 of their staff to join our Impact Accelerator. Or, another partner, SVOJA, an organization in Croatia founded and led by Ukrainian refugee women, needed a flexible programme that aligned with their unique “by refugees, for refugees” mission. This digital infrastructure allowed us to include both.

    The key result is really around health outcomes. The capstone activity of our programme is called the PFA Accelerator. This is our “learn-by-doing” model. It is not a traditional course. It follows a simple weekly rhythm: on Monday, you set one specific, practical goal. On Friday, you report on what happened. And you give and receive both feedback and support.

    This structure helps practitioners move from vague intentions to concrete action. For example, one participant, Yuliia, moved from an initial goal of “I want to help children with their emotional state” to a specific, measurable goal: “This week I will hold a session for a group of teenagers (6 people) aimed at developing self-help skills. We will practice the grounding technique ‘54321’.”

    This weekly reporting cycle, this “learn-by-doing” model, then allows us to measure what really matters: health outcomes for the children. It allowed us to document specific, tangible ways that participation was linked to improvements in a child’s well-being.

    We call these “attribution-level outcomes,” which, as many of us in public health know, is the holy grail. We cannot afford to just train professionals and hope for the best. We were able to both document and measure that because of their actions, the children they support showed tangible improvements in their mental health and well-being. For this purpose, Kari Eller, a Ph.D. candidate whose work was supported by The Geneva Learning Foundation, developed a simple, easy-to-use instrument in line with the IASC’s call for tools for busy humanitarian practitioners who lack formal mental health training, but are in fact the only ones there when support is critical for children. This tool was then discussed and improved by practitioners themselves before they began to use it.

    I want to share three qualitative examples from our practitioners’ Friday reports. Hundreds of such reports describe how a professional used what they learned from the network, and that led to improvements in the health and well-being of the children they were supporting.

    • One teacher in Kharkiv, working with children who panicked during air raids, taught them the “butterfly hug” self-soothing technique as a way to provide support. She reported: “One girl, who usually cries for 30 minutes after a siren, stopped crying and was able to start her drawing activity. She told me the ‘hug’ helped her ‘bad feelings go away’.”
    • Another practitioner, Юлія, reported on her work with a teenage girl: “During an anxiety attack, the girl began to use the grounding technique we had learned. She was able to calm down on her own. This is a very good result.”
    • And finally, Раїса wrote: “When the children heard the siren, they were able to do breathing exercises on their own… They knew what to do and it gave them confidence. The children began to use the ‘safe place’ exercise on their own when they felt anxious.”

    With all the public health professionals in the room, we know that attribution is the challenge. We feel that in a small but significant way, we found a method to document it. Because of the volume of data, which also includes quantitative measurement, we quickly see patterns of outcomes. These practitioners are not just learning theory. They are successfully applying their skills in ways that demonstrably restore a sense of calm, safety, and function for children in crisis.

    As one participant, Olha, reflected, “This experience did not just add to my knowledge—it completely redefined the essence of my profession. I no longer just heal wounds; I build oases of safety in the midst of chaos.”

    That is the impact we are documenting. Thank you very much.

    The initial development and implementation of this programme (2023-2025) was funded by the European Union through a project partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). All ongoing activities, content, and their delivery from 1 September 2025 are the sole responsibility of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF).

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. In Seed of Silence, the artist captures a moment of profound stillness, the fragile intersection of innocence, nature, and transformation. The child’s face, serene and introspective, is encircled by sculpted layers resembling petals or scales, evoking both protection and metamorphosis. The materiality of the form, textured, earthen, and softly colored, blurs the boundary between organic and human, suggesting that resilience and renewal are rooted in both. The muted palette of ochre, rust, and blue recalls soil, flame, and sky: elemental forces that cradle life even amid crisis. This image resonates deeply with the work of those documenting children’s mental health and psychosocial well-being in humanitarian contexts. Here, art becomes a quiet witness, not to trauma itself, but to the enduring capacity for growth, reflection, and rebirth. Through silence, the piece speaks of healing.

    References

    1. Sadki, R., 2025. How practitioners in Ukraine and across Europe built a self-sustaining peer learning network to support children. https://doi.org/10.59350/25pa2-ddt80
    2. Sadki, R., 2025. PFA Accelerator: across Europe, practitioners learn from each other to strengthen support to children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21155
    3. Sadki, R., 2025. Peer learning for Psychological First Aid: New ways to strengthen support for Ukrainian children. https://doi.org/10.59350/dgpff-n9d63
    4. Sadki, R., 2024. Support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: Bridging practice and learning through the sharing of experience. https://doi.org/10.59350/zbb4v-hay69
    5. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2025. Діти у кризових ситуаціях, спільноти підтримки – Застосування першої психологічної допомоги для підтримки дітей, які постраждали від гуманітарної кризи в україні. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14901474
    6. The Geneva Learning Foundation, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2025. Children in Crisis, Communities of Care – Psychological first aid for children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14732092
    7. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2024. Перша психологічна допомога дітям, які постраждали внаслідок гуманітарної кризи в Україні – Досвід дітей, опікунів та помічників. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13730132
    8. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2024. Psychological first aid in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: Experiences of children, caregivers, and helpers. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13618862

    #certificatePeerLearningProgrammeOnPsychologicalFirstAidPfaInSupportOfChildrenAffectedByTheHumanitarianCrisisInUkraine #childProtection #children #europe #europeanUnion #globalHealth #healthOutcomes #internationalFederationOfRedCrossAndRedCrescentSocietiesIfrc #learning2 #mentalHealth #mhpss #peerLearning #pfa #psychologicalFirstAid #psychosocialSupport #genevaLearningFoundation #ukraine

    #ukraine #genevalearningfoundation #psychosocialsupport #psychologicalfirstaid #pfa #peerlearning
  8. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Beyond outputs, a scalable model for documenting child MHPSS outcomes in a crisis: remarks by Reda Sadki at the 18th European Public Health Conference

    On November 12, 2025, the 18th European Public Health Conference hosted a symposium organized by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The session, “The heart of resilience: lessons from mental health support for children and young people affected by conflict in Ukraine,” explored the large-scale mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) initiative developed by the IFRC with support from the European Commission.

    The panel was moderated by Dr Aneta Trgachevska, who coordinated this initiative at the IFRC Regional Office for Europe. She was joined by four panelists: Emelie Rohdén and Ivan Kryvenko from the Swedish Red Cross Youth, Martina Dugonjić, a primary school teacher from Croatia, and Reda Sadki, Executive Director of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF).

    As part of the IFRC-led initiative, TGLF developed the first Certificate peer learning programme on Psychological First Aid (PFA) in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. In his remarks, Mr. Sadki explains how this model’s success has led to its transformation from a time-limited project into a self-sustaining digital network proven to improve children’s health and well-being outcomes. Following the completion of the EU4Health project, the Geneva Learning Foundation has committed to supporting this community-driven system for five additional years, until 2030.

    The following remarks from Reda Sadki have been edited for clarity and coherence from the panel transcript and expanded with examples from the project’s insights reports.

    Aneta Trgachevska: Reda, we heard that enabling environments and peer-to-peer support and learning are very important. The Geneva Learning Foundation has developed a huge and diverse set of tools within the project to support professionals working with children displaced from Ukraine. Can you tell me from your perspective, working with these professionals, what you have noticed? What are the challenges and needs, and how have they managed with this environment and situation?

    Reda Sadki: Thank you, Aneta. At The Geneva Learning Foundation, we research, develop, and implement large-scale peer learning systems that really drive change, all the way to health outcomes that can be attributed to the activities involved.

    We took on this challenge with IFRC of reaching outside the Red Cross networks to support people who work in education, social work, and health. These are three complementary, but potentially very different groups. The common thread was that they were all involved in supporting Ukrainian children.

    How did we start? I think what brought us together with the IFRC was a shared culture of listening and of paying attention to the needs of communities. Rather than presuming, we used that listening to build initiatives.

    What that meant is that before launching a peer learning programme, we asked questions. We asked questions about your situation, about your context. What we had within less than four weeks was 873 context-specific descriptions of challenges faced by practitioners, in Ukraine and throughout Europe.

    And those 873 descriptions told us a powerful story. The challenges were not abstract. They were immediate and acute: pervasive anxiety and fear, especially in response to air raid sirens; children showing sudden aggression or complete withdrawal; and the profound social isolation of being displaced.

    We made some pretty radical changes very quickly based on this listening. The first was language. We had assumed most people would be professionals outside of Ukraine who are supporting displayed children. Our data showed the opposite: 76 percent of participants were in Ukraine itself, and 77 percent preferred to learn in Ukrainian. So, we changed our plan immediately and launched in Ukrainian from day one. That was the most obvious, but one of the most significant, changes.

    The second thing we found was the profound sense of professional isolation. The feedback we received was overwhelming on this point. More than any tool, what these practitioners valued was connection. It was the most important thing to them. We heard it in their own words. One participant from Ukraine wrote: “It is very important to know that I am not alone with these problems.”. An English-speaking colleague wrote, “It was so helpful to hear that other teachers are facing the same challenges. It makes you feel less alone.” This sense of community, we found, is a powerful antidote to burnout.

    We also found was a significant knowledge-to-action gap. Our focus was on Psychological First Aid for children. There is already excellent technical training. But we realized that in some cases, people had been through formal training but had struggled to connect that with application. They wondered, “How do I take that and actually put it to use?”

    Our data confirmed this. When we analyzed their plans, we saw a strong preference for practical, concrete support.

    Aneta Trgachevska: I really think it is important to have these tools, training, and capacity building, so that the frontline responders that are on the ground can provide adequate and timely, quality Psychological First Aid and mental health support to children.

    Reda Sadki: Alongside the knowledge and skills, what I heard from my fellow panelists is also about emotion and connection.

    The challenge we took on is that we are looking at how to connect people who may not have anyone to talk to. Who would rather be on a squawky Zoom call than being human together with fellow humans in a physical space? No one, I think. But in some cases, you do not have a choice. It is the only way to connect.

    The main result is that alongside the amazing MHPSS infrastructure of the Red Cross, we contributed to building a digital infrastructure that helps people connect.

    The first main result is a self-sustaining network. What that looks like is that staff and volunteers from 331 organizations, 76 percent of them from Ukraine, participated in the programme. These partners include large non-governmental organizations and small, locally-led groups working close to the front lines. Together, these organizations represent approximately 10,000 staff and volunteers that are supporting 1 million Ukrainian children.

    The network is owned by its members. People volunteered to serve as European PFA focal points in their local area. Pretty much overnight, we found ourselves with 91 very dedicated volunteer leaders from Ukraine and 12 European countries.

    Alongside that, we had 20 organizations that joined as formal programme partners. And these partnerships were tailored to their real-world needs. For example, Posmishka UA, one of the largest non-governmental organizations in Ukraine, sent 400 of their staff to join our Impact Accelerator. Or, another partner, SVOJA, an organization in Croatia founded and led by Ukrainian refugee women, needed a flexible programme that aligned with their unique “by refugees, for refugees” mission. This digital infrastructure allowed us to include both.

    The key result is really around health outcomes. The capstone activity of our programme is called the PFA Accelerator. This is our “learn-by-doing” model. It is not a traditional course. It follows a simple weekly rhythm: on Monday, you set one specific, practical goal. On Friday, you report on what happened. And you give and receive both feedback and support.

    This structure helps practitioners move from vague intentions to concrete action. For example, one participant, Yuliia, moved from an initial goal of “I want to help children with their emotional state” to a specific, measurable goal: “This week I will hold a session for a group of teenagers (6 people) aimed at developing self-help skills. We will practice the grounding technique ‘54321’.”

    This weekly reporting cycle, this “learn-by-doing” model, then allows us to measure what really matters: health outcomes for the children. It allowed us to document specific, tangible ways that participation was linked to improvements in a child’s well-being.

    We call these “attribution-level outcomes,” which, as many of us in public health know, is the holy grail. We cannot afford to just train professionals and hope for the best. We were able to both document and measure that because of their actions, the children they support showed tangible improvements in their mental health and well-being. For this purpose, Kari Eller, a Ph.D. candidate whose work was supported by The Geneva Learning Foundation, developed a simple, easy-to-use instrument in line with the IASC’s call for tools for busy humanitarian practitioners who lack formal mental health training, but are in fact the only ones there when support is critical for children. This tool was then discussed and improved by practitioners themselves before they began to use it.

    I want to share three qualitative examples from our practitioners’ Friday reports. Hundreds of such reports describe how a professional used what they learned from the network, and that led to improvements in the health and well-being of the children they were supporting.

    • One teacher in Kharkiv, working with children who panicked during air raids, taught them the “butterfly hug” self-soothing technique as a way to provide support. She reported: “One girl, who usually cries for 30 minutes after a siren, stopped crying and was able to start her drawing activity. She told me the ‘hug’ helped her ‘bad feelings go away’.”
    • Another practitioner, Юлія, reported on her work with a teenage girl: “During an anxiety attack, the girl began to use the grounding technique we had learned. She was able to calm down on her own. This is a very good result.”
    • And finally, Раїса wrote: “When the children heard the siren, they were able to do breathing exercises on their own… They knew what to do and it gave them confidence. The children began to use the ‘safe place’ exercise on their own when they felt anxious.”

    With all the public health professionals in the room, we know that attribution is the challenge. We feel that in a small but significant way, we found a method to document it. Because of the volume of data, which also includes quantitative measurement, we quickly see patterns of outcomes. These practitioners are not just learning theory. They are successfully applying their skills in ways that demonstrably restore a sense of calm, safety, and function for children in crisis.

    As one participant, Olha, reflected, “This experience did not just add to my knowledge—it completely redefined the essence of my profession. I no longer just heal wounds; I build oases of safety in the midst of chaos.”

    That is the impact we are documenting. Thank you very much.

    The initial development and implementation of this programme (2023-2025) was funded by the European Union through a project partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). All ongoing activities, content, and their delivery from 1 September 2025 are the sole responsibility of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF).

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. In Seed of Silence, the artist captures a moment of profound stillness, the fragile intersection of innocence, nature, and transformation. The child’s face, serene and introspective, is encircled by sculpted layers resembling petals or scales, evoking both protection and metamorphosis. The materiality of the form, textured, earthen, and softly colored, blurs the boundary between organic and human, suggesting that resilience and renewal are rooted in both. The muted palette of ochre, rust, and blue recalls soil, flame, and sky: elemental forces that cradle life even amid crisis. This image resonates deeply with the work of those documenting children’s mental health and psychosocial well-being in humanitarian contexts. Here, art becomes a quiet witness, not to trauma itself, but to the enduring capacity for growth, reflection, and rebirth. Through silence, the piece speaks of healing.

    References

    1. Sadki, R., 2025. How practitioners in Ukraine and across Europe built a self-sustaining peer learning network to support children. https://doi.org/10.59350/25pa2-ddt80
    2. Sadki, R., 2025. PFA Accelerator: across Europe, practitioners learn from each other to strengthen support to children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21155
    3. Sadki, R., 2025. Peer learning for Psychological First Aid: New ways to strengthen support for Ukrainian children. https://doi.org/10.59350/dgpff-n9d63
    4. Sadki, R., 2024. Support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: Bridging practice and learning through the sharing of experience. https://doi.org/10.59350/zbb4v-hay69
    5. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2025. Діти у кризових ситуаціях, спільноти підтримки – Застосування першої психологічної допомоги для підтримки дітей, які постраждали від гуманітарної кризи в україні. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14901474
    6. The Geneva Learning Foundation, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2025. Children in Crisis, Communities of Care – Psychological first aid for children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14732092
    7. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2024. Перша психологічна допомога дітям, які постраждали внаслідок гуманітарної кризи в Україні – Досвід дітей, опікунів та помічників. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13730132
    8. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2024. Psychological first aid in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: Experiences of children, caregivers, and helpers. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13618862

    #certificatePeerLearningProgrammeOnPsychologicalFirstAidPfaInSupportOfChildrenAffectedByTheHumanitarianCrisisInUkraine #childProtection #children #europe #europeanUnion #globalHealth #healthOutcomes #internationalFederationOfRedCrossAndRedCrescentSocietiesIfrc #learning2 #mentalHealth #mhpss #peerLearning #pfa #psychologicalFirstAid #psychosocialSupport #genevaLearningFoundation #ukraine

    #certificatepeerlearningprogrammeonpsychologicalfirstaidpfainsupportofchildrenaffectedbythehumanitariancrisisinukraine #childprotection #children #europe #europeanunion #globalhealth
  9. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    The future of work: remarks at the 9th 1M1B Impact Summit held at the United Nations in Geneva

    On November 7, 2025, Reda Sadki, Executive Director of The Geneva Learning Foundation, joined the panel “The Future of Work: AI and Green Skills” at the 9th 1M1B Impact Summit held at the United Nations in Geneva. Moderated by Elizabeth Saunders, the discussion explored the rapid redefinition of the workforce by artificial intelligence and the green transition. The following is an edited transcript of Mr. Sadki’s remarks.

    Living with artificial intelligence

    Moderator: You have just seen some of these really incredible changemaker ideas and so what skills and mindsets stood out to you and how do you think those can be scaled to build a workforce that is living with AI and not competing with it?

