#peerlearning — Public Fediverse posts

Peer.. ??
Was ist denn am Dienstag los?
9 bis 11 Uhr über Zoom

Nutze die Chance, Unterstützung in deiner eigenen Professionalität zu erhalten und dich mit anderen Experten zu vernetzen.

Ob individuelle Fragestellungen, Teamdynamiken oder organisationale Herausforderungen – bei uns findest du Gehör und Unterstützung.

Professionalität² – Kollegiales Peer-Coaching auf Zoom – Corporate Learning Community
https://colearn.de/event/professionalitaet%c2%b2-kollegiales-peer-coaching-auf-zoom-9/

#colearn #peerlearning #peercoaching #HR #Lernen #Corporate

@simondueckert erhöht die Vorfreude auf die @lernos Convention 2026 (#loscon26) am 23. und 24.06.2026.

https://loscon.lernos.org/de/

#loscon26 #PeerLearning #lernOS

Here's how to hold simple successful workshops that create memorable learning experiences and connections.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2018/07/simple-workshops

#meetings #EventDesign #workshops #SolutionRoom #PeerLearning #connection #eventprofs #assnchat

@haraldschirmer ich stimme Dir sicher zu.
Aber ich habe - leider - zu viele Menschen erlebt, die in dem jeweiligen Kontext so lange "herumgeschubst" wurden, dass sie schlicht nicht glaubten, dass für sie Veränderung und Lernen möglich sei - selbst wenn sie offensichtlich vieles gelernt hatten.
Und gerade diese Menschen dürften mMn viel vom #peerlearning profitieren.

Dank #clcamp26 denke ich seit gestern über #peerlearning nach.
Ich habe Fragen:
- Wie lassen sich Leute erreichen, die eher nicht online aktiv sind? Das Fediverse - sehr überschaubarer, oder?
- Wie lässt sich die Führung in Organisationen überzeugen, dass die verwendete Zeit sinnvoll genutzt wird?
- Wie lassen sich Menschen überzeugen, selber ins Tun zu gehen, die jahrelang paternalisiert wurden?
- Wie lassen sich Dritte (Gerichte, Zertifizierer, ..) überzeugen, dass wirklich etwas gelernt wurd?

@haraldschirmer
Haben sogar #clc Beiträge aus vergangenen Jahre n hier im #Mastodon zum
#peerlearning
Hinterlassen 🤩

( oder suchst du anders ? )

#Peerlearning gab es auf unserer Instanz noch nicht als #Hashtag - das können wir ändern - oder folgt dem Hashtag (auch wenn es noch nichts gibt) - um mitzubekommen, wenn etwas kommt

Traditional conferences are obsolete because a standardized approach for education & training to support creative work is obsolete.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2016/10/traditional-conferences-are-obsolete

#meetings #EventDesign #obsolescence #PeerLearning #eventprofs

Rethinking human resources for malaria control and elimination in Africa

The comprehensive policy review by Halima Mwenesi and colleagues “Rethinking human resources and capacity building needs for malaria control and elimination in Africa” argues that the stagnation in global malaria progress is fundamentally a human resources crisis rather than solely a biological or technical failure.

The authors posit that the current workforce is insufficient in number and ill-equipped with the necessary skills to navigate the complex transition from malaria control to elimination.

It is a critical indictment of the status quo in malaria training and offers a roadmap for structural reform.

This article summarizes key points from the policy review and examines how The Geneva Learning Foundation’s peer learning-to-action model could be used by national programmes to transform the health workforce.

The mismatch between training and operational needs

The authors identify a severe imbalance in training priorities where capacity building has historically favored biomedical and basic sciences such as entomology and parasitology.

While essential, this focus has led to a neglect of operational, translational, and implementation sciences.

The report highlights that while the global community produces high-level scientists who understand the parasite, it fails to produce “translational scientists” who can bridge the gap between global guidelines and local realities.

This has resulted, they argue, in a workforce lacking the practical competencies to operationalize complex elimination strategies that require precision and adaptation.

The deficit in leadership and social sciences

A major finding is the specific deficit in so-called “soft skills” and social sciences which are increasingly critical as programs move toward elimination.

The authors argue that modern malaria control requires competencies in leadership, health diplomacy, anthropology, sociology, and political analysis.

Program managers currently lack the training to navigate complex political landscapes, mobilize domestic resources, or engage effectively with communities to sustain interventions.

The review emphasizes that understanding community behavior and social determinants is as critical as understanding vector behavior but this is rarely reflected in curricula.

Data illiteracy and the failure of surveillance

The paper identifies pervasive “data illiteracy” across the workforce.

Health workers collect vast amounts of data to satisfy donor reporting requirements but often lack the skills to interpret or use it for local decision-making.

This results in a “data-rich but information-poor” environment.

As countries move toward elimination, the need for real-time, granular surveillance becomes paramount.

The current workforce is unable to perform the rapid data analysis required to detect and respond to outbreaks at the sub-national level.

Fragmentation and lack of coordination

The review critiques the fragmentation of investments in training, capacity-building, and technical assistance driven by donor agendas.

It notes a lack of coordination among donors and agencies which leads to a proliferation of uncoordinated short courses and workshops that do not necessarily align with national strategic plans.

This fragmentation is exacerbated by a lack of data on the workforce itself.

Many countries lack a central registry of malaria personnel which makes it impossible to forecast needs, plan for attrition, or manage career pathways.

The call for structural transformation

The authors call for a radical shift toward “South-South” collaboration where African institutions take the lead in training.

They advocate for moving away from ad hoc workshops toward institutionalized, long-term capacity building.

Crucially, they recommend the use of digital platforms to democratize access to knowledge for mid-level and community-based cadres who are often excluded from elite fellowships.

How can learning science help transform malaria training investments into tangible health worker performance?

For a global health epidemiologist accustomed to viewing disease control through the lens of biological interventions and coverage rates, the human resource crisis described by Mwenesi and colleagues represents a “delivery failure” of validated tools.

The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) learning science model functions as a structural intervention designed to repair broken delivery mechanisms in global health and humanitarian response.

The following analysis translates the TGLF approach into terms recognizable to an epidemiologist or program manager who operates with the assumption that training is primarily about the transmission of technical knowledge.

Moving from passive transmission to implementation fidelity

Epidemiologists understand that a vaccine with high efficacy in a trial often has low effectiveness in the real world due to poor administration or cold chain failure.

Similarly, Mwenesi et al. identify that technical malaria guidelines fail because the “human infrastructure” cannot implement them.

Traditional training assumes that if you lecture health workers on a protocol, which is a transmission of information, they will execute it.

This is a “single-loop” assumption.

The TGLF model introduces an “implementation loop.”