    That is a wonderful question.

    I would answer that the key skill is learning to work with artificial intelligence.

    It is likely that your generation will be the first one learning to work side-by-side with AI as a partner or a co-worker, in the same way my generation learned to navigate the Internet.

    This requires three things.

    First, being ambitious.

    Second, being bold.

    And third, being courageous.

    Things are going to change dramatically in the next three to six years.

    There is a convergence of belief among those building these systems—what some call the “San Francisco Consensus”—that within this short timeframe, AI will fundamentally transform every aspect of human activity.

    We are facing the arrival of a new, non-human intelligence that is likely to have better reasoning skills than humans.

    This is not just about new tools.

    We are already seeing AI automate the routine tasks that make up the first rungs of a professional career.

    Some may tell you AI is not coming for your job, but I struggle to see that as anything other than misleading at best.

    In our programmes at The Geneva Learning Foundation, we have already used AI to replace key functions previously performed by humans.

    So, the sooner we are thinking, learning, and getting ready to navigate those changes, the better.

    The challenge is not to compete with AI in knowledge transmission.

    The risk is what some call “metacognitive laziness”, outsourcing our critical thinking to the machine.

    What is left for humans, and what we must cultivate, is facilitation, interpretation, and uniquely human-centric skills.

    These include creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, collective care, and consciousness.

    We must cultivate judgment, contextual wisdom, and ethical reasoning.

    We are navigating the unknown, and learning to do so together – by strengthening the connections between us, by asking what it means to be connected as humans – will be critical to our survival.

    Peer learning and democratizing access

    Moderator: I have a question for you about your foundation, because you have pioneered peer learning networks that have reached thousands globally. So what can we learn from this model about how to democratize access to AI and green skills, and make lifelong learning more inclusive and action-driven?

    The Geneva Learning Foundation’s mission, since 2016, has been to research, develop, and implement new ways to learn and lead.

    Our initial premise was that our traditional education systems are broken.

    They often rely on a top-down, “transmission model” of learning, where knowledge flows from experts to practitioners.

    This model is too slow, too expensive, and often fails to reach the people and communities that are facing extinction-level threats, whether that is climate change or artificial intelligence.

    In today’s world, these broken systems create significant risks when it comes to the critical threats upon our societies, including climate change and artificial intelligence.

    In the last three years, we have made key breakthroughs in solving four problems:

    • The problem of scale: how do we simultaneously connect tens of thousands of people in a single initiative, rather than one classroom at a time?
    • The problem of speed: how do we share knowledge at the speed problems emerge?
    • The problem of cost: how do we make this affordable?
    • And the problem of sustainability: how do we create systems people will continue to use because they are relevant?

    We have developed a model that we have tested in over 137 countries, working with international partners as well as ministries of health and, most importantly, with people on the ground in local communities.

    The first lesson learned is that in today’s complex, hyper-connected world, where there is an abundance of knowledge, simply knowing things is necessary, but not sufficient.

    The second lesson is recognizing the significance of what people know because they are there every day.

    We operate within knowledge systems that tend to devalue this “experiential knowledge”, often dismissing it as “anecdotal”.

    This is a form of “epistemic injustice”.

    We believe we must value what the health worker knows, what the mother or grandmother knows, and what the youth know, in order to solve the challenges before us.

    The third lesson is the power of digital networks to enable connections.

    In the past, learning from experience was constrained by our local environment.

    With digital networks, you can make connections with people from all over the world.

    This led us to the central piece of our innovation: peer learning mediated through digital networks.

    This could be so much more than the informal chatter and negative feedback loops of social media.

    It is a structured process where participants develop concrete projects addressing real challenges, review each other’s work, and engage in facilitated dialogue to share insights.

    Knowledge flows horizontally, from peer to peer, rather than just vertically.

    This model solves our four problems.

    It gives us scale.

    There is no upper limit.

    It gives us speed.

    It turns out to be incredibly cheap.

    And it is sustainable, because people keep doing it because it is actually helping them solve their needs.

    To give a specific example, in July 2023 we launched our program on climate change and health.

    We started by listening to the voices of thousands of health workers from all over the world, who painted a very scary picture of the impacts of climate change on the health of those they serve.

    But we also found that health workers were being incredibly creative with very limited resources.

    They had already begun to solve the problems they were facing in their communities, but unfortunately, very often with no one helping or supporting them.

    That led us to calculate that if we are able to connect one million health workers to each other to be learning from and supporting each other by 2030, that group of health workers could use the power of those connections to save seven million lives.

    And for the “bean counters” in the room, this would be at a cost of less than two dollars per life saved, which is actually cheaper than vaccination, one of the most effective interventions we have in health today.

    This is such an incredible equation that some of our partners say it sounds too good to be true.

    There is an incredible opportunity to link up health workers with other segments of society, including youth.

    We see the potential from building these coalitions and networks.

    This brings us back to AI.

    We really see peer learning as key to our survival as human beings.

    We may end up working with machines that already exceed our cognitive capacities, and will almost certainly do so definitively in pretty much every area of work within the next three to six years.

    We are going to have to respond to that by strengthening the connections we have as human beings.

    AI systems are trained on global data, but humans possess deep “contextual intelligence”.

    Peer learning is the bridge.

    It is how we learn together how to adapt AI’s powerful analytics to our local realities, cultural contexts, trust networks, and resource constraints.

    We have to think about what it means to be human in the Age of AI, and learning from each other will be very critical, very key to that survival.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. Suspended between earth and ether, Cathedral of Circuits and Roots evokes a world where technology and nature, thought and matter, coalesce in fragile harmony. Its oxidized cubes, hues of turquoise, gold, and quiet rust, resemble relics of a civilization both ancient and yet to come. The sculpture’s floating architecture suggests a digital forest, each metallic block a leaf of knowledge, each connection a pulse of shared intelligence. It speaks to the dual call of our age: to grow roots deep in human wisdom, even as we build circuits reaching toward artificial minds. In this shimmering equilibrium, the work asks: can progress be both luminous and humane — and can learning itself become an act of restoration?

    References

    #9th1m1bImpactSummit #artificialIntelligence #climateAndHealth #globalHealth #greeSkills #peerLearning #youth

    #youth #peerlearning #greeskills #globalhealth #climateandhealth #artificialintelligence
  10. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    The future of work: remarks at the 9th 1M1B Impact Summit held at the United Nations in Geneva

    On November 7, 2025, Reda Sadki, Executive Director of The Geneva Learning Foundation, joined the panel “The Future of Work: AI and Green Skills” at the 9th 1M1B Impact Summit held at the United Nations in Geneva. Moderated by Elizabeth Saunders, the discussion explored the rapid redefinition of the workforce by artificial intelligence and the green transition. The following is an edited transcript of Mr. Sadki’s remarks.

    Living with artificial intelligence

    Moderator: You have just seen some of these really incredible changemaker ideas and so what skills and mindsets stood out to you and how do you think those can be scaled to build a workforce that is living with AI and not competing with it?

    That is a wonderful question.

    I would answer that the key skill is learning to work with artificial intelligence.

    It is likely that your generation will be the first one learning to work side-by-side with AI as a partner or a co-worker, in the same way my generation learned to navigate the Internet.

    This requires three things.

    First, being ambitious.

    Second, being bold.

    And third, being courageous.

    Things are going to change dramatically in the next three to six years.

    There is a convergence of belief among those building these systems—what some call the “San Francisco Consensus”—that within this short timeframe, AI will fundamentally transform every aspect of human activity.

    We are facing the arrival of a new, non-human intelligence that is likely to have better reasoning skills than humans.

    This is not just about new tools.

    We are already seeing AI automate the routine tasks that make up the first rungs of a professional career.

    Some may tell you AI is not coming for your job, but I struggle to see that as anything other than misleading at best.

    In our programmes at The Geneva Learning Foundation, we have already used AI to replace key functions previously performed by humans.

    So, the sooner we are thinking, learning, and getting ready to navigate those changes, the better.

    The challenge is not to compete with AI in knowledge transmission.

    The risk is what some call “metacognitive laziness”, outsourcing our critical thinking to the machine.

    What is left for humans, and what we must cultivate, is facilitation, interpretation, and uniquely human-centric skills.

    These include creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, collective care, and consciousness.

    We must cultivate judgment, contextual wisdom, and ethical reasoning.

    We are navigating the unknown, and learning to do so together – by strengthening the connections between us, by asking what it means to be connected as humans – will be critical to our survival.

    Peer learning and democratizing access

    Moderator: I have a question for you about your foundation, because you have pioneered peer learning networks that have reached thousands globally. So what can we learn from this model about how to democratize access to AI and green skills, and make lifelong learning more inclusive and action-driven?

    The Geneva Learning Foundation’s mission, since 2016, has been to research, develop, and implement new ways to learn and lead.

    Our initial premise was that our traditional education systems are broken.

    They often rely on a top-down, “transmission model” of learning, where knowledge flows from experts to practitioners.

    This model is too slow, too expensive, and often fails to reach the people and communities that are facing extinction-level threats, whether that is climate change or artificial intelligence.

    In today’s world, these broken systems create significant risks when it comes to the critical threats upon our societies, including climate change and artificial intelligence.

    In the last three years, we have made key breakthroughs in solving four problems:

    • The problem of scale: how do we simultaneously connect tens of thousands of people in a single initiative, rather than one classroom at a time?
    • The problem of speed: how do we share knowledge at the speed problems emerge?
    • The problem of cost: how do we make this affordable?
    • And the problem of sustainability: how do we create systems people will continue to use because they are relevant?

    We have developed a model that we have tested in over 137 countries, working with international partners as well as ministries of health and, most importantly, with people on the ground in local communities.

    The first lesson learned is that in today’s complex, hyper-connected world, where there is an abundance of knowledge, simply knowing things is necessary, but not sufficient.

    The second lesson is recognizing the significance of what people know because they are there every day.

    We operate within knowledge systems that tend to devalue this “experiential knowledge”, often dismissing it as “anecdotal”.

    This is a form of “epistemic injustice”.

    We believe we must value what the health worker knows, what the mother or grandmother knows, and what the youth know, in order to solve the challenges before us.

    The third lesson is the power of digital networks to enable connections.

    In the past, learning from experience was constrained by our local environment.

    With digital networks, you can make connections with people from all over the world.

    This led us to the central piece of our innovation: peer learning mediated through digital networks.

    This could be so much more than the informal chatter and negative feedback loops of social media.

    It is a structured process where participants develop concrete projects addressing real challenges, review each other’s work, and engage in facilitated dialogue to share insights.

    Knowledge flows horizontally, from peer to peer, rather than just vertically.

    This model solves our four problems.

    It gives us scale.

    There is no upper limit.

    It gives us speed.

    It turns out to be incredibly cheap.

    And it is sustainable, because people keep doing it because it is actually helping them solve their needs.

    To give a specific example, in July 2023 we launched our program on climate change and health.

    We started by listening to the voices of thousands of health workers from all over the world, who painted a very scary picture of the impacts of climate change on the health of those they serve.

    But we also found that health workers were being incredibly creative with very limited resources.

    They had already begun to solve the problems they were facing in their communities, but unfortunately, very often with no one helping or supporting them.

    That led us to calculate that if we are able to connect one million health workers to each other to be learning from and supporting each other by 2030, that group of health workers could use the power of those connections to save seven million lives.

    And for the “bean counters” in the room, this would be at a cost of less than two dollars per life saved, which is actually cheaper than vaccination, one of the most effective interventions we have in health today.

    This is such an incredible equation that some of our partners say it sounds too good to be true.

    There is an incredible opportunity to link up health workers with other segments of society, including youth.

    We see the potential from building these coalitions and networks.

    This brings us back to AI.

    We really see peer learning as key to our survival as human beings.

    We may end up working with machines that already exceed our cognitive capacities, and will almost certainly do so definitively in pretty much every area of work within the next three to six years.

    We are going to have to respond to that by strengthening the connections we have as human beings.

    AI systems are trained on global data, but humans possess deep “contextual intelligence”.

    Peer learning is the bridge.

    It is how we learn together how to adapt AI’s powerful analytics to our local realities, cultural contexts, trust networks, and resource constraints.

    We have to think about what it means to be human in the Age of AI, and learning from each other will be very critical, very key to that survival.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. Suspended between earth and ether, Cathedral of Circuits and Roots evokes a world where technology and nature, thought and matter, coalesce in fragile harmony. Its oxidized cubes, hues of turquoise, gold, and quiet rust, resemble relics of a civilization both ancient and yet to come. The sculpture’s floating architecture suggests a digital forest, each metallic block a leaf of knowledge, each connection a pulse of shared intelligence. It speaks to the dual call of our age: to grow roots deep in human wisdom, even as we build circuits reaching toward artificial minds. In this shimmering equilibrium, the work asks: can progress be both luminous and humane — and can learning itself become an act of restoration?

    References

    #9th1m1bImpactSummit #artificialIntelligence #climateAndHealth #globalHealth #greeSkills #peerLearning #youth

    #9th1m1bimpactsummit #artificialintelligence #climateandhealth #globalhealth #greeskills #peerlearning
  11. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    How the Lancet Countdown illuminates a new path to climate-resilient health systems

    The 2025 Lancet Countdown report has begun to acknowledge a critical, often-overlooked source of intelligence to build climate-resilient health systems: the health worker. By including testimonials from health workers alongside formal quantitative evidence, the Lancet cracks open a door, hinting at a world beyond globally standardized datasets. This is a necessary first step. However, the report’s framework for action remains a traditional, top-down model. It primarily frames the health workforce as passive recipients of knowledge—a group that must be “educated and trained” because they are “unprepared”, rather than build on existing evidence that points to health workers as leaders for climate-health resilience.

    The 2025 report confirms that climate change’s assault on human health has reached alarming new levels.

    • Thirteen of 20 indicators tracking health threats are flashing red at record highs.
    • Heat-related mortality, now estimated at 546,000 deaths annually in the 2012-21 period, has climbed 63% since the 1990s.
    • Deaths linked to wildfire smoke pollution hit a new peak in 2024, while fossil fuel combustion overall remained responsible for 2.52 million deaths in 2022 alone.
    • Extreme weather increasingly drives food insecurity.
    • This accelerating health crisis unfolds against a backdrop of faltering political will.
    • The report documents governmental retreats from climate commitments.

    Yet, within this sobering assessment lies a quiet but potentially pivotal shift.

    For the first time, the Countdown’s country profiles integrate direct testimonials from frontline health workers, explicitly acknowledging their “lived experiences as valuable evidence”.

    It is a crucial opening, recognizing that globally standardized data alone cannot capture the full picture or tell the story.

    The Countdown’s inclusion of health worker voices in its country profiles is laudable.

    It hints at bridging what philosopher Donald Schön called the divide between the “high, hard ground” of research-based theory and the “swampy lowlands” of messy, real-world practice.

    Schön argued that the problems of greatest human concern often lie in that swamp, requiring practitioners to rely on experience and intuition – what he termed “knowing-in-action”.

    This promising step creates new possibilities.

    When the reference global report on climate change and health sees the frontline, this illuminates the path to recognize those working there as agents and leaders capable of forging solutions.

    However, the report’s dominant framework still positions the health workforce primarily on the receiving end of knowledge transfer.

    Indicator 2.2.5 meticulously documents gaps in climate and health education, concluding that professionals are left “unprepared”.

    The resulting recommendation?

    Health systems must “[e]ducat[e] and train[…] the health workforce”.

    This framing, while highlighting a genuine need, implicitly casts health workers as passive vessels needing to be filled, rather than as active knowers and problem-solvers.

    This perspective misses an important dimension, one vividly apparent from our direct work at The Geneva Learning Foundation with tens of thousands of health practitioners globally.

    Frontline health workers are already responding – adapting vaccination schedules during heatwaves, managing cholera outbreaks after floods, counseling communities on new health risks – because they must.

    Their daily observations is distinct from “lived experience”, because of their formal health education. 

    The patterns that emerge could form a vital, real-time early warning system, detecting subtle shifts in disease patterns or community vulnerabilities even before formal surveillance systems register them.

    To dismiss this deep experiential knowledge as merely “anecdotal” is to ignore critical intelligence in a rapidly escalating crisis.

    Worse, it reflects an “epistemological injustice” where practical wisdom is systematically devalued.

    Here lies the crucial disconnect.

    The Lancet Countdown rightly presents evidence for “community-led action,” showcasing powerful examples in Panel 6 where farmers or local groups have driven substantial environmental and health gains.

    Yet, it fails to connect this potential explicitly to the health workers embedded within those very communities.

    What does empowering the health workforce truly mean?

    It cannot be limited to providing didactic training, such as webinar lectures about climate science.

    Drawing on our research and practice, it involves concrete actions:

    1. Recognizing health professionals as knowledge creators: Systematically capturing, validating, and integrating their “knowing-in-action” into the evidence base.
    2. Connecting them through peer learning networks: Enabling practitioners facing similar “swampy” problems across diverse contexts to share hyperlocal solutions and build collective intelligence.
    3. Supporting locally-led implementation: Equipping them to design and execute adaptation projects tailored to community needs, often leveraging existing local resources, as demonstrated in TGLF initiatives where the vast majority of participants reported sustaining action without external funding.
    4. Creating feedback loops to policy: Establishing mechanisms for this ground-level knowledge to flow upwards, informing district, national, and even global strategies.