Instead of merely receiving information, learners in the TGLF network must design a micro-project to apply the new guideline in their specific district, execute it, and report back on the results using their own local data.

This turns the workforce from passive recipients of protocols into active testers of implementation fidelity.

It directly addresses the “translational science” gap identified in the paper by forcing the learner to translate theory into practice immediately.

Sceptics often argue that this approach places an undue burden on an already overworked workforce.

However, the TGLF model embeds learning into the workflow itself.

This is not additional work but rather “learning-based work.”

Participants do not create hypothetical projects.

They identify a bottleneck they are currently facing, such as a specific pocket of malaria transmission, and use the learning cycle to address it.

This transforms the training from an external interruption into an operational support mechanism.

By embedding learning into the workflow, it operationalizes Mwenesi’s call for translational science.

It considers the daily struggle of the health worker as a form of structured scientific inquiry: they hypothesize a solution, test it, and report the results.

This is implementation as science.

Operationalizing data use for local decision-making

Mwenesi notes that health workers collect data but do not use it.

In the TGLF model, data is not something sent “up” to the ministry.

It is the raw material for peer support and feedback.

In a TGLF peer learning exercise, a district medical officer in Ghana shares their case management data to compare performance with a peer in Uganda.

They share because they want to, not because they are required to.

This creates a social incentive to understand and analyze one’s own data.

It builds the “data literacy” the authors call for not through abstract statistics courses but through the practical necessity of explaining one’s own performance to a colleague.

This process transforms data from a compliance burden into a tool for local problem-solving.

Is there a risk that peer learning will pool ignorance?

Is there a valid concern regarding the risk of “pooled ignorance” where peers might reinforce incorrect practices?

The TGLF model mitigates this through “structured emergence.”

The model does not dismiss expert knowledge but uses global guidelines as the “anchor” for local problem-solving.

In this system, a health worker cannot simply state an opinion.

They must submit an action plan that is peer-reviewed against a rubric derived from WHO guidelines.

This process ensures fidelity to technical standards while allowing for necessary local adaptation.

The aggregation of thousands of these peer-reviewed plans creates a new form of rigorous, practice-based evidence that complements expert guidance.

Scaling “soft skills” through structured peer review

The review calls for leadership and diplomacy skills but notes these are hard to teach in workshops.

The TGLF model builds these skills implicitly through its pedagogical structure.

When a participant submits an action plan, they must receive and respond to critical feedback from peers in other countries.

They must negotiate differing viewpoints and defend their technical choices.

This mimics the “health diplomacy” and leadership dynamics required in real-world program management.

Furthermore, because they must engage community stakeholders to implement their projects, they practice the anthropological and social engagement skills Mwenesi identifies as missing.

They learn leadership not by studying a theory of leadership but by leading a change initiative in their facility.

While some experts argue that soft skills require “hard contact” in physical spaces, TGLF results suggest that physical proximity often limits a worker to their known environment and existing biases.

The TGLF model introduces a form of “cosmopolitan localism.”

When a nurse in rural Nigeria must explain her challenge to a peer in urban India, she is forced to articulate her context with a clarity and diplomacy not required when speaking to a neighbor.

This defiance of distance fosters a quantum leap in communication capabilities.

Participants report that the skills learned in negotiating these digital, cross-cultural peer relationships directly translate to better engagement with their physical-world colleagues and community leaders.

Addressing the incentive structure and correcting expertise asymmetry

The paper critiques the “brain drain” and the reliance on experts from the Global North.

TGLF operationalizes the “South-South” collaboration recommended by the authors by creating a flat digital hierarchy.

In this model, the “expert” is not a visiting consultant from Geneva but a peer who has successfully solved the problem in their own context.

A nurse in Nigeria learns how to improve bed net usage from a nurse in Kenya who solved that exact refusal issue last month.

This actually results in greater interest, comprehension, and use of official guidelines.

It also validates local knowledge and creates the “critical mass of thinking professionals” that Mwenesi argues is essential for elimination.

It shifts the source of authority from external experts to the collective intelligence of the network.

Transforming the economy of per diem

A common critique of moving away from face-to-face training is the reliance of health workers on per diems for financial survival.

Mwenesi implies that the current system is unsustainable.

The TGLF model operates on the evidence that per diem-driven training often restricts access to a “training aristocracy” of recurrent participants while excluding the frontline workers who most need the knowledge.

TGLF replaces the financial incentive with a professional survival incentive.

In the Nigeria Immunization Collaborative, over 4,300 health workers participated without per diems.

They did so because the program addressed the specific pain points of their daily work.

This filters the workforce for “positive deviants,” or those with high intrinsic motivation who are most likely to drive elimination efforts, rather than those primarily motivated by daily subsistence allowances.

A “surveillance system” for human resources and performance

Finally, the review notes the lack of registries and data on the workforce itself.

The TGLF digital network acts as a real-time sensor of workforce capacity.

By engaging thousands of health workers simultaneously, the platform generates data on who is active, what problems they are facing, and where their skills are deficient.

For an epidemiologist, this is equivalent to a surveillance system for human resources.

It provides the visibility needed to forecast gaps and target interventions precisely, replacing the “blind” proliferation of uncoordinated workshops with a data-driven approach to capacity building.

Regarding concerns that digital platforms fail in low-resource settings due to poor connectivity, TGLF utilizes a “cognitively quiet” design that functions on low-bandwidth connections and mobile devices.

This design respects the technological reality of the African context.

Data from the Teach to Reach program, which has engaged over 60,000 participants in remote, ongoing peer learning activities , demonstrates that when the technology is adapted to the user rather than the other way around, participation rates exceed those of physical workshops.

This scale allows for the identification of systemic patterns and workforce gaps that would be invisible in a smaller, face-to-face cohort.

Reference

Mwenesi, H., Mbogo, C., Casamitjana, N., Castro, M.C., Itoe, M.A., Okonofua, F., Tanner, M., 2022. Rethinking human resources and capacity building needs for malaria control and elimination in Africa. PLOS Glob Public Health 2, e0000210. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000210

Reda Sadki (2023). How do we reframe health performance management within complex adaptive systems?. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/mx5qr-qet97

Reda Sadki (2024). Prioritizing the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/zzqr4-9g482

Reda Sadki (2024). Protect, invest, together: strengthening health workforce through new learning models. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/g24b4-7fj64

Reda Sadki (2024). What is double-loop learning in global health?. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/s4xtw-b7274

Reda Sadki (2024). World Malaria Day 2024: We need new ways to support health workers leading change with local communities. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/yrn1r-hpz62

Rethinking human resources for malaria control and elimination in Africa

The comprehensive policy review by Halima Mwenesi and colleagues “Rethinking human resources and capacity building needs for malaria control and elimination in Africa” argues that the stagnation in global malaria progress is fundamentally a human resources crisis rather than solely a biological or technical failure.

The authors posit that the current workforce is insufficient in number and ill-equipped with the necessary skills to navigate the complex transition from malaria control to elimination.

It is a critical indictment of the status quo in malaria training and offers a roadmap for structural reform.

This article summarizes key points from the policy review and examines how The Geneva Learning Foundation’s peer learning-to-action model could be used by national programmes to transform the health workforce.

The mismatch between training and operational needs

The authors identify a severe imbalance in training priorities where capacity building has historically favored biomedical and basic sciences such as entomology and parasitology.

While essential, this focus has led to a neglect of operational, translational, and implementation sciences.

The report highlights that while the global community produces high-level scientists who understand the parasite, it fails to produce “translational scientists” who can bridge the gap between global guidelines and local realities.

This has resulted, they argue, in a workforce lacking the practical competencies to operationalize complex elimination strategies that require precision and adaptation.

The deficit in leadership and social sciences

A major finding is the specific deficit in so-called “soft skills” and social sciences which are increasingly critical as programs move toward elimination.

The authors argue that modern malaria control requires competencies in leadership, health diplomacy, anthropology, sociology, and political analysis.

Program managers currently lack the training to navigate complex political landscapes, mobilize domestic resources, or engage effectively with communities to sustain interventions.

The review emphasizes that understanding community behavior and social determinants is as critical as understanding vector behavior but this is rarely reflected in curricula.

Data illiteracy and the failure of surveillance

The paper identifies pervasive “data illiteracy” across the workforce.

Health workers collect vast amounts of data to satisfy donor reporting requirements but often lack the skills to interpret or use it for local decision-making.

This results in a “data-rich but information-poor” environment.

As countries move toward elimination, the need for real-time, granular surveillance becomes paramount.

The current workforce is unable to perform the rapid data analysis required to detect and respond to outbreaks at the sub-national level.

Fragmentation and lack of coordination

The review critiques the fragmentation of investments in training, capacity-building, and technical assistance driven by donor agendas.

It notes a lack of coordination among donors and agencies which leads to a proliferation of uncoordinated short courses and workshops that do not necessarily align with national strategic plans.

This fragmentation is exacerbated by a lack of data on the workforce itself.

Many countries lack a central registry of malaria personnel which makes it impossible to forecast needs, plan for attrition, or manage career pathways.

The call for structural transformation

The authors call for a radical shift toward “South-South” collaboration where African institutions take the lead in training.

They advocate for moving away from ad hoc workshops toward institutionalized, long-term capacity building.

Crucially, they recommend the use of digital platforms to democratize access to knowledge for mid-level and community-based cadres who are often excluded from elite fellowships.

How can learning science help transform malaria training investments into tangible health worker performance?

For a global health epidemiologist accustomed to viewing disease control through the lens of biological interventions and coverage rates, the human resource crisis described by Mwenesi and colleagues represents a “delivery failure” of validated tools.

The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) learning science model functions as a structural intervention designed to repair broken delivery mechanisms in global health and humanitarian response.

The following analysis translates the TGLF approach into terms recognizable to an epidemiologist or program manager who operates with the assumption that training is primarily about the transmission of technical knowledge.

Moving from passive transmission to implementation fidelity

Epidemiologists understand that a vaccine with high efficacy in a trial often has low effectiveness in the real world due to poor administration or cold chain failure.

Similarly, Mwenesi et al. identify that technical malaria guidelines fail because the “human infrastructure” cannot implement them.

Traditional training assumes that if you lecture health workers on a protocol, which is a transmission of information, they will execute it.

This is a “single-loop” assumption.

The TGLF model introduces an “implementation loop.”

Instead of merely receiving information, learners in the TGLF network must design a micro-project to apply the new guideline in their specific district, execute it, and report back on the results using their own local data.

This turns the workforce from passive recipients of protocols into active testers of implementation fidelity.

It directly addresses the “translational science” gap identified in the paper by forcing the learner to translate theory into practice immediately.

Sceptics often argue that this approach places an undue burden on an already overworked workforce.

However, the TGLF model embeds learning into the workflow itself.

This is not additional work but rather “learning-based work.”

Participants do not create hypothetical projects.

They identify a bottleneck they are currently facing, such as a specific pocket of malaria transmission, and use the learning cycle to address it.

This transforms the training from an external interruption into an operational support mechanism.

By embedding learning into the workflow, it operationalizes Mwenesi’s call for translational science.

It considers the daily struggle of the health worker as a form of structured scientific inquiry: they hypothesize a solution, test it, and report the results.

This is implementation as science.

Operationalizing data use for local decision-making

Mwenesi notes that health workers collect data but do not use it.

In the TGLF model, data is not something sent “up” to the ministry.

It is the raw material for peer support and feedback.

In a TGLF peer learning exercise, a district medical officer in Ghana shares their case management data to compare performance with a peer in Uganda.

They share because they want to, not because they are required to.

This creates a social incentive to understand and analyze one’s own data.

It builds the “data literacy” the authors call for not through abstract statistics courses but through the practical necessity of explaining one’s own performance to a colleague.

This process transforms data from a compliance burden into a tool for local problem-solving.

Is there a risk that peer learning will pool ignorance?

Is there a valid concern regarding the risk of “pooled ignorance” where peers might reinforce incorrect practices?

The TGLF model mitigates this through “structured emergence.”

The model does not dismiss expert knowledge but uses global guidelines as the “anchor” for local problem-solving.

In this system, a health worker cannot simply state an opinion.

They must submit an action plan that is peer-reviewed against a rubric derived from WHO guidelines.

This process ensures fidelity to technical standards while allowing for necessary local adaptation.

The aggregation of thousands of these peer-reviewed plans creates a new form of rigorous, practice-based evidence that complements expert guidance.

Scaling “soft skills” through structured peer review

The review calls for leadership and diplomacy skills but notes these are hard to teach in workshops.

The TGLF model builds these skills implicitly through its pedagogical structure.

When a participant submits an action plan, they must receive and respond to critical feedback from peers in other countries.

They must negotiate differing viewpoints and defend their technical choices.

This mimics the “health diplomacy” and leadership dynamics required in real-world program management.

Furthermore, because they must engage community stakeholders to implement their projects, they practice the anthropological and social engagement skills Mwenesi identifies as missing.

They learn leadership not by studying a theory of leadership but by leading a change initiative in their facility.

While some experts argue that soft skills require “hard contact” in physical spaces, TGLF results suggest that physical proximity often limits a worker to their known environment and existing biases.