    This approach offers concrete pathways for the academic research community.

    These networks function as distributed, real-world laboratories.

    They generate rich qualitative and quantitative data on context-specific climate impacts, the practicalities of implementing adaptation strategies, barriers encountered, and observed outcomes.

    They offer fertile ground for implementation science, participatory action research, and validating citizen science methodologies at scale.

    Rigorous study of these networks themselves – how knowledge flows, how solutions spread, how collective capacity builds – can advance our understanding of learning and adaptation in complex systems.

    This vision of an empowered, networked health workforce directly supports emerging global policy.

    WHO’s Global Plan of Action on Climate Change and Health, and the Belém Health Action Plan (BHAP) under development for COP30, both stress social participation, capacity building, and the integration of local knowledge.

    Peer learning networks provide a practical, field-tested engine to translate these principles into action, connecting the ambitions of Belém with the realities faced by a nurse in Bangladesh, a community health worker in Kenya, or a community health doctor in India.

    Furthermore, this approach may represent one of the most effective investments available.

    Preliminary analysis by The Geneva Learning Foundation suggests that supporting local action health workers through networked peer learning could yield substantial health gains.

    With a critical mass of one million health workers connected to learn from and support each other, the potential is to save seven million lives, at a cost lower than that of immunization.

    This is not just about doing good.

    It is about smart investment in resilience.

    The 2025 Lancet Countdown acknowledges the view from the ground.

    The challenge now is to fully integrate that perspective into research and policy, by supporting and amplifying existing, community-led local action.

    We must move beyond framing health workers as recipients of knowledge or vulnerable populations needing protection, and recognize their indispensable role as knowledgeable, capable leaders.

    Harnessing their “knowing-in-action” through structured, networked peer support is not merely an alternative approach. 

    It is essential for building the adaptive, equitable, and effective health responses this escalating climate crisis demands.

    The wisdom needed to navigate the swamp often resides within it.

    References

    1. Romanello M, Walawender M, Hsu S-C, et al. The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. Lancet 2025; published online Oct 29. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(25)01919-1.
    2. Sadki, R., 2025a. Climate change and health: a new peer learning programme by and for health workers from the most climate-vulnerable countries. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21339
    3. Sadki, R., 2025b. WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21322
    4. Sadki, R., 2024a. Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. https://doi.org/10.59350/nv6f2-svp12
    5. Sadki, R., 2024b. Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
    6. Sadki, R., 2024c. Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
    7. Sadki, R., 2024d. The cost of inaction: Quantifying the impact of climate change on health. https://doi.org/10.59350/gn95w-jpt34
    8. Sadki, R., 2024e. Why guidelines fail: on consequences of the false dichotomy between global and local knowledge in health systems. https://redasadki.me/2024/11/26/why-guidelines-fail-on-consequences-of-the-false-dichotomy-between-global-and-local-knowledge-in-health-systems/
    9. Sadki, R., 2024f. Anecdote or lived experience: reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems. https://redasadki.me/2024/11/11/anecdote-or-lived-experience-reimagining-knowledge-for-climate-resilient-health-systems/
    10. Sadki, R., 2024g. Knowing-in-action: Bridging the theory-practice divide in global health. https://redasadki.me/2024/12/14/knowing-in-action-bridging-the-theory-practice-divide-in-global-health/
    11. Sadki, R., 2023a. Investing in the health workforce is vital to tackle climate change: A new report shares insights from over 1,200 on the frontline. https://doi.org/10.59350/3kkfc-9rb27
    12. Sadki, R., 2023b. Climate change is a threat to the health of the communities we serve: health workers speak out at COP28. https://redasadki.me/2023/12/11/climate-and-health-health-workers-trust/
    13. Sanchez, J.J., Gitau, E., Sadki, R., Mbuh, C., Silver, K., Berry, P., Bhutta, Z., Bogard, K., Collman, G., Dey, S., Dinku, T., Dwipayanti, N.M.U., Ebi, K., Felts La Roca Soares, M., Gudoshava, M., Hashizume, M., Lichtveld, M., Lowe, R., Mateen, B., Muchangi, M., Ndiaye, O., Omay, P., Pinheiro dos Santos, W., Ruiz-Carrascal, D., Shumake-Guillemot, J., Stewart-Ibarra, A., Tiwari, S., 2025. The climate crisis and human health: identifying grand challenges through participatory research. The Lancet Global Health 13, e199–e200. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(25)00003-8
    14. Schön, D.A., 1995. Knowing-in-action: The new scholarship requires a new epistemology. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 27, 27–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.1995.10544673
    15. The Geneva Learning Foundation, 2023. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10204660

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

    #climateChangeAndHealth #climateResilience #climateResilientHealthSystems #LancetCountdown #MarinaRomanello #primaryHealthCare #workforceDevelopment

    #workforcedevelopment #primaryhealthcare #marinaromanello #lancetcountdown #climateresilienthealthsystems #climateresilience
  12. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    How the Lancet Countdown illuminates a new path to climate-resilient health systems

    The 2025 Lancet Countdown report has begun to acknowledge a critical, often-overlooked source of intelligence to build climate-resilient health systems: the health worker. By including testimonials from health workers alongside formal quantitative evidence, the Lancet cracks open a door, hinting at a world beyond globally standardized datasets. This is a necessary first step. However, the report’s framework for action remains a traditional, top-down model. It primarily frames the health workforce as passive recipients of knowledge—a group that must be “educated and trained” because they are “unprepared”, rather than build on existing evidence that points to health workers as leaders for climate-health resilience.

    The 2025 report confirms that climate change’s assault on human health has reached alarming new levels.

    • Thirteen of 20 indicators tracking health threats are flashing red at record highs.
    • Heat-related mortality, now estimated at 546,000 deaths annually in the 2012-21 period, has climbed 63% since the 1990s.
    • Deaths linked to wildfire smoke pollution hit a new peak in 2024, while fossil fuel combustion overall remained responsible for 2.52 million deaths in 2022 alone.
    • Extreme weather increasingly drives food insecurity.
    • This accelerating health crisis unfolds against a backdrop of faltering political will.
    • The report documents governmental retreats from climate commitments.

    Yet, within this sobering assessment lies a quiet but potentially pivotal shift.

    For the first time, the Countdown’s country profiles integrate direct testimonials from frontline health workers, explicitly acknowledging their “lived experiences as valuable evidence”.

    It is a crucial opening, recognizing that globally standardized data alone cannot capture the full picture or tell the story.

    The Countdown’s inclusion of health worker voices in its country profiles is laudable.

    It hints at bridging what philosopher Donald Schön called the divide between the “high, hard ground” of research-based theory and the “swampy lowlands” of messy, real-world practice.

    Schön argued that the problems of greatest human concern often lie in that swamp, requiring practitioners to rely on experience and intuition – what he termed “knowing-in-action”.

    This promising step creates new possibilities.

    When the reference global report on climate change and health sees the frontline, this illuminates the path to recognize those working there as agents and leaders capable of forging solutions.

    However, the report’s dominant framework still positions the health workforce primarily on the receiving end of knowledge transfer.

    Indicator 2.2.5 meticulously documents gaps in climate and health education, concluding that professionals are left “unprepared”.

    The resulting recommendation?

    Health systems must “[e]ducat[e] and train[…] the health workforce”.

    This framing, while highlighting a genuine need, implicitly casts health workers as passive vessels needing to be filled, rather than as active knowers and problem-solvers.

    This perspective misses an important dimension, one vividly apparent from our direct work at The Geneva Learning Foundation with tens of thousands of health practitioners globally.

    Frontline health workers are already responding – adapting vaccination schedules during heatwaves, managing cholera outbreaks after floods, counseling communities on new health risks – because they must.

    Their daily observations is distinct from “lived experience”, because of their formal health education. 

    The patterns that emerge could form a vital, real-time early warning system, detecting subtle shifts in disease patterns or community vulnerabilities even before formal surveillance systems register them.

    To dismiss this deep experiential knowledge as merely “anecdotal” is to ignore critical intelligence in a rapidly escalating crisis.

    Worse, it reflects an “epistemological injustice” where practical wisdom is systematically devalued.

    Here lies the crucial disconnect.

    The Lancet Countdown rightly presents evidence for “community-led action,” showcasing powerful examples in Panel 6 where farmers or local groups have driven substantial environmental and health gains.

    Yet, it fails to connect this potential explicitly to the health workers embedded within those very communities.

    What does empowering the health workforce truly mean?

    It cannot be limited to providing didactic training, such as webinar lectures about climate science.

    Drawing on our research and practice, it involves concrete actions:

    1. Recognizing health professionals as knowledge creators: Systematically capturing, validating, and integrating their “knowing-in-action” into the evidence base.
    2. Connecting them through peer learning networks: Enabling practitioners facing similar “swampy” problems across diverse contexts to share hyperlocal solutions and build collective intelligence.
    3. Supporting locally-led implementation: Equipping them to design and execute adaptation projects tailored to community needs, often leveraging existing local resources, as demonstrated in TGLF initiatives where the vast majority of participants reported sustaining action without external funding.
    4. Creating feedback loops to policy: Establishing mechanisms for this ground-level knowledge to flow upwards, informing district, national, and even global strategies.

    This approach offers concrete pathways for the academic research community.

    These networks function as distributed, real-world laboratories.

    They generate rich qualitative and quantitative data on context-specific climate impacts, the practicalities of implementing adaptation strategies, barriers encountered, and observed outcomes.

    They offer fertile ground for implementation science, participatory action research, and validating citizen science methodologies at scale.

    Rigorous study of these networks themselves – how knowledge flows, how solutions spread, how collective capacity builds – can advance our understanding of learning and adaptation in complex systems.

    This vision of an empowered, networked health workforce directly supports emerging global policy.

    WHO’s Global Plan of Action on Climate Change and Health, and the Belém Health Action Plan (BHAP) under development for COP30, both stress social participation, capacity building, and the integration of local knowledge.

    Peer learning networks provide a practical, field-tested engine to translate these principles into action, connecting the ambitions of Belém with the realities faced by a nurse in Bangladesh, a community health worker in Kenya, or a community health doctor in India.

    Furthermore, this approach may represent one of the most effective investments available.

    Preliminary analysis by The Geneva Learning Foundation suggests that supporting local action health workers through networked peer learning could yield substantial health gains.

    With a critical mass of one million health workers connected to learn from and support each other, the potential is to save seven million lives, at a cost lower than that of immunization.

    This is not just about doing good.

    It is about smart investment in resilience.

    The 2025 Lancet Countdown acknowledges the view from the ground.

    The challenge now is to fully integrate that perspective into research and policy, by supporting and amplifying existing, community-led local action.

    We must move beyond framing health workers as recipients of knowledge or vulnerable populations needing protection, and recognize their indispensable role as knowledgeable, capable leaders.

    Harnessing their “knowing-in-action” through structured, networked peer support is not merely an alternative approach. 

    It is essential for building the adaptive, equitable, and effective health responses this escalating climate crisis demands.

    The wisdom needed to navigate the swamp often resides within it.

    References

    1. Romanello M, Walawender M, Hsu S-C, et al. The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. Lancet 2025; published online Oct 29. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(25)01919-1.
    2. Sadki, R., 2025a. Climate change and health: a new peer learning programme by and for health workers from the most climate-vulnerable countries. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21339
    3. Sadki, R., 2025b. WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21322
    4. Sadki, R., 2024a. Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. https://doi.org/10.59350/nv6f2-svp12
    5. Sadki, R., 2024b. Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
    6. Sadki, R., 2024c. Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
    7. Sadki, R., 2024d. The cost of inaction: Quantifying the impact of climate change on health. https://doi.org/10.59350/gn95w-jpt34
    8. Sadki, R., 2024e. Why guidelines fail: on consequences of the false dichotomy between global and local knowledge in health systems. https://redasadki.me/2024/11/26/why-guidelines-fail-on-consequences-of-the-false-dichotomy-between-global-and-local-knowledge-in-health-systems/
    9. Sadki, R., 2024f. Anecdote or lived experience: reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems. https://redasadki.me/2024/11/11/anecdote-or-lived-experience-reimagining-knowledge-for-climate-resilient-health-systems/
    10. Sadki, R., 2024g. Knowing-in-action: Bridging the theory-practice divide in global health. https://redasadki.me/2024/12/14/knowing-in-action-bridging-the-theory-practice-divide-in-global-health/
    11. Sadki, R., 2023a. Investing in the health workforce is vital to tackle climate change: A new report shares insights from over 1,200 on the frontline. https://doi.org/10.59350/3kkfc-9rb27
    12. Sadki, R., 2023b. Climate change is a threat to the health of the communities we serve: health workers speak out at COP28. https://redasadki.me/2023/12/11/climate-and-health-health-workers-trust/
    13. Sanchez, J.J., Gitau, E., Sadki, R., Mbuh, C., Silver, K., Berry, P., Bhutta, Z., Bogard, K., Collman, G., Dey, S., Dinku, T., Dwipayanti, N.M.U., Ebi, K., Felts La Roca Soares, M., Gudoshava, M., Hashizume, M., Lichtveld, M., Lowe, R., Mateen, B., Muchangi, M., Ndiaye, O., Omay, P., Pinheiro dos Santos, W., Ruiz-Carrascal, D., Shumake-Guillemot, J., Stewart-Ibarra, A., Tiwari, S., 2025. The climate crisis and human health: identifying grand challenges through participatory research. The Lancet Global Health 13, e199–e200. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(25)00003-8
    14. Schön, D.A., 1995. Knowing-in-action: The new scholarship requires a new epistemology. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 27, 27–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.1995.10544673
    15. The Geneva Learning Foundation, 2023. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10204660

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

    #climateChangeAndHealth #climateResilience #climateResilientHealthSystems #LancetCountdown #MarinaRomanello #primaryHealthCare #workforceDevelopment

    #climatechangeandhealth #climateresilience #climateresilienthealthsystems #lancetcountdown #marinaromanello #primaryhealthcare
  13. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    How practitioners in Ukraine and across Europe built a self-sustaining peer learning network to support children

    When military fathers started arriving at her centre in Bulgaria, sharing challenges they faced with their own children, Irina V. found herself drawing on lessons learned not from textbooks, but from conversations with fellow practitioners scattered across a war zone.

    “What I learned about providing psychological first aid (PFA) to children actually helped me in working with parents of children in crisis,” Irina explained during a recent video call with professionals across Europe supporting children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

    That call was the first annual meeting of an entirely volunteer-driven network of practitioners – some working within kilometres of active combat – who teach each other how to better support children. This network emerged from an innovative certificate peer learning programme supported by the European Union’s EU4Health programme, developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

    An organization like “Everything will be fine Ukraine” maintains operations within 20 kilometres of active fighting while supporting 6,000 children across three eastern regions. During online peer learning activities, some participants manage air raid interruptions, power outages, and repeated displacement of both staff and families they serve.

    “The most powerful solutions often emerge when professionals can learn directly from each other’s experience,” TGLF’s Charlotte Mbuh noted. “But knowledge sharing and learning are necessary but insufficient. Through the ‘Accelerator’ mechanism, we showed that participation results in measurable improvements in children’s wellbeing.”

    Learning in crisis

    The programme that connected Irina to her peers has achieved something that aid organizations typically spend years trying to build. In less than a year, 331 organizations representing 10,000 staff and volunteers joined a peer learning network that now reaches over one million Ukrainian children. Ninety-one volunteers across 13 countries now serve as focal points, recruiting participants and adapting materials to local contexts. The cost per participant is 87 per cent lower than European training averages. And rather than winding down as initial funding expires, the network is expanding.

    Most remarkably, 76 per cent of participants are based in Ukraine itself—not in the European host countries the programme originally planned to serve.

    IFRC’s longstanding commitment to integrating mental health into humanitarian response created the institutional framework that made this achievement possible. Speaking at the  EU4Health final event in Brussels in June, IFRC Regional Director for Europe Birgitte Bischoff Ebbesen called IFRC’s effort “the most ambitious targeted mental health and psychosocial support response in the history of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.”

    TGLF’s specific focus was to explore how online peer learning could support Red Cross staff and volunteers, together with other organizations and networks that support children.

    IFRC’s Panu Saaristo explains: “Peer learning creates a horizontal approach where practitioners facing similar challenges can support each other directly. This is really consistent with our community-led and volunteer-driven action led by local volunteers. When tools and approaches are shared peer-to-peer, we see solutions that are both more sustainable and more locally owned.”

    The power of learning from and supporting each other

    What makes this network different is its rejection of the traditional aid model, where experts tell local workers what to do. Instead, practitioners learn from and support each other.

    The approach addresses a fundamental problem in crisis response: conventional training cannot keep pace with rapidly evolving challenges on the ground. When a teacher in Poland encounters a child showing signs of distress linked to their experiences, she can connect within hours to a social worker in Ukraine who has dealt with similar cases.

    Katerina W., who worked with Ukrainian refugee students in Slovakia, described creating “safe corners” and “art corners” where children could communicate when trauma left them unable to speak. She shared these techniques not with a supervisor, but with hundreds of peers facing similar challenges across Europe.