The TGLF model introduces a form of “cosmopolitan localism.”

When a nurse in rural Nigeria must explain her challenge to a peer in urban India, she is forced to articulate her context with a clarity and diplomacy not required when speaking to a neighbor.

This defiance of distance fosters a quantum leap in communication capabilities.

Participants report that the skills learned in negotiating these digital, cross-cultural peer relationships directly translate to better engagement with their physical-world colleagues and community leaders.

Addressing the incentive structure and correcting expertise asymmetry

The paper critiques the “brain drain” and the reliance on experts from the Global North.

TGLF operationalizes the “South-South” collaboration recommended by the authors by creating a flat digital hierarchy.

In this model, the “expert” is not a visiting consultant from Geneva but a peer who has successfully solved the problem in their own context.

A nurse in Nigeria learns how to improve bed net usage from a nurse in Kenya who solved that exact refusal issue last month.

This actually results in greater interest, comprehension, and use of official guidelines.

It also validates local knowledge and creates the “critical mass of thinking professionals” that Mwenesi argues is essential for elimination.

It shifts the source of authority from external experts to the collective intelligence of the network.

Transforming the economy of per diem

A common critique of moving away from face-to-face training is the reliance of health workers on per diems for financial survival.

Mwenesi implies that the current system is unsustainable.

The TGLF model operates on the evidence that per diem-driven training often restricts access to a “training aristocracy” of recurrent participants while excluding the frontline workers who most need the knowledge.

TGLF replaces the financial incentive with a professional survival incentive.

In the Nigeria Immunization Collaborative, over 4,300 health workers participated without per diems.

They did so because the program addressed the specific pain points of their daily work.

This filters the workforce for “positive deviants,” or those with high intrinsic motivation who are most likely to drive elimination efforts, rather than those primarily motivated by daily subsistence allowances.

A “surveillance system” for human resources and performance

Finally, the review notes the lack of registries and data on the workforce itself.

The TGLF digital network acts as a real-time sensor of workforce capacity.

By engaging thousands of health workers simultaneously, the platform generates data on who is active, what problems they are facing, and where their skills are deficient.

For an epidemiologist, this is equivalent to a surveillance system for human resources.

It provides the visibility needed to forecast gaps and target interventions precisely, replacing the “blind” proliferation of uncoordinated workshops with a data-driven approach to capacity building.

Regarding concerns that digital platforms fail in low-resource settings due to poor connectivity, TGLF utilizes a “cognitively quiet” design that functions on low-bandwidth connections and mobile devices.

This design respects the technological reality of the African context.

Data from the Teach to Reach program, which has engaged over 60,000 participants in remote, ongoing peer learning activities , demonstrates that when the technology is adapted to the user rather than the other way around, participation rates exceed those of physical workshops.

This scale allows for the identification of systemic patterns and workforce gaps that would be invisible in a smaller, face-to-face cohort.

Reference

Mwenesi, H., Mbogo, C., Casamitjana, N., Castro, M.C., Itoe, M.A., Okonofua, F., Tanner, M., 2022. Rethinking human resources and capacity building needs for malaria control and elimination in Africa. PLOS Glob Public Health 2, e0000210. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000210

Reda Sadki (2023). How do we reframe health performance management within complex adaptive systems?. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/mx5qr-qet97

Reda Sadki (2024). Prioritizing the health and care workforce shortage: protect, invest, together. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/zzqr4-9g482

Reda Sadki (2024). Protect, invest, together: strengthening health workforce through new learning models. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/g24b4-7fj64

Reda Sadki (2024). What is double-loop learning in global health?. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/s4xtw-b7274

Reda Sadki (2024). World Malaria Day 2024: We need new ways to support health workers leading change with local communities. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/yrn1r-hpz62

Evaluation of a capacity building intervention on malaria treatment for children

The study by Ayodele Jegede and colleagues “Evaluation of a capacity building intervention on malaria treatment for under-fives in rural health facilities in Niger State, Nigeria” provides a rigorous evaluation of a standard “cascade training” intervention.

The intervention followed the classic global health model where national experts trained state trainers who then trained local government area facilitators who were supposed to train frontline health workers.

The results expose deep structural flaws in this approach.

The most damning finding was the “reach gap.”

Despite the intervention being fully funded and implemented, the cascade broke down before reaching the frontline.

Only 54% of the health workers who actually treat febrile children reported receiving the training.

The transmission of knowledge stopped at the facility in-charge level and did not filter down to the lower-level cadres who manage the bulk of the patient load.

Consequently, the study found no statistically significant difference in appropriate treatment practices between the intervention and control groups.

The study also illuminated the persistence of the “know-do” gap.

Even where testing rates increased, appropriate treatment did not necessarily follow.

A critical finding was that while health workers in the intervention arm correctly withheld artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) from children who tested negative for malaria, they frequently substituted them with other inappropriate antimalarials or antibiotics.

This suggests that the training taught them the technical rule (“no ACT for negatives”) but failed to teach the adaptive clinical skill of how to manage a negative diagnosis and patient expectations.

Finally, the study highlighted the futility of training in the absence of system support.

Significant stock-outs of Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs) and ACTs occurred in the intervention facilities.

On many visit days, half the facilities had no ACTs available.

The authors conclude that capacity building cannot be an isolated activity and must be embedded within a functioning supply chain and health system.

Analysis through the lens of learning science

This study provides the empirical “counter-factual” that justifies TGLF’s evidence-based rejection of the cascade training model.

It illustrates precisely why a digital-first and direct-to-learner approach is necessary from an epidemiological and operational perspective.

Overcoming transmission loss

The finding that the cascade reached only 54% of workers is a powerful argument for TGLF’s networked learning approach.

By using digital platforms to connect directly with individual health workers on their own devices, TGLF bypasses the “frozen middle” layers of hierarchy where cascade training stalls.

TGLF does not rely on a facility manager to pass on a message but invites both the frontline worker and the manager to join the conversation directly.

From rote compliance to critical thinking

The behavior of the health workers who stopped giving ACTs but switched to other inappropriate drugs demonstrates the failure of “single-loop” learning.

They learned the what (do not give ACT) but not the why or the how (clinical reasoning and stewardship).

TGLF’s “double-loop” learning model addresses this by engaging workers in peer dialogue about why they feel compelled to prescribe drugs for negative cases.

This might include patient pressure or fear of complications.

The model helps them develop strategies to manage those pressures rather than just memorizing a guideline.

Resilience in the face of system failure

The study shows that stock-outs rendered the training ineffective.

In a traditional model, the health worker is a passive victim of these stock-outs.

In TGLF’s “challenge-based” learning model, a worker is likely to be the first one to identify “frequent stock-outs” as their primary challenge.

The network would then connect them with peers who have solved similar supply chain issues.

This might be through better forecasting, redistribution from nearby clinics or advocacy with district officials.

TGLF aims to transform the worker from a passive recipient of training into an active agent of system change who can navigate the very barriers that defeated the intervention in Niger State.

Reference

Jegede, A., Willey, B., Hamade, P., Oshiname, F., Chandramohan, D., Ajayi, I., Falade, C., Baba, E., Webster, J., 2020. Evaluation of a capacity building intervention on malaria treatment for under-fives in rural health facilities in Niger State, Nigeria. Malar J 19, 90. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-020-03167-y

Reda Sadki (2024). Why does cascade training fail?. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/j8vg0-yng46

Reda Sadki (2024). What is double-loop learning in global health?. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/s4xtw-b7274

Evaluation of a capacity building intervention on malaria treatment for children

The study by Ayodele Jegede and colleagues “Evaluation of a capacity building intervention on malaria treatment for under-fives in rural health facilities in Niger State, Nigeria” provides a rigorous evaluation of a standard “cascade training” intervention.

The intervention followed the classic global health model where national experts trained state trainers who then trained local government area facilitators who were supposed to train frontline health workers.

The results expose deep structural flaws in this approach.

The most damning finding was the “reach gap.”

Despite the intervention being fully funded and implemented, the cascade broke down before reaching the frontline.

Only 54% of the health workers who actually treat febrile children reported receiving the training.

The transmission of knowledge stopped at the facility in-charge level and did not filter down to the lower-level cadres who manage the bulk of the patient load.

Consequently, the study found no statistically significant difference in appropriate treatment practices between the intervention and control groups.

The study also illuminated the persistence of the “know-do” gap.

Even where testing rates increased, appropriate treatment did not necessarily follow.

A critical finding was that while health workers in the intervention arm correctly withheld artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) from children who tested negative for malaria, they frequently substituted them with other inappropriate antimalarials or antibiotics.

This suggests that the training taught them the technical rule (“no ACT for negatives”) but failed to teach the adaptive clinical skill of how to manage a negative diagnosis and patient expectations.

Finally, the study highlighted the futility of training in the absence of system support.

Significant stock-outs of Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTs) and ACTs occurred in the intervention facilities.

On many visit days, half the facilities had no ACTs available.

The authors conclude that capacity building cannot be an isolated activity and must be embedded within a functioning supply chain and health system.

Analysis through the lens of learning science

This study provides the empirical “counter-factual” that justifies TGLF’s evidence-based rejection of the cascade training model.

It illustrates precisely why a digital-first and direct-to-learner approach is necessary from an epidemiological and operational perspective.

Overcoming transmission loss

The finding that the cascade reached only 54% of workers is a powerful argument for TGLF’s networked learning approach.

By using digital platforms to connect directly with individual health workers on their own devices, TGLF bypasses the “frozen middle” layers of hierarchy where cascade training stalls.

TGLF does not rely on a facility manager to pass on a message but invites both the frontline worker and the manager to join the conversation directly.

From rote compliance to critical thinking

The behavior of the health workers who stopped giving ACTs but switched to other inappropriate drugs demonstrates the failure of “single-loop” learning.

They learned the what (do not give ACT) but not the why or the how (clinical reasoning and stewardship).

TGLF’s “double-loop” learning model addresses this by engaging workers in peer dialogue about why they feel compelled to prescribe drugs for negative cases.

This might include patient pressure or fear of complications.

The model helps them develop strategies to manage those pressures rather than just memorizing a guideline.

Resilience in the face of system failure

The study shows that stock-outs rendered the training ineffective.

In a traditional model, the health worker is a passive victim of these stock-outs.

In TGLF’s “challenge-based” learning model, a worker is likely to be the first one to identify “frequent stock-outs” as their primary challenge.

The network would then connect them with peers who have solved similar supply chain issues.

This might be through better forecasting, redistribution from nearby clinics or advocacy with district officials.

TGLF aims to transform the worker from a passive recipient of training into an active agent of system change who can navigate the very barriers that defeated the intervention in Niger State.

Reference

Jegede, A., Willey, B., Hamade, P., Oshiname, F., Chandramohan, D., Ajayi, I., Falade, C., Baba, E., Webster, J., 2020. Evaluation of a capacity building intervention on malaria treatment for under-fives in rural health facilities in Niger State, Nigeria. Malar J 19, 90. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-020-03167-y

Reda Sadki (2024). Why does cascade training fail?. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/j8vg0-yng46

Reda Sadki (2024). What is double-loop learning in global health?. Reda Sadki: Learning to make a difference. https://doi.org/10.59350/s4xtw-b7274

5 reasons why our current systems of learning are broken – and how to fix them

Reda Sadki’s writing explores how systems of learning matter when tackling complex challenges across global health, humanitarian aid, and education.

Over twelve years of articles on his blog, he has built a cohesive argument for why our current systems of learning are broken and how we might fix them.

Since 2016, his work at The Geneva Learning Foundation has demonstrated how to turn such rethinking into new ways to learn and lead in the face of critical threats to our societies.

Here are five themes that define his work.

1. The failure of traditional systems of learning and the peer learning alternative

One of Sadki’s most persistent arguments is that the humanitarian and global health sectors are addicted to ineffective models of training.

He questions the “workshop culture” that flies experts around the world at great cost with little measurable impact.

He argues that this “sage on the stage” model assumes knowledge flows only one way: from the expert to the ignorant practitioner.

He is equally critical of digital replacements that merely replicate this dynamic.

In Why gamification is a disaster for humanitarian learning, he warns that dressing up behaviorist drills with points and badges does not foster the critical thinking needed in crisis zones.

He expands on this in Experience and blended learning: two heads of the humanitarian training chimera, arguing that “transmissive” learning fails to prepare professionals for volatility and complexity.

Instead, Sadki advocates for peer learning networks where practitioners teach and learn from each other.

As he explains in What learning science underpins peer learning for Global Health?, the goal is not to transmit information but to foster the “co-creation” of new knowledge that is directly applicable to local contexts.

2. Epistemic justice: valuing communities as systems of learning

Sadki frequently uses the philosophy of Donald Schön to distinguish between the “high ground” of theory and the “swampy lowlands” of practice.

He argues that global health suffers from “epistemic injustice” – a systematic devaluation of the experiential knowledge held by local health workers.

In Knowing-in-action: Bridging the theory-practice divide in global health, he makes the case that the gap between global guidelines and local reality can only be bridged by recognizing frontline workers as knowledge creators, not just recipients.

He challenges the hierarchy that dismisses local insights as mere “anecdote.”