    “The practical knowledge and real-life examples inspired me to adapt my methods and approach challenges with greater empathy and creativity,” said Jelena P., an education professional from Croatia who participated in the network.

    Jennifer R., who founded Teachers for Peace to provide free online lessons to war-affected Ukrainian children, explains the urgent need: “Many of my students show signs of distress that affected their learning. My challenge is to equip volunteer teachers with the right tools so they can feel confident and support the students beyond language learning.”

    Building something that lasts

    The network provides resources for what aid workers call “psychological first aid” or “PFA” for children—the immediate support provided to children experiencing crisis-related distress. This includes listening without pressure, addressing immediate needs, and connecting children with appropriate services.

    But the real innovation lies in how knowledge spreads and gets turned into action. Practitioners connect to share challenges and problem-solve solutions. The agenda emerges from their actual needs, not predetermined curricula.

    “At traditional training, we acquire knowledge and practice skills to get diplomas or certificates,” explained Anna Nyzkodubova, a Ukrainian PFA leader who became a facilitator to support her colleagues. “But here, when we learn through peer-to-peer principles, we grow professionally and make our contribution to solving real cases and real challenges.”

    This peer learning model has proven so effective that the Geneva Learning Foundation announced in August it would continue the programme for five additional years. 

    “We saw that amongst those we had reached, this included practitioners working close to the front lines of armed conflict, working in very difficult conditions,” said Reda Sadki, Executive Director of The Geneva Learning Foundation, which coordinates the network. “Rather than limiting effectiveness, these challenging conditions revealed significant demand for peer learning. This is why we decided to continue these activities.”

    Scale through connection

    The network’s growth defies conventional wisdom about aid work. Rather than adding overhead, the growing size of the network enhances learning by providing more diverse experiences and perspectives. A social worker in eastern Ukraine might develop an approach that helps a teacher in Croatia facing similar challenges.

    Participants access six different types of activities, from short self-guided modules in multiple languages to intensive month-long programs where they implement specific projects and document results. The variety accommodates practitioners with different schedules and experience levels while maintaining quality through peer review and a strong child protection and mutual support framework.

    A different kind of aid

    The programme represents a broader shift in how international assistance might work. Rather than extracting knowledge from affected communities to inform distant decision-makers, it amplifies local expertise and creates connections between practitioners facing similar challenges.

    For Irina, working with Ukrainian refugees far from her home country, the network provided something invaluable: the knowledge that she was not alone, and that solutions existed within her professional community.

    “I realized the importance of separating psychotherapeutic long-term assistance and psychological first aid, especially when working with children who may be at risk of harming themselves,” she said, describing an insight that emerged from group discussions about recognizing when cases require specialist referral.

    As the programme enters its next phase, its founders are proposing additional innovations, including apps where practitioners can log experiences and reflect on challenges while building evidence of what works across different contexts.

    The model suggests a fundamental reimagining of how knowledge can strengthen local action in crisis response—not from experts to recipients, but between peers who understand each other’s reality because they live it every day. If properly supported, this model could reinforce its importance in the blueprint for future humanitarian action.

    References

    1. Sadki, R., 2025. How practitioners in Ukraine and across Europe built a self-sustaining peer learning network to support children. https://doi.org/10.59350/25pa2-ddt80
    2. Sadki, R., 2025. PFA Accelerator: across Europe, practitioners learn from each other to strengthen support to children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21155
    3. Sadki, R., 2025. Peer learning for Psychological First Aid: New ways to strengthen support for Ukrainian children. https://doi.org/10.59350/dgpff-n9d63
    4. Sadki, R., 2024. Support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: Bridging practice and learning through the sharing of experience. https://doi.org/10.59350/zbb4v-hay69
    5. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2025. Діти у кризових ситуаціях, спільноти підтримки – Застосування першої психологічної допомоги для підтримки дітей, які постраждали від гуманітарної кризи в україні. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14901474
    6. The Geneva Learning Foundation, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2025. Children in Crisis, Communities of Care – Psychological first aid for children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14732092
    7. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2024. Перша психологічна допомога дітям, які постраждали внаслідок гуманітарної кризи в Україні – Досвід дітей, опікунів та помічників. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13730132
    8. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2024. Psychological first aid in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: Experiences of children, caregivers, and helpers. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13618862

    The initial development and implementation of this programme (2023-2025) was funded by the European Union through a project partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). All ongoing activities, content, and their delivery from 1 September 2025 are the sole responsibility of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF).

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

    #BirgitteBischoffEbbesen #childProtection #children #Europe #EuropeanUnion #healthOutcomes #learning #mentalHealth #PanuSaaristo #peerLearning #PFA #psychologicalFirstAid #psychosocialSupport #TheGenevaLearningFoundation #Ukraine

    #ukraine #thegenevalearningfoundation #psychosocialsupport #psychologicalfirstaid #pfa #peerlearning
  14. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    How practitioners in Ukraine and across Europe built a self-sustaining peer learning network to support children

    When military fathers started arriving at her centre in Bulgaria, sharing challenges they faced with their own children, Irina V. found herself drawing on lessons learned not from textbooks, but from conversations with fellow practitioners scattered across a war zone.

    “What I learned about providing psychological first aid (PFA) to children actually helped me in working with parents of children in crisis,” Irina explained during a recent video call with professionals across Europe supporting children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

    That call was the first annual meeting of an entirely volunteer-driven network of practitioners – some working within kilometres of active combat – who teach each other how to better support children. This network emerged from an innovative certificate peer learning programme supported by the European Union’s EU4Health programme, developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

    An organization like “Everything will be fine Ukraine” maintains operations within 20 kilometres of active fighting while supporting 6,000 children across three eastern regions. During online peer learning activities, some participants manage air raid interruptions, power outages, and repeated displacement of both staff and families they serve.

    “The most powerful solutions often emerge when professionals can learn directly from each other’s experience,” TGLF’s Charlotte Mbuh noted. “But knowledge sharing and learning are necessary but insufficient. Through the ‘Accelerator’ mechanism, we showed that participation results in measurable improvements in children’s wellbeing.”

    Learning in crisis

    The programme that connected Irina to her peers has achieved something that aid organizations typically spend years trying to build. In less than a year, 331 organizations representing 10,000 staff and volunteers joined a peer learning network that now reaches over one million Ukrainian children. Ninety-one volunteers across 13 countries now serve as focal points, recruiting participants and adapting materials to local contexts. The cost per participant is 87 per cent lower than European training averages. And rather than winding down as initial funding expires, the network is expanding.

    Most remarkably, 76 per cent of participants are based in Ukraine itself—not in the European host countries the programme originally planned to serve.

    IFRC’s longstanding commitment to integrating mental health into humanitarian response created the institutional framework that made this achievement possible. Speaking at the  EU4Health final event in Brussels in June, IFRC Regional Director for Europe Birgitte Bischoff Ebbesen called IFRC’s effort “the most ambitious targeted mental health and psychosocial support response in the history of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.”

    TGLF’s specific focus was to explore how online peer learning could support Red Cross staff and volunteers, together with other organizations and networks that support children.

    IFRC’s Panu Saaristo explains: “Peer learning creates a horizontal approach where practitioners facing similar challenges can support each other directly. This is really consistent with our community-led and volunteer-driven action led by local volunteers. When tools and approaches are shared peer-to-peer, we see solutions that are both more sustainable and more locally owned.”

    The power of learning from and supporting each other

    What makes this network different is its rejection of the traditional aid model, where experts tell local workers what to do. Instead, practitioners learn from and support each other.

    The approach addresses a fundamental problem in crisis response: conventional training cannot keep pace with rapidly evolving challenges on the ground. When a teacher in Poland encounters a child showing signs of distress linked to their experiences, she can connect within hours to a social worker in Ukraine who has dealt with similar cases.

    Katerina W., who worked with Ukrainian refugee students in Slovakia, described creating “safe corners” and “art corners” where children could communicate when trauma left them unable to speak. She shared these techniques not with a supervisor, but with hundreds of peers facing similar challenges across Europe.

    “The practical knowledge and real-life examples inspired me to adapt my methods and approach challenges with greater empathy and creativity,” said Jelena P., an education professional from Croatia who participated in the network.

    Jennifer R., who founded Teachers for Peace to provide free online lessons to war-affected Ukrainian children, explains the urgent need: “Many of my students show signs of distress that affected their learning. My challenge is to equip volunteer teachers with the right tools so they can feel confident and support the students beyond language learning.”

    Building something that lasts

    The network provides resources for what aid workers call “psychological first aid” or “PFA” for children—the immediate support provided to children experiencing crisis-related distress. This includes listening without pressure, addressing immediate needs, and connecting children with appropriate services.

    But the real innovation lies in how knowledge spreads and gets turned into action. Practitioners connect to share challenges and problem-solve solutions. The agenda emerges from their actual needs, not predetermined curricula.

    “At traditional training, we acquire knowledge and practice skills to get diplomas or certificates,” explained Anna Nyzkodubova, a Ukrainian PFA leader who became a facilitator to support her colleagues. “But here, when we learn through peer-to-peer principles, we grow professionally and make our contribution to solving real cases and real challenges.”

    This peer learning model has proven so effective that the Geneva Learning Foundation announced in August it would continue the programme for five additional years. 

    “We saw that amongst those we had reached, this included practitioners working close to the front lines of armed conflict, working in very difficult conditions,” said Reda Sadki, Executive Director of The Geneva Learning Foundation, which coordinates the network. “Rather than limiting effectiveness, these challenging conditions revealed significant demand for peer learning. This is why we decided to continue these activities.”

    Scale through connection

    The network’s growth defies conventional wisdom about aid work. Rather than adding overhead, the growing size of the network enhances learning by providing more diverse experiences and perspectives. A social worker in eastern Ukraine might develop an approach that helps a teacher in Croatia facing similar challenges.

    Participants access six different types of activities, from short self-guided modules in multiple languages to intensive month-long programs where they implement specific projects and document results. The variety accommodates practitioners with different schedules and experience levels while maintaining quality through peer review and a strong child protection and mutual support framework.

    A different kind of aid

    The programme represents a broader shift in how international assistance might work. Rather than extracting knowledge from affected communities to inform distant decision-makers, it amplifies local expertise and creates connections between practitioners facing similar challenges.

    For Irina, working with Ukrainian refugees far from her home country, the network provided something invaluable: the knowledge that she was not alone, and that solutions existed within her professional community.

    “I realized the importance of separating psychotherapeutic long-term assistance and psychological first aid, especially when working with children who may be at risk of harming themselves,” she said, describing an insight that emerged from group discussions about recognizing when cases require specialist referral.

    As the programme enters its next phase, its founders are proposing additional innovations, including apps where practitioners can log experiences and reflect on challenges while building evidence of what works across different contexts.

    The model suggests a fundamental reimagining of how knowledge can strengthen local action in crisis response—not from experts to recipients, but between peers who understand each other’s reality because they live it every day. If properly supported, this model could reinforce its importance in the blueprint for future humanitarian action.

    References

    1. Sadki, R., 2025. How practitioners in Ukraine and across Europe built a self-sustaining peer learning network to support children. https://doi.org/10.59350/25pa2-ddt80
    2. Sadki, R., 2025. PFA Accelerator: across Europe, practitioners learn from each other to strengthen support to children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21155
    3. Sadki, R., 2025. Peer learning for Psychological First Aid: New ways to strengthen support for Ukrainian children. https://doi.org/10.59350/dgpff-n9d63
    4. Sadki, R., 2024. Support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: Bridging practice and learning through the sharing of experience. https://doi.org/10.59350/zbb4v-hay69
    5. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2025. Діти у кризових ситуаціях, спільноти підтримки – Застосування першої психологічної допомоги для підтримки дітей, які постраждали від гуманітарної кризи в україні. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14901474
    6. The Geneva Learning Foundation, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2025. Children in Crisis, Communities of Care – Psychological first aid for children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14732092
    7. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2024. Перша психологічна допомога дітям, які постраждали внаслідок гуманітарної кризи в Україні – Досвід дітей, опікунів та помічників. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13730132
    8. The Geneva Learning Foundation and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2024. Psychological first aid in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine: Experiences of children, caregivers, and helpers. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.13618862

    The initial development and implementation of this programme (2023-2025) was funded by the European Union through a project partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). All ongoing activities, content, and their delivery from 1 September 2025 are the sole responsibility of The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF).

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

    #BirgitteBischoffEbbesen #childProtection #children #Europe #EuropeanUnion #healthOutcomes #learning #mentalHealth #PanuSaaristo #peerLearning #PFA #psychologicalFirstAid #psychosocialSupport #TheGenevaLearningFoundation #Ukraine

    #birgittebischoffebbesen #childprotection #children #europe #europeanunion #healthoutcomes
  15. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change

    The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change “reveals the health threats of climate change have reached record-breaking levels” and provides “the most up-to-date assessment of the links between health and climate change”.

    Yet its treatment of experiential knowledge – particularly the direct observations and understanding developed by frontline health workers and communities – reveals both progress and persistent gaps in how major global health assessments value different forms of knowing.

    The fundamental tension appears right at the start.

    The report notes a significant challenge: “A global scarcity of internationally standardised data hinders the capacity to optimally monitor the observed health impacts of climate change and evaluate the health-protective effect of implemented interventions.”

    This framing privileges standardized, quantifiable data over other forms of knowledge.

    Yet paradoxically, the report recognizes that “health workers are already intimate witnesses to the impacts of climate change on the health of the communities they serve, possessing valuable knowledge that should inform both science and policy.”

    This recognition of frontline experience as a valid source of knowledge is significant, even if not fully integrated into the report’s methodology.

    Health workers’ experiences are not merely anecdotal but represent a crucial form of evidence gathering and early warning that conventional research methods cannot match.

    When a nurse in Bangladesh notices changing patterns of heat-related illness in specific neighborhoods, or when a community health worker in Kenya observes shifts in disease transmission seasons, they are detecting signals that might take epidemiological studies decades to formally document.

    Can we afford to wait?

    As the report acknowledges that we face “record-breaking threats to their wellbeing, health, and survival from the rapidly changing climate,” why wait for traditional longitudinal studies to validate what health workers are already seeing?

    Explore the value of health workers’ experiential knowledge: Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Eller, K., Rhoda, D., 2023. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10204660

    Their observations, if their significance and value were fully recognized, could provide vital early insights into emerging health threats and guide rapid, life-saving adaptations.

    This is especially critical given the report’s call to alarm that climate change impacts are “increasingly claiming lives and livelihoods worldwide” and that “delays in climate change mitigation and adaptation have intensified these impacts.”

    The humanitarian imperative to act quickly makes health workers’ experiential knowledge not just valuable but essential – they are the canaries in the coal mine of our climate crisis, and their insights could help bridge critical evidence gaps while more traditional research catches up.

    The report’s most thoughtful engagement with alternative forms of knowledge comes in its treatment of Indigenous knowledge systems.

    A panel titled “Indigenous knowledge for a healthy future” explicitly acknowledges that “Indigenous peoples maintain deep connections with the natural environment that are important for the social, livelihood, cultural, and spiritual practices that underpin their health and wellbeing.”

    More importantly, it recognizes that “Indigenous knowledge has been shown to be the key to protect Indigenous health in times of health emergencies when official health systems and governments are unable to provide assistance to Indigenous communities.”

    However, the report also acknowledges that “Indigenous medicine and worldviews are rarely considered within health care or health risk preparedness and response.”

    This gap between recognizing the value of Indigenous knowledge and actually incorporating it into health systems and policies reflects a broader challenge.

    A crucial observation comes in the report’s data discussion: available data are “rarely disaggregated by relevant groups (eg, gender, age, indigeneity, ethnicity, and socioeconomic level)” and “Indigenous knowledge is often overlooked, and Indigenous populations are seldom taken into consideration in the production and reporting of evidence and data.”

    This gap in representation means that crucial experiential knowledge is systematically excluded from our understanding of climate change’s health impacts.

    Perhaps most tellingly, while the report calls for “improved data” to evaluate progress on international commitments, it focuses primarily on standardized quantitative metrics rather than developing new frameworks that could better integrate experiential knowledge.

    This reveals an underlying epistemological bias – while experiential knowledge is acknowledged as valuable, the report’s methodology remains firmly grounded in traditional scientific approaches.

    Looking forward, truly leveraging experiential knowledge in understanding climate change’s health impacts will require more than just acknowledgment.

    It will require developing new methodological frameworks that can systematically incorporate and validate different forms of knowing, while ensuring that frontline voices – whether from health workers, Indigenous communities, or other groups with direct experience – are centered rather than marginalized in our understanding of this global crisis.

    For the Lancet Countdown to fully live up to its mission of tracking progress on health and climate change, future reports will need to more fundamentally rethink how they recognize, validate, and incorporate experiential knowledge.

    The seeds of this transformation are present in the 2024 report.

    Doing so is both necessary to improve science and consistent with The Lancet Countdown’s commitment to “operate an open and iterative process of indicator improvement, welcoming proposals for new indicators… from the world’s most vulnerable countries”.