In Anecdote or lived experience: reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems, he proposes a new framework where the collective stories of thousands of health workers shape a new, rigorous form of evidence.

In Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, he points out that the most rigorous science can miss the vital signals that only those working in communities can see.

3. Artificial intelligence as a co-worker

While many in education view Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a threat to integrity or a tool for cheating, Sadki frames it as a transformative partner.

He argues that we are entering a new epoch where AI will not just be a tool we use, but a “co-worker” we collaborate with.

In A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action, he outlines how AI can support the “human” parts of learning – such as feedback and synthesis – without replacing human agency.

He explores the profound shifts in how we will interact with technology in The agentic AI revolution: what does it mean for workforce development?, describing a future where “AI agents” handle coordination, freeing humans to focus on judgment and ethics.

He pushes this further in Why YouTube is obsolete: From linear video content consumption to AI-mediated multimodal knowledge production, suggesting that AI will fundamentally change how we consume information, moving us away from linear formats like video lectures toward dynamic, interactive knowledge creation and retrieval.

4. Learning culture as the driver of learning systems

Sadki insists that learning is not an event but a culture.

Drawing heavily on the research of Karen E. Watkins and Victoria Marsick, he argues that an organization’s “learning culture” is the single best predictor of its ability to adapt and perform.

In Learning culture: the missing link in global health between learning and performance, he explains that without a culture that supports inquiry, dialogue, and risk-taking, even the best training programs will fail.

He identifies specific weaknesses in current systems, noting in Why lack of continuous learning is the Achilles heel of immunization that health systems often prioritize task completion over the continuous learning necessary to improve those tasks.

This theme connects deeply to leadership.

He argues in What is the relationship between leadership and performance? that true leadership is not about authority but about fostering an environment where learning can happen at every level of the hierarchy.

5. New ways to bridge the gap from policy to action

Finally, Sadki focuses relentlessly on the “know-do” gap, the disconnect between global policy and local implementation.

He argues that guidelines often fail because they are designed without the input of those who must implement them.

In Why guidelines fail: on consequences of the false dichotomy between global and local knowledge in health systems, he dissects how the separation of “thinkers” (global experts) and “doers” (local staff) dooms many initiatives.

He offers concrete examples of how to close this gap, such as in The Nigeria Immunization Collaborative: Early learning from a novel sector-wide approach model for zero-dose challenges, where thousands of health workers used peer learning to identify root causes of vaccine inequity that central planners had missed.

This theme emphasizes that the solution is not more “technical assistance” from the outside, but better mechanisms to unlock the problem-solving capacity that already exists within communities.

Beyond learning: a new operating system in global development

Taken together, these themes provide the specifications for a new operating system in global development, one that moves beyond the limitations of the models of today.

• Sadki’s work challenges the sector to recognize its most undervalued asset: the collective intelligence of the health and humanitarian workforce.
• By dismantling the barriers between the “high ground” of policy and the “swampy lowlands” of practice, his framework constructs a learning ecosystem where artificial intelligence amplifies human connection and local insights continuously refine global strategy.
• This evolution—from episodic workshops to continuous, networked problem-solving—offers a pragmatic path to close the persistent gap between investment and outcome.

In a resource-constrained world, unlocking this latent capacity is not merely an ethical choice, but a strategic imperative to build systems resilient enough for an unpredictable future.

5 reasons why our current systems of learning are broken – and how to fix them

Reda Sadki’s writing explores how systems of learning matter when tackling complex challenges across global health, humanitarian aid, and education.

Over twelve years of articles on his blog, he has built a cohesive argument for why our current systems of learning are broken and how we might fix them.

Since 2016, his work at The Geneva Learning Foundation has demonstrated how to turn such rethinking into new ways to learn and lead in the face of critical threats to our societies.

Here are five themes that define his work.

1. The failure of traditional systems of learning and the peer learning alternative

One of Sadki’s most persistent arguments is that the humanitarian and global health sectors are addicted to ineffective models of training.

He questions the “workshop culture” that flies experts around the world at great cost with little measurable impact.

He argues that this “sage on the stage” model assumes knowledge flows only one way: from the expert to the ignorant practitioner.

He is equally critical of digital replacements that merely replicate this dynamic.

In Why gamification is a disaster for humanitarian learning, he warns that dressing up behaviorist drills with points and badges does not foster the critical thinking needed in crisis zones.

He expands on this in Experience and blended learning: two heads of the humanitarian training chimera, arguing that “transmissive” learning fails to prepare professionals for volatility and complexity.

Instead, Sadki advocates for peer learning networks where practitioners teach and learn from each other.

As he explains in What learning science underpins peer learning for Global Health?, the goal is not to transmit information but to foster the “co-creation” of new knowledge that is directly applicable to local contexts.

2. Epistemic justice: valuing communities as systems of learning

Sadki frequently uses the philosophy of Donald Schön to distinguish between the “high ground” of theory and the “swampy lowlands” of practice.

He argues that global health suffers from “epistemic injustice” – a systematic devaluation of the experiential knowledge held by local health workers.

In Knowing-in-action: Bridging the theory-practice divide in global health, he makes the case that the gap between global guidelines and local reality can only be bridged by recognizing frontline workers as knowledge creators, not just recipients.

He challenges the hierarchy that dismisses local insights as mere “anecdote.”

In Anecdote or lived experience: reimagining knowledge for climate-resilient health systems, he proposes a new framework where the collective stories of thousands of health workers shape a new, rigorous form of evidence.

In Critical evidence gaps in the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, he points out that the most rigorous science can miss the vital signals that only those working in communities can see.

3. Artificial intelligence as a co-worker

While many in education view Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a threat to integrity or a tool for cheating, Sadki frames it as a transformative partner.

He argues that we are entering a new epoch where AI will not just be a tool we use, but a “co-worker” we collaborate with.

In A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action, he outlines how AI can support the “human” parts of learning – such as feedback and synthesis – without replacing human agency.

He explores the profound shifts in how we will interact with technology in The agentic AI revolution: what does it mean for workforce development?, describing a future where “AI agents” handle coordination, freeing humans to focus on judgment and ethics.

He pushes this further in Why YouTube is obsolete: From linear video content consumption to AI-mediated multimodal knowledge production, suggesting that AI will fundamentally change how we consume information, moving us away from linear formats like video lectures toward dynamic, interactive knowledge creation and retrieval.

4. Learning culture as the driver of learning systems

Sadki insists that learning is not an event but a culture.

Drawing heavily on the research of Karen E. Watkins and Victoria Marsick, he argues that an organization’s “learning culture” is the single best predictor of its ability to adapt and perform.

In Learning culture: the missing link in global health between learning and performance, he explains that without a culture that supports inquiry, dialogue, and risk-taking, even the best training programs will fail.

He identifies specific weaknesses in current systems, noting in Why lack of continuous learning is the Achilles heel of immunization that health systems often prioritize task completion over the continuous learning necessary to improve those tasks.

This theme connects deeply to leadership.

He argues in What is the relationship between leadership and performance? that true leadership is not about authority but about fostering an environment where learning can happen at every level of the hierarchy.

5. New ways to bridge the gap from policy to action

Finally, Sadki focuses relentlessly on the “know-do” gap, the disconnect between global policy and local implementation.

He argues that guidelines often fail because they are designed without the input of those who must implement them.

In Why guidelines fail: on consequences of the false dichotomy between global and local knowledge in health systems, he dissects how the separation of “thinkers” (global experts) and “doers” (local staff) dooms many initiatives.

He offers concrete examples of how to close this gap, such as in The Nigeria Immunization Collaborative: Early learning from a novel sector-wide approach model for zero-dose challenges, where thousands of health workers used peer learning to identify root causes of vaccine inequity that central planners had missed.

This theme emphasizes that the solution is not more “technical assistance” from the outside, but better mechanisms to unlock the problem-solving capacity that already exists within communities.

Beyond learning: a new operating system in global development

Taken together, these themes provide the specifications for a new operating system in global development, one that moves beyond the limitations of the models of today.

• Sadki’s work challenges the sector to recognize its most undervalued asset: the collective intelligence of the health and humanitarian workforce.
• By dismantling the barriers between the “high ground” of policy and the “swampy lowlands” of practice, his framework constructs a learning ecosystem where artificial intelligence amplifies human connection and local insights continuously refine global strategy.
• This evolution—from episodic workshops to continuous, networked problem-solving—offers a pragmatic path to close the persistent gap between investment and outcome.

In a resource-constrained world, unlocking this latent capacity is not merely an ethical choice, but a strategic imperative to build systems resilient enough for an unpredictable future.

Here's how to hold simple successful workshops that create memorable learning experiences and connections.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2018/07/simple-workshops

#meetings #EventDesign #workshops #SolutionRoom #PeerLearning #connection #eventprofs #assnchat

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

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

Traditional conferences are obsolete because a standardized approach for education & training to support creative work is obsolete.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2016/10/traditional-conferences-are-obsolete

#meetings #EventDesign #obsolescence #PeerLearning #eventprofs

How can governments protect and promote mental health and well-being across sectors?

For decades, global health policy has approached mental illness primarily as a clinical challenge, a condition to be managed within the walls of hospitals and clinics by medical professionals. This biomedical focus, while essential, has often obscured the broader context in which mental health is shaped. A new publication from the World Health Organization, Guidance on policy and strategic actions to protect and promote mental health and well-being across government sectors, marks a significant shift in normative standards. It posits that mental health is not merely a health outcome but a structural one, determined as much by the fiscal policy, urban planning, and labor laws of governments as by psychiatric care.

A technical framework for cross-sectoral governance

The guidance emerges against a backdrop of escalating costs. The global economic burden of mental health conditions is projected to reach US$6 trillion by 2030. In response, the WHO outlines a “whole-of-government” approach, moving beyond general advocacy to provide specific policy directives for ministries that have historically operated independently of mental health considerations.

The document details an eight-step implementation cycle, requiring high-level political dialogue, rigorous situational analysis, and the drafting of sector-specific policies. It assigns distinct responsibilities to key government sectors:

• Finance and Treasury: The guidance suggests that fiscal policies – including tax rates and welfare allocations – must be evaluated for their impact on health equity, rather than viewing mental health funding solely as a healthcare expenditure.
• Interior and Justice: It recommends a shift in the role of police and prisons, advocating for the retraining of first responders to manage crises through de-escalation rather than coercion, and establishing independent mechanisms to report abuse.
• Education and Employment: The framework calls for schools to embed social-emotional learning into standard curricula and for labor ministries to enforce standards that mitigate psychosocial risks in the workplace, such as precarious contracts and unsafe working conditions.

This approach frames mental health as a shared liability across the state apparatus, requiring coordinated action to address the social and structural determinants such as poverty, discrimination, and violence that drive poor mental health outcomes.

The challenge of implementation in resource-constrained settings

While the normative framework is clear, the practical pathway to implementation remains complex, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The current development finance landscape is characterized by shrinking budgets and a fracturing of global health funding. Governments in LMICs face the dual challenge of executing complex, multi-sectoral strategies while managing severe fiscal constraints.

One critical question for policymakers is operational: How can a Ministry of Health in a resource-constrained setting effectively engage other sectors – such as finance or justice – to adopt these recommendations without significant new external funding? Moving from high-level policy documents to localized action requires a mechanism that can bridge the gap between statutory intent and the reality of service delivery.

So what are the options to do more with less?

Peer learning as a mechanism for structural change

The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) offers an operational model that addresses this implementation gap by utilizing the existing capacity of the health and social workforce. Rather than relying on traditional, resource-intensive capacity-building or technical assistance models, TGLF employs a “learning-to-action” methodology rooted in structured peer interaction. This approach connects thousands of frontline professionals – ranging from district administrators to social workers – into a structured digital network to learn from and support each other in actual implementation.

This model could support this WHO guidance in three specific ways:

• Generating actionable local data: In contexts where central data is scarce, the network functions as a distributed sensor. In a recent deployment in Nigeria, working with NPHCDA and UNICEF, 4,300 health workers generated over 400 root cause analyses within weeks. By identifying specific local barriers to service delivery the network produced the granular evidence needed to inform the cross-sectoral policies advocated by the WHO, and turn them into practice.
• Facilitating cross-sectoral integration: The WHO guidance necessitates collaboration between siloed professionals. TGLF’s model creates a forum where professionals from different sectors can share experience as they work to drive change, each in their own context. A school nurse can analyze crisis response strategies alongside a social worker from a different district, fostering the “collective intelligence” required to implement complex, multi-agency directives right down to the community level.
• Improving cost-efficiency: By digitizing the peer-learning process and utilizing peer accountability rather than external consultants, the model achieves a cost reduction of approximately 90 percent compared to conventional implementation methods. This efficiency could allow governments to begin operationalizing the WHO guidelines immediately using existing payroll structures, rather than waiting for external grants.

By validating local knowledge and structuring peer accountability, this innovative model provides a practical means to transform the WHO’s technical guidance into sustained administrative action. It demonstrates that the capacity to reform mental health governance lies not only in new financial instruments but in the structured coordination of the workforce already present on the ground.