    References

    1. Romanello, M., et al., 2024. The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: facing record-breaking threats from delayed action. The Lancet 404, 1847–1896. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01822-1
    2. Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Eller, K., Rhoda, D., 2023. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10204660
    3. Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Steed, I., 2024. Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11194918
    4. Sadki, R., 2025. WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21322
    5. Sadki, R., 2025. Climate change and health: a new peer learning programme by and for health workers from the most climate-vulnerable countries. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21339
    6. Sadki, R., 2024. Knowing-in-action: Bridging the theory-practice divide in global health. https://doi.org/10.59350/4evj5-vm802
    7. Sadki, R., 2024. Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
    8. Sadki, R., 2024. World Health Summit: to rebuild trust in global health, invest in health workers as community leaders. https://doi.org/10.59350/343na-80712
    9. Sadki, R., 2024. The cost of inaction: Quantifying the impact of climate change on health. https://doi.org/10.59350/gn95w-jpt34
    10. Sanchez, J.J. et al. (2025) ‘The climate crisis and human health: identifying grand challenges through participatory research’, The Lancet Global Health, p. S2214109X25000038. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(25)00003-8.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    #climateAndHealth #COP29 #CriticalEvidenceGapsInTheLancetCountdownOnHealthAndClimateChange #epistemology #experientialKnowledge #IndigenousKnowledge #localKnowledge #quantitativeData

    #cop29 #quantitativedata #localknowledge #indigenousknowledge #experientialknowledge #epistemology
  16. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change

    The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change “reveals the health threats of climate change have reached record-breaking levels” and provides “the most up-to-date assessment of the links between health and climate change”.

    Yet its treatment of experiential knowledge – particularly the direct observations and understanding developed by frontline health workers and communities – reveals both progress and persistent gaps in how major global health assessments value different forms of knowing.

    The fundamental tension appears right at the start.

    The report notes a significant challenge: “A global scarcity of internationally standardised data hinders the capacity to optimally monitor the observed health impacts of climate change and evaluate the health-protective effect of implemented interventions.”

    This framing privileges standardized, quantifiable data over other forms of knowledge.

    Yet paradoxically, the report recognizes that “health workers are already intimate witnesses to the impacts of climate change on the health of the communities they serve, possessing valuable knowledge that should inform both science and policy.”

    This recognition of frontline experience as a valid source of knowledge is significant, even if not fully integrated into the report’s methodology.

    Health workers’ experiences are not merely anecdotal but represent a crucial form of evidence gathering and early warning that conventional research methods cannot match.

    When a nurse in Bangladesh notices changing patterns of heat-related illness in specific neighborhoods, or when a community health worker in Kenya observes shifts in disease transmission seasons, they are detecting signals that might take epidemiological studies decades to formally document.

    Can we afford to wait?

    As the report acknowledges that we face “record-breaking threats to their wellbeing, health, and survival from the rapidly changing climate,” why wait for traditional longitudinal studies to validate what health workers are already seeing?

    Explore the value of health workers’ experiential knowledge: Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Eller, K., Rhoda, D., 2023. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10204660

    Their observations, if their significance and value were fully recognized, could provide vital early insights into emerging health threats and guide rapid, life-saving adaptations.

    This is especially critical given the report’s call to alarm that climate change impacts are “increasingly claiming lives and livelihoods worldwide” and that “delays in climate change mitigation and adaptation have intensified these impacts.”

    The humanitarian imperative to act quickly makes health workers’ experiential knowledge not just valuable but essential – they are the canaries in the coal mine of our climate crisis, and their insights could help bridge critical evidence gaps while more traditional research catches up.

    The report’s most thoughtful engagement with alternative forms of knowledge comes in its treatment of Indigenous knowledge systems.

    A panel titled “Indigenous knowledge for a healthy future” explicitly acknowledges that “Indigenous peoples maintain deep connections with the natural environment that are important for the social, livelihood, cultural, and spiritual practices that underpin their health and wellbeing.”

    More importantly, it recognizes that “Indigenous knowledge has been shown to be the key to protect Indigenous health in times of health emergencies when official health systems and governments are unable to provide assistance to Indigenous communities.”

    However, the report also acknowledges that “Indigenous medicine and worldviews are rarely considered within health care or health risk preparedness and response.”

    This gap between recognizing the value of Indigenous knowledge and actually incorporating it into health systems and policies reflects a broader challenge.

    A crucial observation comes in the report’s data discussion: available data are “rarely disaggregated by relevant groups (eg, gender, age, indigeneity, ethnicity, and socioeconomic level)” and “Indigenous knowledge is often overlooked, and Indigenous populations are seldom taken into consideration in the production and reporting of evidence and data.”

    This gap in representation means that crucial experiential knowledge is systematically excluded from our understanding of climate change’s health impacts.

    Perhaps most tellingly, while the report calls for “improved data” to evaluate progress on international commitments, it focuses primarily on standardized quantitative metrics rather than developing new frameworks that could better integrate experiential knowledge.

    This reveals an underlying epistemological bias – while experiential knowledge is acknowledged as valuable, the report’s methodology remains firmly grounded in traditional scientific approaches.

    Looking forward, truly leveraging experiential knowledge in understanding climate change’s health impacts will require more than just acknowledgment.

    It will require developing new methodological frameworks that can systematically incorporate and validate different forms of knowing, while ensuring that frontline voices – whether from health workers, Indigenous communities, or other groups with direct experience – are centered rather than marginalized in our understanding of this global crisis.

    For the Lancet Countdown to fully live up to its mission of tracking progress on health and climate change, future reports will need to more fundamentally rethink how they recognize, validate, and incorporate experiential knowledge.

    The seeds of this transformation are present in the 2024 report.

    Doing so is both necessary to improve science and consistent with The Lancet Countdown’s commitment to “operate an open and iterative process of indicator improvement, welcoming proposals for new indicators… from the world’s most vulnerable countries”.

    References

    1. Romanello, M., et al., 2024. The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: facing record-breaking threats from delayed action. The Lancet 404, 1847–1896. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01822-1
    2. Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Eller, K., Rhoda, D., 2023. On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10204660
    3. Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Steed, I., 2024. Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11194918
    4. Sadki, R., 2025. WHO Global Conference on Climate and Health: New pathways to overcome structural barriers blocking effective climate and health action. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21322
    5. Sadki, R., 2025. Climate change and health: a new peer learning programme by and for health workers from the most climate-vulnerable countries. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21339
    6. Sadki, R., 2024. Knowing-in-action: Bridging the theory-practice divide in global health. https://doi.org/10.59350/4evj5-vm802
    7. Sadki, R., 2024. Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
    8. Sadki, R., 2024. World Health Summit: to rebuild trust in global health, invest in health workers as community leaders. https://doi.org/10.59350/343na-80712
    9. Sadki, R., 2024. The cost of inaction: Quantifying the impact of climate change on health. https://doi.org/10.59350/gn95w-jpt34
    10. Sanchez, J.J. et al. (2025) ‘The climate crisis and human health: identifying grand challenges through participatory research’, The Lancet Global Health, p. S2214109X25000038. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(25)00003-8.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    #climateAndHealth #COP29 #CriticalEvidenceGapsInTheLancetCountdownOnHealthAndClimateChange #epistemology #experientialKnowledge #IndigenousKnowledge #localKnowledge #quantitativeData

    #cop29 #climateandhealth #criticalevidencegapsinthelancetcountdownonhealthandclimatechange #epistemology #experientialknowledge #indigenousknowledge
  17. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    The Geneva Learning Foundation is launching REACH (Relate, Engage, Act, Connect, Help), a new initiative to connect leaders of health organizations who are solving similar problems in different countries. Launching November 6, REACH responds to an unexpected outcome of Teach to Reach, a peer learning platform that–in less than four years–has already documented over 10,000 local solutions and experiences to health challenges by connecting more than 60,000 participants across 77 countries.

    When organizations began formally participating in Teach to Reach in June 2024, many leaders discovered they were tackling similar challenges. A digital immunization tracking system in Rwanda sparked interest from several African countries. A community engagement approach to vaccine hesitancy in Nigeria resonated with teams in Kenya and Zimbabwe. These spontaneous connections led to the creation of REACH.

    What is Teach to Reach?

    “Teach to Reach is a place where you learn in the most formidable way. You’re learning from people’s experiences and it makes the learning very easy to adapt, very easy to replicate wherever you are,” says Ful Marine Fuen, Humanitarian Program Coordinator at Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services.

    Teach to Reach is a bilingual (French/English) peer learning platform where government health workers, local organizations, and frontline staff document, analyze, and share implementation solutions across borders. Half of all participants work in government health services, with 80% based at district and facility levels where policy meets practice. The platform’s structured learning process includes pre-event experience sharing, live sessions for discussion and networking, and post-event analysis to capture insights.

    “It’s a meeting of giving and receiving. Because with Teach to Reach, we always learn from peers and we develop ourselves and develop others,” notes Arthur Fidelis Metsampito Bamlatol, Coordinator at AAPSEB Cameroon.

    From individual learning to organizational impact

    The impact of these connections is already visible. Nduka Ozor, Project Director at the Centre for HIV/AIDS and STD RESEARCH in Nigeria, describes how a single connection expanded his organization’s reach: “I was able to meet with a potential partner who stays in Australia. Something I thought is just an online stuff is moving into a greater partnership. We have had several meetings with other networks from that initial meeting, including with representatives of New York University.”

    These kinds of partnerships form naturally as organizations share their work. Here are just three examples:

    • In Rwanda, Albert Ndagijimana’s team achieved 95% childhood vaccination rates through digital tracking
    • In Kenya, Samuel Mutambuki’s organization partners with local groups to address water quality and disease outbreaks
    • In Zimbabwe, Rebecca Chirenga’s team tackles interconnected issues of food security, education, and health

    “It is essentially a framework that allows us to share experiences… to strengthen our capacities,” says Patrice Kazadi, Project Director at Save the Children International DR Congo. “The challenges in DRC can be the same as in Ivory Coast and what is done in Ivory Coast can also help address challenges in DRC.”

    REACH: A new network exclusively for Teach to Reach Partners

    REACH builds on this foundation but with an important distinction – it’s exclusively for leaders of organizations that have committed to partnership with Teach to Reach. Over 700 organizational leaders have already confirmed their participation, representing both government agencies and civil society organizations.

    The first REACH session on November 6 will:

    1. Connect organizations working on similar challenges
    2. Share practical approaches that have worked in different contexts
    3. Facilitate direct conversations between organizational leaders
    4. Identify potential areas for collaboration

    How can organizations join REACH?

    To participate in REACH, organizations must complete all partnership steps for Teach to Reach:

    1. Attend a Partner briefing
    2. Complete the Partnership application
    3. Share the Teach to Reach announcement
    4. Have organizational leadership endorse participation

    https://redasadki.me/2024/11/05/teach-to-reach-new-leadership-network-connects-health-organizations-tackling-common-challenges/

    #globalHealth #leadership #peerLearning #REACH #TeachToReach #TheGenevaLearningFoundation

    #globalhealth #leadership #peerlearning #reach #teachtoreach #thegenevalearningfoundation
  18. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    In a rural health center in Kenya, a community health worker develops an innovative approach to reaching families who have been hesitant about vaccination.

    Meanwhile, in a Brazilian city, a nurse has gotten everyone involved – including families and communities – onboard to integrate information about HPV vaccination into cervical cancer screening.

    These valuable insights might once have remained isolated, their potential impact limited to their immediate contexts.

    But through Teach to Reach – a peer learning platform, network, and community hosted by The Geneva Learning Foundation – these experiences become part of a larger tapestry of knowledge that transforms how health workers learn and adapt their practices worldwide.

    Since January 2021, the event series has grown to connect over 21,000 health professionals from more than 70 countries, reaching its tenth edition with 21,398 participants in June 2024.

    Scale matters, but this level of engagement begs the question: how and why does it work?

    The challenge in global health is not just about what people need to learn – it is about reimagining how learning happens and gets applied in complex, rapidly-changing environments to improve performance, improve health outcomes, and prepare the next generation of leaders.

    Traditional approaches to professional development, built around expert-led training and top-down knowledge transfer, often fail to create lasting change.

    They tend to ignore the rich knowledge that exists in practice – what we know when we are there every day, side-by-side with the community we serve – and the complex ways that learning actually occurs in professional networks and communities.

    Teach to Reach is one component in The Geneva Learning Foundation’s emergent model for learning and change.

    This article describes the pedagogical patterns that Teach to Reach brings to life.

    A new vision for digital-first, networked professional learning

    Teach to Reach represents a shift in how we think about professional learning in global health.

    Its pedagogical pattern draws from three complementary theoretical frameworks that together create a more complete understanding of how professionals learn and how that learning translates into improved practice.

    At its foundation lies Bill Cope’s and Mary Kalantzis’s New Learning framework, which recognizes that knowledge creation in the digital age requires new approaches to learning and assessment.

    Teach to Reach then integrates insights from Watkins and Marsick’s research on the strong relationship between learning culture (a measure of the capacity for change) and performance and George Siemens’s learning theory of connectivism to create something syncretic: a learning approach that simultaneously builds individual capability, organizational capacity, and network strength.

    Active knowledge making

    The prevailing model of professional development often treats learners as empty vessels to be filled with expert knowledge.

    Drawing from constructivist learning theory, it positions health workers as knowledge creators rather than passive recipients.

    When a community health worker in Kenya shares how they’ve adapted vaccination strategies for remote communities, they are not just describing their work – they’re creating valuable knowledge that others can learn from and adapt.

    The role of experts is even more significant in this model: experts become “Guides on the side”, listening to challenges and their contexts to identify what expert knowledge is most likely to be useful to a specific challenge and context.

    (This is the oft-neglected “downstream” to the “upstream” work that goes into the creation of global guidelines.)

    This principle manifests in how questions are framed.

    Instead of asking “What should you do when faced with vaccine hesitancy?” Teach to Reach asks “Tell us about a time when you successfully addressed vaccine hesitancy in your community.” This subtle shift transforms the learning dynamic from theoretical to practical, from passive to active.

    Collaborative intelligence

    The concept of collaborative intelligence, inspired by social learning theory, recognizes that knowledge in complex fields like global health is distributed across many individuals and contexts.

    No single expert or institution holds all the answers.

    By creating structures for health workers to share and learn from each other’s experiences, Teach to Reach taps into what cognitive scientists call “distributed cognition” – the idea that knowledge and understanding emerge from networks of people rather than individual minds.

    This plays out practically in how experiences are shared and synthesized.

    When a nurse in Brazil shares their approach to integrating COVID-19 vaccination with routine immunization, their experience becomes part of a larger tapestry of knowledge that includes perspectives from diverse contexts and roles.

    Metacognitive reflection

    Metacognition – thinking about thinking – is crucial for professional development, yet it is often overlooked in traditional training.

    Teach to Reach deliberately builds in opportunities for metacognitive reflection through its question design and response framework.

    When participants share experiences, they are prompted not just to describe what happened, but to analyze why they made certain decisions and what they learned from the experience.
    This reflective practice helps health workers develop deeper understanding of their own practice and decision-making processes.

    It transforms individual experiences into learning opportunities that benefit both the sharer and the wider community.

    Recursive feedback

    Learning is not linear – it is a cyclical process of sharing, reflecting, applying, and refining.

    Teach to Reach’s model of recursive feedback, inspired by systems thinking, creates multiple opportunities for participants to engage with and build upon each other’s experiences.

    This goes beyond communities of practice, because the community component is part of a broader, dynamic and ongoing process.

    Executing a complex pedagogical pattern

    The pedagogical pattern of Teach to Reach come to life through a carefully designed implementation framework over a six-month period, before, during, and after the live event.

    This extended timeframe is not arbitrary – it is based on research showing that sustained engagement over time leads to deeper learning and more lasting change than one-off learning events.
    The core of the learning process is the Teach to Reach Questions – weekly prompts that guide participants through progressively more complex reflection and sharing.

    These questions are crafted to elicit not just information, but insight and understanding.

    They follow a deliberate sequence that moves from description to analysis to reflection to application, mirroring the natural cycle of experiential learning.

    Communication as pedagogy

    In Teach to Reach, communication is not just about delivering information – it is an integral part of the learning process.

    The model uses what scholars call “pedagogical communication” – communication designed specifically to facilitate learning.

    This manifests in several ways:

    • Personal and warm tone that creates psychological safety for sharing
    • Clear calls to action that guide participants through the learning process
    • Multiple touchpoints that reinforce learning and maintain engagement
    • Progressive engagement that builds complexity gradually

    Learning culture and performance

    Watkins and Marsick’s work helps us understand why Teach to Reach’s approach is so effective.

    Learning culture – the set of organizational values, practices, and systems that support continuous learning – is crucial for translating individual insights into improved organizational performance.

    Teach to Reach deliberately builds elements of strong learning cultures into its design.

    Furthermore, the Geneva Learning Foundation’s research found that continuous learning is the weakest dimension of learning culture in immunization – and probably global health.

    Hence, Teach to Reach itself provides a mechanism to strengthen specifically this dimension.

    Take the simple act of asking questions about real work experiences.

    This is not just about gathering information – it’s about creating what Watkins and Marsick call “inquiry and dialogue,” a fundamental dimension of learning organizations.

    When health workers share their experiences, they are not just describing what happened.

    They are engaging in a form of collaborative inquiry that helps everyone involved develop deeper understanding.

    Networks of knowledge

    George Siemens’s connectivism theory provides another crucial lens for understanding Teach to Reach’s effectiveness.

    In today’s world, knowledge is not just what is in our heads – it is distributed across networks of people and resources.

    Teach to Reach creates and strengthens these networks through its unique approach to asynchronous peer learning.

    The process begins with carefully designed questions that prompt health workers to share specific experiences.

    But it does not stop there.

    These experiences become nodes in a growing network of knowledge, connected through themes, challenges, and solutions.

    When a health worker in India reads about how a colleague in Nigeria addressed a particular challenge, they are not just learning about one solution – they are becoming part of a network that makes everyone’s practice stronger.

    From theory to practice

    What makes Teach to Reach particularly powerful is how it fuses multiple theories of learning into a practical model that works in real-world conditions.

    The model recognizes that learning must be accessible to health workers dealing with limited connectivity, heavy workloads, and diverse linguistic and cultural contexts.

    New Learning’s emphasis on multimodal meaning-making supports the use of multiple communication channels ensuring accessibility.

    Learning culture principles guide the creation of supportive structures that make continuous learning possible even in challenging conditions.

    Connectivist insights inform how knowledge is shared and distributed across the network.

    Creating sustainable change

    The real test of any learning approach is whether it creates sustainable change in practice.

    By simultaneously building individual capability, organizational capacity, and network strength, it creates the conditions for continuous improvement and adaptation.

    Health workers do not just learn new approaches – they develop the capacity to learn continuously from their own experience and the experiences of others.

    Organizations do not just gain new knowledge – they develop stronger learning cultures that support ongoing innovation.

    And the broader health system gains not just a collection of good practices, but a living network of practitioners who continue to learn and adapt together.

    Looking forward

    As global health challenges have become more complex, the need for more effective approaches to professional learning becomes more urgent.

    Teach to Reach’s pedagogical model, grounded in complementary theoretical frameworks and proven in practice, offers valuable insights for anyone interested in creating impactful professional learning experiences.

    The model suggests that effective professional learning in complex fields like global health requires more than just good content or engaging delivery.

    It requires careful attention to how learning cultures are built, how networks are strengthened, and how individual learning connects to organizational and system performance.

    Most importantly, it reminds us that the most powerful learning often happens not through traditional training but through thoughtfully structured opportunities for professionals to learn from and with each other.

    In this way, Teach to Reach is a demonstration of what becomes possible when we reimagine how professional learning happens in service of better health outcomes worldwide.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    Share this:

    https://redasadki.me/2024/10/30/what-is-the-pedagogy-of-teach-to-reach/

    #continuousLearning #globalHealth #learningCulture #learningStrategy #learningTheory #pedagogicalPatterns #peerLearning #TeachToReach #TheGenevaLearningFoundation

    #thegenevalearningfoundation #teachtoreach #peerlearning #pedagogicalpatterns #learningtheory #learningstrategy
  19. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    In a rural health center in Kenya, a community health worker develops an innovative approach to reaching families who have been hesitant about vaccination.

    Meanwhile, in a Brazilian city, a nurse has gotten everyone involved – including families and communities – onboard to integrate information about HPV vaccination into cervical cancer screening.

    These valuable insights might once have remained isolated, their potential impact limited to their immediate contexts.

    But through Teach to Reach – a peer learning platform, network, and community hosted by The Geneva Learning Foundation – these experiences become part of a larger tapestry of knowledge that transforms how health workers learn and adapt their practices worldwide.

    Since January 2021, the event series has grown to connect over 21,000 health professionals from more than 70 countries, reaching its tenth edition with 21,398 participants in June 2024.

    Scale matters, but this level of engagement begs the question: how and why does it work?

    The challenge in global health is not just about what people need to learn – it is about reimagining how learning happens and gets applied in complex, rapidly-changing environments to improve performance, improve health outcomes, and prepare the next generation of leaders.

    Traditional approaches to professional development, built around expert-led training and top-down knowledge transfer, often fail to create lasting change.

    They tend to ignore the rich knowledge that exists in practice – what we know when we are there every day, side-by-side with the community we serve – and the complex ways that learning actually occurs in professional networks and communities.

    Teach to Reach is one component in The Geneva Learning Foundation’s emergent model for learning and change.

    This article describes the pedagogical patterns that Teach to Reach brings to life.

    A new vision for digital-first, networked professional learning

    Teach to Reach represents a shift in how we think about professional learning in global health.

    Its pedagogical pattern draws from three complementary theoretical frameworks that together create a more complete understanding of how professionals learn and how that learning translates into improved practice.

    At its foundation lies Bill Cope’s and Mary Kalantzis’s New Learning framework, which recognizes that knowledge creation in the digital age requires new approaches to learning and assessment.

    Teach to Reach then integrates insights from Watkins and Marsick’s research on the strong relationship between learning culture (a measure of the capacity for change) and performance and George Siemens’s learning theory of connectivism to create something syncretic: a learning approach that simultaneously builds individual capability, organizational capacity, and network strength.

    Active knowledge making

    The prevailing model of professional development often treats learners as empty vessels to be filled with expert knowledge.

    Drawing from constructivist learning theory, it positions health workers as knowledge creators rather than passive recipients.

    When a community health worker in Kenya shares how they’ve adapted vaccination strategies for remote communities, they are not just describing their work – they’re creating valuable knowledge that others can learn from and adapt.

    The role of experts is even more significant in this model: experts become “Guides on the side”, listening to challenges and their contexts to identify what expert knowledge is most likely to be useful to a specific challenge and context.

    (This is the oft-neglected “downstream” to the “upstream” work that goes into the creation of global guidelines.)

    This principle manifests in how questions are framed.

    Instead of asking “What should you do when faced with vaccine hesitancy?” Teach to Reach asks “Tell us about a time when you successfully addressed vaccine hesitancy in your community.” This subtle shift transforms the learning dynamic from theoretical to practical, from passive to active.

    Collaborative intelligence

    The concept of collaborative intelligence, inspired by social learning theory, recognizes that knowledge in complex fields like global health is distributed across many individuals and contexts.

    No single expert or institution holds all the answers.

    By creating structures for health workers to share and learn from each other’s experiences, Teach to Reach taps into what cognitive scientists call “distributed cognition” – the idea that knowledge and understanding emerge from networks of people rather than individual minds.

    This plays out practically in how experiences are shared and synthesized.

    When a nurse in Brazil shares their approach to integrating COVID-19 vaccination with routine immunization, their experience becomes part of a larger tapestry of knowledge that includes perspectives from diverse contexts and roles.

    Metacognitive reflection

    Metacognition – thinking about thinking – is crucial for professional development, yet it is often overlooked in traditional training.

    Teach to Reach deliberately builds in opportunities for metacognitive reflection through its question design and response framework.

    When participants share experiences, they are prompted not just to describe what happened, but to analyze why they made certain decisions and what they learned from the experience.
    This reflective practice helps health workers develop deeper understanding of their own practice and decision-making processes.

    It transforms individual experiences into learning opportunities that benefit both the sharer and the wider community.

    Recursive feedback

    Learning is not linear – it is a cyclical process of sharing, reflecting, applying, and refining.

    Teach to Reach’s model of recursive feedback, inspired by systems thinking, creates multiple opportunities for participants to engage with and build upon each other’s experiences.

    This goes beyond communities of practice, because the community component is part of a broader, dynamic and ongoing process.

    Executing a complex pedagogical pattern

    The pedagogical pattern of Teach to Reach come to life through a carefully designed implementation framework over a six-month period, before, during, and after the live event.

    This extended timeframe is not arbitrary – it is based on research showing that sustained engagement over time leads to deeper learning and more lasting change than one-off learning events.
    The core of the learning process is the Teach to Reach Questions – weekly prompts that guide participants through progressively more complex reflection and sharing.

    These questions are crafted to elicit not just information, but insight and understanding.

    They follow a deliberate sequence that moves from description to analysis to reflection to application, mirroring the natural cycle of experiential learning.

    Communication as pedagogy

    In Teach to Reach, communication is not just about delivering information – it is an integral part of the learning process.

    The model uses what scholars call “pedagogical communication” – communication designed specifically to facilitate learning.

    This manifests in several ways:

    • Personal and warm tone that creates psychological safety for sharing
    • Clear calls to action that guide participants through the learning process
    • Multiple touchpoints that reinforce learning and maintain engagement
    • Progressive engagement that builds complexity gradually

    Learning culture and performance

    Watkins and Marsick’s work helps us understand why Teach to Reach’s approach is so effective.

    Learning culture – the set of organizational values, practices, and systems that support continuous learning – is crucial for translating individual insights into improved organizational performance.

    Teach to Reach deliberately builds elements of strong learning cultures into its design.

    Furthermore, the Geneva Learning Foundation’s research found that continuous learning is the weakest dimension of learning culture in immunization – and probably global health.

    Hence, Teach to Reach itself provides a mechanism to strengthen specifically this dimension.

    Take the simple act of asking questions about real work experiences.

    This is not just about gathering information – it’s about creating what Watkins and Marsick call “inquiry and dialogue,” a fundamental dimension of learning organizations.

    When health workers share their experiences, they are not just describing what happened.

    They are engaging in a form of collaborative inquiry that helps everyone involved develop deeper understanding.

    Networks of knowledge

    George Siemens’s connectivism theory provides another crucial lens for understanding Teach to Reach’s effectiveness.

    In today’s world, knowledge is not just what is in our heads – it is distributed across networks of people and resources.

    Teach to Reach creates and strengthens these networks through its unique approach to asynchronous peer learning.

    The process begins with carefully designed questions that prompt health workers to share specific experiences.

    But it does not stop there.

    These experiences become nodes in a growing network of knowledge, connected through themes, challenges, and solutions.

    When a health worker in India reads about how a colleague in Nigeria addressed a particular challenge, they are not just learning about one solution – they are becoming part of a network that makes everyone’s practice stronger.

    From theory to practice

    What makes Teach to Reach particularly powerful is how it fuses multiple theories of learning into a practical model that works in real-world conditions.

    The model recognizes that learning must be accessible to health workers dealing with limited connectivity, heavy workloads, and diverse linguistic and cultural contexts.

    New Learning’s emphasis on multimodal meaning-making supports the use of multiple communication channels ensuring accessibility.

    Learning culture principles guide the creation of supportive structures that make continuous learning possible even in challenging conditions.

    Connectivist insights inform how knowledge is shared and distributed across the network.

    Creating sustainable change

    The real test of any learning approach is whether it creates sustainable change in practice.

    By simultaneously building individual capability, organizational capacity, and network strength, it creates the conditions for continuous improvement and adaptation.

    Health workers do not just learn new approaches – they develop the capacity to learn continuously from their own experience and the experiences of others.

    Organizations do not just gain new knowledge – they develop stronger learning cultures that support ongoing innovation.

    And the broader health system gains not just a collection of good practices, but a living network of practitioners who continue to learn and adapt together.

    Looking forward

    As global health challenges have become more complex, the need for more effective approaches to professional learning becomes more urgent.

    Teach to Reach’s pedagogical model, grounded in complementary theoretical frameworks and proven in practice, offers valuable insights for anyone interested in creating impactful professional learning experiences.

    The model suggests that effective professional learning in complex fields like global health requires more than just good content or engaging delivery.

    It requires careful attention to how learning cultures are built, how networks are strengthened, and how individual learning connects to organizational and system performance.

    Most importantly, it reminds us that the most powerful learning often happens not through traditional training but through thoughtfully structured opportunities for professionals to learn from and with each other.

    In this way, Teach to Reach is a demonstration of what becomes possible when we reimagine how professional learning happens in service of better health outcomes worldwide.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    Share this:

    https://redasadki.me/2024/10/30/what-is-the-pedagogy-of-teach-to-reach/

    #continuousLearning #globalHealth #learningCulture #learningStrategy #learningTheory #pedagogicalPatterns #peerLearning #TeachToReach #TheGenevaLearningFoundation

    #continuouslearning #globalhealth #learningculture #learningstrategy #learningtheory #pedagogicalpatterns
  20. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Discussions at the World Health Summit in Berlin this week have rightly emphasized the role of health workers, especially those directly serving local communities.

    Health workers stand at the intersection of climate change and community health.

    They are first-hand eyewitnesses and the first line of defense against the impacts of climate on health.

    There is real horror in the climate impacts on health they describe.

    Read the Health Worker Eyewitness reports “Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action“ and “On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report”.

    There is also real hope in the local solutions and strategies they are already implementing to help communities survive such impacts, most often without support from their government or from the global community.

    There is no alternative to the health workforce as the ones most likely to drive effective adaptation strategies and build trust when it comes to climate change and health.

    Their unique value stems from several key factors:

    1. Firsthand experience: Health workers witness the direct and indirect health impacts of climate change daily, providing valuable insights.
    2. Community trust: As respected figures in their communities, health workers can effectively communicate climate-health risks and promote adaptive behaviors.
    3. Local knowledge: Their deep understanding of local contexts allows for the development of tailored, culturally appropriate solutions.
    4. Existing infrastructure: Health workers represent an established network that is already having to respond to climate change.

    As Dr. Maria Neira from the World Health Organization emphasized at Teach to Reach 10 in June 2024: “We need to use our voice, the power of the voice of health, to convince governments to do three things. First, accelerate the transition to clean sources of energy to stop this disaster. Second, to accelerate the transition to sustainable food systems. And third, to accelerate the transition to better planning of urban areas…” Learn more about Teach to Reach.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai5RlHRt70A

    However, current global health investments often overlook the potential of health workers.

    Furthermore, there is a tendency to see them as instruments to implement national plans and policies and recipients for knowledge about climate change that they are assumed to be lacking.

    This fails to recognize the potential of health workers to lead, not just execute plans, in the face of climate change impacts on health.

    It also fails to recognize the significance and value of local knowledge and experience that health workers hold because they are there every day.

    A shift in focus could make health workers the most obvious “best buy” for governments and international funders.

    By investing in health workers as agents of change, we can leverage an existing, trusted workforce to rapidly scale up adaptation efforts and rebuild trust in global health initiatives.

    One innovative model developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation has shown promise in this area, connecting over 60,000 health practitioners across 137 countries and reaching frontline government staff working for health in conflict zones and other challenging contexts.

    This approach not only maximizes the impact of climate-health investments but also strengthens health systems overall, creating a win-win scenario for global health and climate resilience.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    Share this:

    https://redasadki.me/2024/10/15/world-health-summit-to-rebuild-trust-in-global-health-recognize-health-workers-as-community-leaders/

    #climateChange #climateInjustice #community #health #HRH #MariaNeira #trust #WHOInvestmentRound #WorldHealthSummit

    #worldhealthsummit #whoinvestmentround #trust #marianeira #hrh #health
  21. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    Discussions at the World Health Summit in Berlin this week have rightly emphasized the role of health workers, especially those directly serving local communities.

    Health workers stand at the intersection of climate change and community health.

    They are first-hand eyewitnesses and the first line of defense against the impacts of climate on health.

    There is real horror in the climate impacts on health they describe.

    Read the Health Worker Eyewitness reports “Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action“ and “On the frontline of climate change and health: A health worker eyewitness report”.

    There is also real hope in the local solutions and strategies they are already implementing to help communities survive such impacts, most often without support from their government or from the global community.

    There is no alternative to the health workforce as the ones most likely to drive effective adaptation strategies and build trust when it comes to climate change and health.

    Their unique value stems from several key factors:

    1. Firsthand experience: Health workers witness the direct and indirect health impacts of climate change daily, providing valuable insights.
    2. Community trust: As respected figures in their communities, health workers can effectively communicate climate-health risks and promote adaptive behaviors.
    3. Local knowledge: Their deep understanding of local contexts allows for the development of tailored, culturally appropriate solutions.
    4. Existing infrastructure: Health workers represent an established network that is already having to respond to climate change.

    As Dr. Maria Neira from the World Health Organization emphasized at Teach to Reach 10 in June 2024: “We need to use our voice, the power of the voice of health, to convince governments to do three things. First, accelerate the transition to clean sources of energy to stop this disaster. Second, to accelerate the transition to sustainable food systems. And third, to accelerate the transition to better planning of urban areas…” Learn more about Teach to Reach.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai5RlHRt70A

    However, current global health investments often overlook the potential of health workers.

    Furthermore, there is a tendency to see them as instruments to implement national plans and policies and recipients for knowledge about climate change that they are assumed to be lacking.

    This fails to recognize the potential of health workers to lead, not just execute plans, in the face of climate change impacts on health.

    It also fails to recognize the significance and value of local knowledge and experience that health workers hold because they are there every day.

    A shift in focus could make health workers the most obvious “best buy” for governments and international funders.

    By investing in health workers as agents of change, we can leverage an existing, trusted workforce to rapidly scale up adaptation efforts and rebuild trust in global health initiatives.

    One innovative model developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation has shown promise in this area, connecting over 60,000 health practitioners across 137 countries and reaching frontline government staff working for health in conflict zones and other challenging contexts.

    This approach not only maximizes the impact of climate-health investments but also strengthens health systems overall, creating a win-win scenario for global health and climate resilience.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    Share this:

    https://redasadki.me/2024/10/15/world-health-summit-to-rebuild-trust-in-global-health-recognize-health-workers-as-community-leaders/

    #climateChange #climateInjustice #community #health #HRH #MariaNeira #trust #WHOInvestmentRound #WorldHealthSummit

    #climatechange #climateinjustice #community #health #hrh #marianeira
  22. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    “Do you have an experience supporting children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine that you would like to share with colleagues? Tell us what happened and how it turned out. Be specific and detailed so that we can understand your story.”

    This was one of the questions that applicants to the Certificate peer learning programme on Psychological First Aid (PFA) in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine could choose to answer.

    If you are reading this, you may be one of the education, health, or social work professionals who answered questions like these. You may also be a policy maker or organizational leader asking yourself how children from Ukraine and the people who work with them can be better supported.

    The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), in collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and with support from the European Union’s EU4Health programme, is pleased to announce the publication of the first “Listening and Learning” report focused on the experiences of education, social work, and health professionals who support children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

    This new report, published in both Ukrainian and English editions, gives back the collected experiences of 873 volunteers and professionals who applied to this new programme in spring 2024.

    Readers will find short, thematic analyses. A comprehensive annex is also included to present the full compendium of experiences shared.

    To transform these rich experiences into actionable insights, the Foundation’s Insights Unit applied a rigorous analytical process. This included systematic consolidation of data, thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns, synthesis of key trends and effective practices, and careful curation of representative experiences. This methodology allows for the rapid sharing of on-the-ground knowledge and innovative practices tailored to the specific context of MHPSS in humanitarian crises. As with any qualitative analysis, these insights should be considered alongside other forms of evidence and expertise in the field.

    Experiences shared reflect the intrinsic motivation of helpers, their subtle attention to children, the magic of doing the right thing at the right moment. They also describe the personal and practical challenges helpers face when working with distressed individuals and communities, often with limited resources. 

    This programme, offered by The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) in partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), employs an innovative peer learning-to-action model grounded in the most recent advances in the learning sciences.

    To complement existing top-down skills-based training in Psychological First Aid (PFA), we are working with IFRC to create structured opportunities for practitioners to learn directly from each other’s experiences while applying what they learn to their own work, aligning to the best guidance and norms for mental health and psychosocial support. For professionals working in crisis settings, this offers several key advantages:

    It leverages the collective expertise and tacit knowledge of practitioners on the ground.

    It creates a supportive community of action, connecting professionals across boundaries of geography, hierarchy, and job roles.

    It helps bridge gaps between theory and practice by positioning learning at the point of work.

    It fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills through peer analysis and feedback.

    It is highly adaptable and can be implemented quickly in response to emerging crises.

    This process not only enhanced participants’ understanding of Psychological First Aid principles but also built their capacity to critically reflect on and improve their practice. By engaging professionals from across Europe and Ukraine in both English and Ukrainian cohorts, the exercise fostered cross-cultural exchange and mutual learning.

    As the humanitarian sector continues to grapple with how to effectively build capacity at scale, particularly in rapidly evolving crisis situations, we believe this peer learning-to-action model offers a promising pathway. It empowers practitioners as both learners and teachers, creating a dynamic and sustainable approach to professional development that can adapt to meet emerging needs.

    The Foundation would like to thank IFRC, the Psychosocial Support Centre (PSC), National Societies, as well as the network of governmental and non-governmental organizations across Europe that has engaged in this new approach, as a complement to their efforts on the ground. As the programme continues through to June 2025, this report will be followed by others to share what we learned from successive peer learning exercises, folllowed by the development and implementation of local projects guided by the collective intelligence of practitioners.

    We invite you to explore these insights, reflect on their implications for your own work, and consider how this approach might be applied to strengthen mental health and psychosocial support capacity in your own context.

    The Geneva Learning Foundation

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    Share this:

    https://redasadki.me/2024/10/10/support-of-children-affected-by-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-ukraine-bridging-practice-and-learning-through-the-sharing-of-experience/

    #CertificatePeerLearningProgrammeOnPsychologicalFirstAidPFAInSupportOfChildrenAffectedByTheHumanitarianCrisisInUkraine #children #education #IFRC #InternationalFederationOfRedCrossAndRedCrescentSocieties #mentalHealth #MHPSS #peerLearning #psychosocialSupport #RedCross #socialWork #Ukraine #WorldMentalHealthDay

    #worldmentalhealthday #ukraine #socialwork #redcross #psychosocialsupport #peerlearning
  23. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    “Do you have an experience supporting children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine that you would like to share with colleagues? Tell us what happened and how it turned out. Be specific and detailed so that we can understand your story.”

    This was one of the questions that applicants to the Certificate peer learning programme on Psychological First Aid (PFA) in support of children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine could choose to answer.

    If you are reading this, you may be one of the education, health, or social work professionals who answered questions like these. You may also be a policy maker or organizational leader asking yourself how children from Ukraine and the people who work with them can be better supported.

    The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF), in collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and with support from the European Union’s EU4Health programme, is pleased to announce the publication of the first “Listening and Learning” report focused on the experiences of education, social work, and health professionals who support children affected by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

    This new report, published in both Ukrainian and English editions, gives back the collected experiences of 873 volunteers and professionals who applied to this new programme in spring 2024.

    Readers will find short, thematic analyses. A comprehensive annex is also included to present the full compendium of experiences shared.

    To transform these rich experiences into actionable insights, the Foundation’s Insights Unit applied a rigorous analytical process. This included systematic consolidation of data, thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns, synthesis of key trends and effective practices, and careful curation of representative experiences. This methodology allows for the rapid sharing of on-the-ground knowledge and innovative practices tailored to the specific context of MHPSS in humanitarian crises. As with any qualitative analysis, these insights should be considered alongside other forms of evidence and expertise in the field.

    Experiences shared reflect the intrinsic motivation of helpers, their subtle attention to children, the magic of doing the right thing at the right moment. They also describe the personal and practical challenges helpers face when working with distressed individuals and communities, often with limited resources. 

    This programme, offered by The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) in partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), employs an innovative peer learning-to-action model grounded in the most recent advances in the learning sciences.

    To complement existing top-down skills-based training in Psychological First Aid (PFA), we are working with IFRC to create structured opportunities for practitioners to learn directly from each other’s experiences while applying what they learn to their own work, aligning to the best guidance and norms for mental health and psychosocial support. For professionals working in crisis settings, this offers several key advantages:

    It leverages the collective expertise and tacit knowledge of practitioners on the ground.

    It creates a supportive community of action, connecting professionals across boundaries of geography, hierarchy, and job roles.

    It helps bridge gaps between theory and practice by positioning learning at the point of work.

    It fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills through peer analysis and feedback.

    It is highly adaptable and can be implemented quickly in response to emerging crises.

    This process not only enhanced participants’ understanding of Psychological First Aid principles but also built their capacity to critically reflect on and improve their practice. By engaging professionals from across Europe and Ukraine in both English and Ukrainian cohorts, the exercise fostered cross-cultural exchange and mutual learning.

    As the humanitarian sector continues to grapple with how to effectively build capacity at scale, particularly in rapidly evolving crisis situations, we believe this peer learning-to-action model offers a promising pathway. It empowers practitioners as both learners and teachers, creating a dynamic and sustainable approach to professional development that can adapt to meet emerging needs.

    The Foundation would like to thank IFRC, the Psychosocial Support Centre (PSC), National Societies, as well as the network of governmental and non-governmental organizations across Europe that has engaged in this new approach, as a complement to their efforts on the ground. As the programme continues through to June 2025, this report will be followed by others to share what we learned from successive peer learning exercises, folllowed by the development and implementation of local projects guided by the collective intelligence of practitioners.

    We invite you to explore these insights, reflect on their implications for your own work, and consider how this approach might be applied to strengthen mental health and psychosocial support capacity in your own context.

    The Geneva Learning Foundation

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    Share this:

    https://redasadki.me/2024/10/10/support-of-children-affected-by-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-ukraine-bridging-practice-and-learning-through-the-sharing-of-experience/

    #CertificatePeerLearningProgrammeOnPsychologicalFirstAidPFAInSupportOfChildrenAffectedByTheHumanitarianCrisisInUkraine #children #education #IFRC #InternationalFederationOfRedCrossAndRedCrescentSocieties #mentalHealth #MHPSS #peerLearning #psychosocialSupport #RedCross #socialWork #Ukraine #WorldMentalHealthDay

    #worldmentalhealthday #certificatepeerlearningprogrammeonpsychologicalfirstaidpfainsupportofchildrenaffectedbythehumanitariancrisisinukraine #children #education #ifrc #internationalfederationofredcrossandredcrescentsocieties
  24. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    We need new ways to tackle global health challenges that impact local communities.

    It is obvious that technology alone is not enough.

    We need human ingenuity, collaboration, and the ability to share across borders and boundaries.

    That is why I am excited about Teach to Reach.

    Imagine if we could tap into the collective intelligence of over 20,000 health professionals working on the front lines in low- and middle-income countries.

    What insights could we gain?

    What innovations might we uncover?

    This is exactly what Teach to Reach is doing.

    In June 2024, Teach to Reach 10 brought together 21,389 participants from across the health system – from community health workers to national policymakers.

    This diverse group represents an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience that has often been overlooked in global health decision-making.

    Bridge the gap between policy and practice

    One of the most exciting aspects of Teach to Reach is how it bridges the gap between policy and practice.

    Too often, there is a disconnect between those making decisions at the global level and those implementing programs on the ground.

    Teach to Reach creates a direct line of communication, allowing frontline workers to influence policy and program design in real-time.

    This approach not only leads to more effective interventions but also empowers health workers, increasing their engagement and motivation.

    Scale knowledge transfer and translation efficiently

    In global health, we are always looking for ways to scale solutions efficiently.

    This scaling effect is particularly crucial in low-resource settings, where formal learning opportunities may be limited.

    Teach to Reach applies this principle to peer learning.

    Then there is speed.

    The platform can disseminate best practices and local solutions much more rapidly than traditional top-down approaches.

    There is also the “know-do” gap or the “applicability problem”.

    Teach to Reach supports continuous learning by sharing experience, focused on how to get results, especially at the local community level.

    Measuring impact and driving innovation

    The Teach to Reach platform uses a comprehensive framework to track the value of participation for individuals and the benefits for partners.

    But we do not stop there.

    Teach to Reach is just one component in the Geneva Learning Foundation’s model to support new learning and leadership to drive change.

    We then track and measure what participants do with the knowledge gained and the experiences shared.

    We do this all the way to the time where improved health outcomes can be attributed to a discovery or significant learning made at Teach to Reach.

    Moreover, Teach to Reach serves as an innovation hub, surfacing diverse ideas and solutions from the field.

    For organizations looking to drive innovation in their global health programs, this platform offers a new path to creative problem-solving with those closest to the challenges.

    A call to action for global health leaders

    If you are a leader in the global health space, I urge you to consider partnering with Teach to Reach.

    Here are 5 ways in which partners have found utility in Teach to Reach:

    1. Inform a strategy with ground-level insights.
    2. Expand reach across multiple countries and health system levels.
    3. Tap into a diverse pool of local solutions – and help augment and scale them.
    4. Demonstrate commitment to supporting locally-led, community-based positive change.
    5. Accelerate progress towards global health goals through collaborative learning.

    In today’s interconnected world, our ability to solve global health challenges depends on our capacity to learn from one another and scale effective solutions quickly.

    Teach to Reach is pioneering a new approach that harnesses the power of peer learning to do just that.

    Investing in Teach to Reach can help unlock the full potential of our global health workforce and make significant strides towards a healthier, more equitable world.

    The future of global health is collaborative.

    Teach to Reach provides a way to turn the rhetoric of collaboration into practical action.

    https://redasadki.me/2024/10/07/why-become-a-teach-to-reach-partner/

    #CollectiveIntelligence #globalHealth #innovation #localCommunities #peerLearning #TeachToReach

    #collectiveintelligence #globalhealth #innovation #localcommunities #peerlearning #teachtoreach
  25. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    It was James Gleick who noted in his book “Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything” the societal shift towards valuing speed over depth:

    “We have become a quick-reflexed, multitasking, channel-flipping, fast-forwarding species. We don’t completely understand it, and we’re not altogether happy about it.”

    In global health, there’s a growing tendency to demand ever-shorter summaries of complex information.
     
    “Can you condense this into four pages?”

    “Is there an executive summary?”

    These requests, while stemming from real time constraints, reveal fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of knowledge and learning.

    Worse, they contribute to perpetuating existing global health inequities.

    Here is why – and a few ideas of what we can do about it.

    The drive for brevity

    The push for shortened summaries is understandable on the surface.

    Some clinical researchers, for example, undeniably face increasing time pressures.

    Many are swamped due to underlying structural issues, such as healthcare professional shortages.

    This is the result of a significant shift over time, leaving less time for deep engagement with new information.

    If we accept these changes, we lose far more than time.

    Why does learning require time, depth, and context?

    True understanding and the ability to apply knowledge in diverse contexts demands deep engagement, reflection, and often, struggle with our own assumptions and mental models.

    Consider the process of learning a new language.

    No one expects to become fluent by reading a few pages of grammar rules.

    Mastery requires immersion, practice, making mistakes, and gradually building competence over time.

    The same principle applies to making sense of multifaceted global health issues.

    5 risks of executive summaries

     Here are five risks of demanding summaries of everything:

    1. Oversimplification: Complex health challenges often cannot be adequately captured in a few pages. Crucial nuances and context-specific details get lost. Those ‘details’ may actually be the ‘how’ of what makes the difference for those leading change to achieve results.
    2. Losing context: Information that can be easily summarized (quantitative data, broad generalizations) gets prioritized over more nuanced, qualitative, or context-specific knowledge. 
    3. Stunting critical thinking: The habit of relying on summaries can atrophy our capacity for deep, critical engagement with complex ideas.
    4. Overconfidence: It assumes that learning is primarily about information transfer, rather than a process of engagement, reflection, and application. Reading a summary can give the false impression that one has grasped a topic, leading to overconfidence in decision-making.
    5. Devaluing local knowledge: Rich, contextual experiences from health workers and communities often do not lend themselves to easy summarization.

    The expectation that complex local realities can always be distilled into brief summaries for consumption by decision-makers (often in the Global North) perpetuates existing power structures in global health.

    The ability to demand summaries often comes from positions of power.

    This can lead to privileging certain voices (those who can produce polished summaries) over others (those with deep, context-specific knowledge that resists easy summarization).

    This knowledge then gets sidelined in favor of more easily digestible but potentially less relevant information.

    10 ways to value and engage with knowledge in global health

    Addressing the “summary culture” requires more than better time management.

    It calls for a fundamental rethinking of how we value and engage with knowledge in global health.

    Instead of defaulting to demands for ever-shorter summaries, we need to rethink how we engage with knowledge in global health. 

    1. Prioritize productive diversity over reductive simplicity: Sometimes, it is better to engage deeply many different ideas than to seek one reductive generalization.
    2. Value local expertise: Prioritize knowledge from those closest to the issues, even when it does not fit neatly into summary format.
    3. Value diverse knowledge forms: Recognize that not all valuable knowledge can be easily summarized. Create space for stories, case studies, and rich qualitative data.
    4. Improve information design: Instead of just shortening, focus on presenting information in more accessible and engaging ways that do not sacrifice complexity.
    5. Create new formats: Develop ways of sharing information that balance accessibility with depth and nuance.
    6. Pause and reflect: What might be lost in the condensing? Are you truly seeking efficiency, or avoiding the discomfort of engaging with complex, potentially challenging ideas? Are you willing to advocate for systemic changes that truly value deep learning and diverse knowledge sources?
    7. Challenge the demand: When asked for summaries, push back (respectfully) and explain why certain information resists easy summarization.
    8. Foster critical engagement: Encourage professionals to develop skills in quickly assessing and engaging with complex information, rather than providing pre-digested summaries.
    9. Educate funders and decision-makers: Help those in power understand the value of engaging with complexity and diverse knowledge forms.
    10. Rethink the economy of time allocation: Advocate for systemic changes that value time spent on deep learning and reflection as core to effective practice and leadership.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    https://redasadki.me/2024/08/27/brevitys-burden-the-executive-summary-trap-in-global-health/

    #decolonization #globalHealth #JamesGleick #learningCulture #learningStrategy #natureOfKnowledge

    #decolonization #globalhealth #jamesgleick #learningculture #learningstrategy #natureofknowledge
  26. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    It was James Gleick who noted in his book “Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything” the societal shift towards valuing speed over depth:

    “We have become a quick-reflexed, multitasking, channel-flipping, fast-forwarding species. We don’t completely understand it, and we’re not altogether happy about it.”

    In global health, there’s a growing tendency to demand ever-shorter summaries of complex information.
     
    “Can you condense this into four pages?”

    “Is there an executive summary?”

    These requests, while stemming from real time constraints, reveal fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of knowledge and learning.

    Worse, they contribute to perpetuating existing global health inequities.

    Here is why – and a few ideas of what we can do about it.

    We lose more than time in the race to brevity

    The push for shortened summaries is understandable on the surface.

    Some clinical researchers, for example, undeniably face increasing time pressures.

    Many are swamped due to underlying structural issues, such as healthcare professional shortages.

    This is the result of a significant shift over time, leaving less time for deep engagement with new information.

    If we accept these changes, we lose far more than time.

    Why does learning require time, depth, and context?

    True understanding and the ability to apply knowledge in diverse contexts demands deep engagement, reflection, and often, struggle with our own assumptions and mental models.

    Consider the process of learning a new language.

    No one expects to become fluent by reading a few pages of grammar rules.

    Mastery requires immersion, practice, making mistakes, and gradually building competence over time.

    The same principle applies to making sense of multifaceted global health issues.

    5 risks of executive summaries

    Here are five risks of demanding summaries of everything:

    1. Oversimplification: Complex health challenges often cannot be adequately captured in a few pages. Crucial nuances and context-specific details get lost. Those ‘details’ may actually be the ‘how’ of what makes the difference for those leading change to achieve results.
    2. Losing context: Information that can be easily summarized (quantitative data, broad generalizations) gets prioritized over more nuanced, qualitative, or context-specific knowledge. 
    3. Stunting critical thinking: The habit of relying on summaries can atrophy our capacity for deep, critical engagement with complex ideas.
    4. Overconfidence: It assumes that learning is primarily about information transfer, rather than a process of engagement, reflection, and application. Reading a summary can give the false impression that one has grasped a topic, leading to overconfidence in decision-making.
    5. Devaluing local knowledge: Rich, contextual experiences from health workers and communities often do not lend themselves to easy summarization.

    The expectation that complex local realities can always be distilled into brief summaries for consumption by decision-makers (often in the Global North) perpetuates existing power structures in global health.

    The ability to demand summaries often comes from positions of power.

    This can lead to privileging certain voices (those who can produce polished summaries) over others (those with deep, context-specific knowledge that resists easy summarization).

    This knowledge then gets sidelined in favor of more easily digestible but potentially less relevant information.

    10 ways to value and engage with knowledge in global health

    Addressing the “summary culture” requires more than better time management.

    It calls for a fundamental rethinking of how we value and engage with knowledge in global health.

    Instead of defaulting to demands for ever-shorter summaries, we need to rethink how we engage with knowledge.

    Here are 10 practical ways to do so.

    1. Prioritize productive diversity over reductive simplicity: Sometimes, it is better to engage deeply many different ideas than to seek one reductive generalization.
    2. Value local expertise: Prioritize knowledge from those closest to the issues, even when it does not fit neatly into summary format.
    3. Value diverse knowledge forms: Recognize that not all valuable knowledge can be easily summarized. Create space for stories, case studies, and rich qualitative data.
    4. Improve information design: Instead of just shortening, focus on presenting information in more accessible and engaging ways that do not sacrifice complexity.
    5. Create new formats: Develop ways of sharing information that balance accessibility with depth and nuance.
    6. Pause and reflect: What might be lost in the condensing? Are you truly seeking efficiency, or avoiding the discomfort of engaging with complex, potentially challenging ideas? Are you willing to advocate for systemic changes that truly value deep learning and diverse knowledge sources?
    7. Challenge the demand: When asked for summaries, push back (respectfully) and explain why certain information resists easy summarization.
    8. Foster critical engagement: Encourage professionals to develop skills in quickly assessing and engaging with complex information, rather than providing pre-digested summaries.
    9. Educate funders and decision-makers: Help those in power understand the value of engaging with complexity and diverse knowledge forms.
    10. Rethink the economy of time allocation: Advocate for systemic changes that value time spent on deep learning and reflection as core to effective practice and leadership.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    Share this:

    https://redasadki.me/2024/08/27/brevitys-burden-the-executive-summary-trap-in-global-health/

    #decolonization #globalHealth #JamesGleick #learningCulture #learningStrategy #natureOfKnowledge

    #natureofknowledge #learningstrategy #learningculture #jamesgleick #globalhealth #decolonization
  27. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    It was James Gleick who noted in his book “Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything” the societal shift towards valuing speed over depth:

    “We have become a quick-reflexed, multitasking, channel-flipping, fast-forwarding species. We don’t completely understand it, and we’re not altogether happy about it.”

    In global health, there’s a growing tendency to demand ever-shorter summaries of complex information.
     
    “Can you condense this into four pages?”

    “Is there an executive summary?”

    These requests, while stemming from real time constraints, reveal fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of knowledge and learning.

    Worse, they contribute to perpetuating existing global health inequities.

    Here is why – and a few ideas of what we can do about it.

    We lose more than time in the race to brevity

    The push for shortened summaries is understandable on the surface.

    Some clinical researchers, for example, undeniably face increasing time pressures.

    Many are swamped due to underlying structural issues, such as healthcare professional shortages.

    This is the result of a significant shift over time, leaving less time for deep engagement with new information.

    If we accept these changes, we lose far more than time.

    Why does learning require time, depth, and context?

    True understanding and the ability to apply knowledge in diverse contexts demands deep engagement, reflection, and often, struggle with our own assumptions and mental models.

    Consider the process of learning a new language.

    No one expects to become fluent by reading a few pages of grammar rules.

    Mastery requires immersion, practice, making mistakes, and gradually building competence over time.

    The same principle applies to making sense of multifaceted global health issues.

    5 risks of executive summaries

    Here are five risks of demanding summaries of everything:

    1. Oversimplification: Complex health challenges often cannot be adequately captured in a few pages. Crucial nuances and context-specific details get lost. Those ‘details’ may actually be the ‘how’ of what makes the difference for those leading change to achieve results.
    2. Losing context: Information that can be easily summarized (quantitative data, broad generalizations) gets prioritized over more nuanced, qualitative, or context-specific knowledge. 
    3. Stunting critical thinking: The habit of relying on summaries can atrophy our capacity for deep, critical engagement with complex ideas.
    4. Overconfidence: It assumes that learning is primarily about information transfer, rather than a process of engagement, reflection, and application. Reading a summary can give the false impression that one has grasped a topic, leading to overconfidence in decision-making.
    5. Devaluing local knowledge: Rich, contextual experiences from health workers and communities often do not lend themselves to easy summarization.

    The expectation that complex local realities can always be distilled into brief summaries for consumption by decision-makers (often in the Global North) perpetuates existing power structures in global health.

    The ability to demand summaries often comes from positions of power.

    This can lead to privileging certain voices (those who can produce polished summaries) over others (those with deep, context-specific knowledge that resists easy summarization).

    This knowledge then gets sidelined in favor of more easily digestible but potentially less relevant information.

    10 ways to value and engage with knowledge in global health

    Addressing the “summary culture” requires more than better time management.

    It calls for a fundamental rethinking of how we value and engage with knowledge in global health.

    Instead of defaulting to demands for ever-shorter summaries, we need to rethink how we engage with knowledge.

    Here are 10 practical ways to do so.

    1. Prioritize productive diversity over reductive simplicity: Sometimes, it is better to engage deeply many different ideas than to seek one reductive generalization.
    2. Value local expertise: Prioritize knowledge from those closest to the issues, even when it does not fit neatly into summary format.
    3. Value diverse knowledge forms: Recognize that not all valuable knowledge can be easily summarized. Create space for stories, case studies, and rich qualitative data.
    4. Improve information design: Instead of just shortening, focus on presenting information in more accessible and engaging ways that do not sacrifice complexity.
    5. Create new formats: Develop ways of sharing information that balance accessibility with depth and nuance.
    6. Pause and reflect: What might be lost in the condensing? Are you truly seeking efficiency, or avoiding the discomfort of engaging with complex, potentially challenging ideas? Are you willing to advocate for systemic changes that truly value deep learning and diverse knowledge sources?
    7. Challenge the demand: When asked for summaries, push back (respectfully) and explain why certain information resists easy summarization.
    8. Foster critical engagement: Encourage professionals to develop skills in quickly assessing and engaging with complex information, rather than providing pre-digested summaries.
    9. Educate funders and decision-makers: Help those in power understand the value of engaging with complexity and diverse knowledge forms.
    10. Rethink the economy of time allocation: Advocate for systemic changes that value time spent on deep learning and reflection as core to effective practice and leadership.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

    Share this:

    https://redasadki.me/2024/08/27/brevitys-burden-the-executive-summary-trap-in-global-health/

    #decolonization #globalHealth #JamesGleick #learningCulture #learningStrategy #natureOfKnowledge

    #decolonization #globalhealth #jamesgleick #learningculture #learningstrategy #natureofknowledge
  28. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    A survey of learners on a large, authoritative global health learning platform has me pondering once again the perils of relying too heavily on learner preferences when designing educational experiences.

    One survey question intended to ask learners for their preferred learning method.

    The list of options provided includes a range of items.

    (Some would make the point that the list conflates learning resources and learning methods, but let us leave that aside for now.)

    Respondents’ top choices (source) were videos, slides, and downloadable documents.

    At first glance, this seems perfectly reasonable.

    After all, should we not give learners what they want?

    As it happens, the main resources offered by this platform are videos, slides, and other downloadable documents.

    (If we asked learners who participate in our peer learning programmes for their preference, they would likely say that they prefer… peer learning.)

    Beyond this availability bias, there is a more significant problem with this approach: learner preferences often have little correlation with actual learning outcomes.

    And learners are especially bad at self-evaluating what learning methods and resources are most conducive to effective learning.

    The scientific literature is quite clear on this point.

    Bjork’s 2013 article on self-regulated learning emphatically states that: “learners are often prone to illusions of competence during learning, and these illusions can be remarkably compelling.”

    The study by Deslauriers et al. (2019) provides a compelling demonstration that while students express a strong preference for traditional lectures over active learning methods, they actually learn significantly more from the active approaches they claim to dislike.

    This disconnect between preference and efficacy is not surprising when we consider how learning actually works.

    Effective learning requires effort, struggle, and sometimes discomfort as we grapple with new ideas and challenge our existing mental models.

    It is not always an enjoyable process in the moment, even if the long-term results are deeply rewarding.

    Furthermore, learners (like all of us) are subject to various cognitive biases that can lead them astray when evaluating their own learning.

    The illusion of explanatory depth, for example, can cause us to overestimate how well we understand a topic after passively consuming information about it.

    None of this is to say we should ignore learner perspectives entirely.

    Motivation and engagement do matter for learning.

    But we need to be thoughtful about how we solicit and interpret learner feedback.

    Asking about preferences for specific content formats (videos, slides, etc.) tells us very little about the actual learning activities and cognitive processes involved.

    A more productive approach might be to focus on understanding learners’ goals, challenges, and contexts.

    What are they trying to achieve?

    What obstacles do they face?

    What constraints shape their learning environment?

    With this information, we can design evidence-based learning experiences that truly meet their needs – even if they don’t always match their stated preferences.

    As learning professionals, our job is not to give learners what they think they want.

    It is to create the conditions for transformative learning experiences that expand their capabilities and perspectives.

    This often means pushing learners out of their comfort zones and challenging their assumptions about how learning should look and feel.

    Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N. (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 417-444. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143823

    Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L.S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., Kestin, G., 2019. Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 201821936. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

    https://redasadki.me/2024/06/30/why-asking-learners-what-they-want-is-a-recipe-for-confusion/

    #globalHealth #learningMethods #learningStrategy #learningStyles

    #globalhealth #learningmethods #learningstrategy #learningstyles
  29. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    A survey of learners on a large, authoritative global health learning platform has me pondering once again the perils of relying too heavily on learner preferences when designing educational experiences.

    One survey question intended to ask learners for their preferred learning method.

    The list of options provided includes a range of items.

    (Some would make the point that the list conflates learning resources and learning methods, but let us leave that aside for now.)

    Respondents’ top choices (source) were videos, slides, and downloadable documents.

    At first glance, this seems perfectly reasonable.

    After all, should we not give learners what they want?

    As it happens, the main resources offered by this platform are videos, slides, and other downloadable documents.

    (If we asked learners who participate in our peer learning programmes for their preference, they would likely say that they prefer… peer learning.)

    Beyond this availability bias, there is a more significant problem with this approach: learner preferences often have little correlation with actual learning outcomes.

    And learners are especially bad at self-evaluating what learning methods and resources are most conducive to effective learning.

    The scientific literature is quite clear on this point.

    Bjork’s 2013 article on self-regulated learning emphatically states that: “learners are often prone to illusions of competence during learning, and these illusions can be remarkably compelling.”

    The study by Deslauriers et al. (2019) provides a compelling demonstration that while students express a strong preference for traditional lectures over active learning methods, they actually learn significantly more from the active approaches they claim to dislike.

    This disconnect between preference and efficacy is not surprising when we consider how learning actually works.

    Effective learning requires effort, struggle, and sometimes discomfort as we grapple with new ideas and challenge our existing mental models.

    It is not always an enjoyable process in the moment, even if the long-term results are deeply rewarding.

    Furthermore, learners (like all of us) are subject to various cognitive biases that can lead them astray when evaluating their own learning.

    The illusion of explanatory depth, for example, can cause us to overestimate how well we understand a topic after passively consuming information about it.

    None of this is to say we should ignore learner perspectives entirely.

    Motivation and engagement do matter for learning.

    But we need to be thoughtful about how we solicit and interpret learner feedback.

    Asking about preferences for specific content formats (videos, slides, etc.) tells us very little about the actual learning activities and cognitive processes involved.

    A more productive approach might be to focus on understanding learners’ goals, challenges, and contexts.

    What are they trying to achieve?

    What obstacles do they face?

    What constraints shape their learning environment?

    With this information, we can design evidence-based learning experiences that truly meet their needs – even if they don’t always match their stated preferences.

    As learning professionals, our job is not to give learners what they think they want.

    It is to create the conditions for transformative learning experiences that expand their capabilities and perspectives.

    This often means pushing learners out of their comfort zones and challenging their assumptions about how learning should look and feel.

    Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N. (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 417-444. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143823

    Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L.S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., Kestin, G., 2019. Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 201821936. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

    https://redasadki.me/2024/06/30/why-asking-learners-what-they-want-is-a-recipe-for-confusion/

    #globalHealth #learningMethods #learningStrategy #learningStyles

    #globalhealth #learningmethods #learningstrategy #learningstyles
  30. Reda Sadki @[email protected] ·

    A survey of learners on a large, authoritative global health learning platform has me pondering once again the perils of relying too heavily on learner preferences when designing educational experiences.

    One survey question intended to ask learners for their preferred learning method.

    The list of options provided includes a range of items.

    (Some would make the point that the list conflates learning resources and learning methods, but let us leave that aside for now.)

    Respondents’ top choices (source) were videos, slides, and downloadable documents.

    At first glance, this seems perfectly reasonable.

    After all, should we not give learners what they want?

    As it happens, the main resources offered by this platform are videos, slides, and other downloadable documents.

    (If we asked learners who participate in our peer learning programmes for their preference, they would likely say that they prefer… peer learning.)

    Beyond this availability bias, there is a more significant problem with this approach: learner preferences often have little correlation with actual learning outcomes.

    And learners are especially bad at self-evaluating what learning methods and resources are most conducive to effective learning.

    The scientific literature is quite clear on this point.

    Bjork’s 2013 article on self-regulated learning emphatically states that: “learners are often prone to illusions of competence during learning, and these illusions can be remarkably compelling.”

    The study by Deslauriers et al. (2019) provides a compelling demonstration that while students express a strong preference for traditional lectures over active learning methods, they actually learn significantly more from the active approaches they claim to dislike.

    This disconnect between preference and efficacy is not surprising when we consider how learning actually works.

    Effective learning requires effort, struggle, and sometimes discomfort as we grapple with new ideas and challenge our existing mental models.

    It is not always an enjoyable process in the moment, even if the long-term results are deeply rewarding.

    Furthermore, learners (like all of us) are subject to various cognitive biases that can lead them astray when evaluating their own learning.

    The illusion of explanatory depth, for example, can cause us to overestimate how well we understand a topic after passively consuming information about it.

    None of this is to say we should ignore learner perspectives entirely.

    Motivation and engagement do matter for learning.

    But we need to be thoughtful about how we solicit and interpret learner feedback.

    Asking about preferences for specific content formats (videos, slides, etc.) tells us very little about the actual learning activities and cognitive processes involved.

    A more productive approach might be to focus on understanding learners’ goals, challenges, and contexts.

    What are they trying to achieve?

    What obstacles do they face?

    What constraints shape their learning environment?

    With this information, we can design evidence-based learning experiences that truly meet their needs – even if they don’t always match their stated preferences.

    As learning professionals, our job is not to give learners what they think they want.

    It is to create the conditions for transformative learning experiences that expand their capabilities and perspectives.

    This often means pushing learners out of their comfort zones and challenging their assumptions about how learning should look and feel.

    Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N. (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 417-444. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143823

    Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L.S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., Kestin, G., 2019. Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 201821936. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

    https://redasadki.me/2024/06/30/why-asking-learners-what-they-want-is-a-recipe-for-confusion/

    #globalHealth #learningMethods #learningStrategy #learningStyles

    #globalhealth #learningmethods #learningstrategy #learningstyles
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