Image: Crossing Into Clarity, The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. A corridor built from carved, interlocking forms – half letters, half symbols – evokes the dense, overlapping pressures that shape mental health across societies. As the viewer steps through this textured passage, the individual ahead emerges into a space of light and openness, suggesting the possibility of coherence after complexity. The piece reflects a core truth of whole-of-government mental health action: when fragmented systems align, even imperfectly, they create pathways that help people move from burden toward balance, and from confusion toward care.

Reference

Michelle Funk, Dévora Kestel, Natalie Drew Bold, Celline Cole, Maria Francesca Moro, 2025. Guidance on policy and strategic actions to protect and promote mental health and well-being across government sectors. World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240114388

#governmentSectors #implementationScience #lmics #mentalHealth #peerLearning #genevaLearningFoundation #wellBeing #workforce

How can governments protect and promote mental health and well-being across sectors?

For decades, global health policy has approached mental illness primarily as a clinical challenge, a condition to be managed within the walls of hospitals and clinics by medical professionals. This biomedical focus, while essential, has often obscured the broader context in which mental health is shaped. A new publication from the World Health Organization, Guidance on policy and strategic actions to protect and promote mental health and well-being across government sectors, marks a significant shift in normative standards. It posits that mental health is not merely a health outcome but a structural one, determined as much by the fiscal policy, urban planning, and labor laws of governments as by psychiatric care.

A technical framework for cross-sectoral governance

The guidance emerges against a backdrop of escalating costs. The global economic burden of mental health conditions is projected to reach US$6 trillion by 2030. In response, the WHO outlines a “whole-of-government” approach, moving beyond general advocacy to provide specific policy directives for ministries that have historically operated independently of mental health considerations.

The document details an eight-step implementation cycle, requiring high-level political dialogue, rigorous situational analysis, and the drafting of sector-specific policies. It assigns distinct responsibilities to key government sectors:

• Finance and Treasury: The guidance suggests that fiscal policies – including tax rates and welfare allocations – must be evaluated for their impact on health equity, rather than viewing mental health funding solely as a healthcare expenditure.
• Interior and Justice: It recommends a shift in the role of police and prisons, advocating for the retraining of first responders to manage crises through de-escalation rather than coercion, and establishing independent mechanisms to report abuse.
• Education and Employment: The framework calls for schools to embed social-emotional learning into standard curricula and for labor ministries to enforce standards that mitigate psychosocial risks in the workplace, such as precarious contracts and unsafe working conditions.

This approach frames mental health as a shared liability across the state apparatus, requiring coordinated action to address the social and structural determinants such as poverty, discrimination, and violence that drive poor mental health outcomes.

The challenge of implementation in resource-constrained settings

While the normative framework is clear, the practical pathway to implementation remains complex, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The current development finance landscape is characterized by shrinking budgets and a fracturing of global health funding. Governments in LMICs face the dual challenge of executing complex, multi-sectoral strategies while managing severe fiscal constraints.

One critical question for policymakers is operational: How can a Ministry of Health in a resource-constrained setting effectively engage other sectors – such as finance or justice – to adopt these recommendations without significant new external funding? Moving from high-level policy documents to localized action requires a mechanism that can bridge the gap between statutory intent and the reality of service delivery.

So what are the options to do more with less?

Peer learning as a mechanism for structural change

The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) offers an operational model that addresses this implementation gap by utilizing the existing capacity of the health and social workforce. Rather than relying on traditional, resource-intensive capacity-building or technical assistance models, TGLF employs a “learning-to-action” methodology rooted in structured peer interaction. This approach connects thousands of frontline professionals – ranging from district administrators to social workers – into a structured digital network to learn from and support each other in actual implementation.

This model could support this WHO guidance in three specific ways:

• Generating actionable local data: In contexts where central data is scarce, the network functions as a distributed sensor. In a recent deployment in Nigeria, working with NPHCDA and UNICEF, 4,300 health workers generated over 400 root cause analyses within weeks. By identifying specific local barriers to service delivery the network produced the granular evidence needed to inform the cross-sectoral policies advocated by the WHO, and turn them into practice.
• Facilitating cross-sectoral integration: The WHO guidance necessitates collaboration between siloed professionals. TGLF’s model creates a forum where professionals from different sectors can share experience as they work to drive change, each in their own context. A school nurse can analyze crisis response strategies alongside a social worker from a different district, fostering the “collective intelligence” required to implement complex, multi-agency directives right down to the community level.
• Improving cost-efficiency: By digitizing the peer-learning process and utilizing peer accountability rather than external consultants, the model achieves a cost reduction of approximately 90 percent compared to conventional implementation methods. This efficiency could allow governments to begin operationalizing the WHO guidelines immediately using existing payroll structures, rather than waiting for external grants.

By validating local knowledge and structuring peer accountability, this innovative model provides a practical means to transform the WHO’s technical guidance into sustained administrative action. It demonstrates that the capacity to reform mental health governance lies not only in new financial instruments but in the structured coordination of the workforce already present on the ground.

Image: Crossing Into Clarity, The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. A corridor built from carved, interlocking forms – half letters, half symbols – evokes the dense, overlapping pressures that shape mental health across societies. As the viewer steps through this textured passage, the individual ahead emerges into a space of light and openness, suggesting the possibility of coherence after complexity. The piece reflects a core truth of whole-of-government mental health action: when fragmented systems align, even imperfectly, they create pathways that help people move from burden toward balance, and from confusion toward care.

Reference

Michelle Funk, Dévora Kestel, Natalie Drew Bold, Celline Cole, Maria Francesca Moro, 2025. Guidance on policy and strategic actions to protect and promote mental health and well-being across government sectors. World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240114388

#governmentSectors #implementationScience #lmics #mentalHealth #peerLearning #genevaLearningFoundation #wellBeing #workforce

#LastChance • #Today @ 3:00 pm EST

The Community College Consortium for OER #CCCOER launches Open Exchange, a webinar series for open education peers to engage in informal, candid discussions about challenges and ideas—no recordings; just open dialogue.

Register now to join and suggest topics!
https://twp.ai/E6Dn6K

#OpenEducation #OERCommunity #HigherEd #PeerLearning #CCCOER

Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions: bridging the gap between planning and implementation

The global malaria response is currently navigating a convergence of crises. Epidemiologically, the reduction in mortality has plateaued. Biologically, threats from Anopheles stephensi and partial artemisinin resistance are accelerating. Financially, the 2025 landscape is defined by a severe contraction in foreign assistance, necessitating a radical optimization of resources. In this context, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new guidance, Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions (2025), offers a necessary technical framework.

However, the manual relies on an implementation architecture that remains fragile. To succeed, the technical rigor of subnational tailoring (SNT) should be coupled with an operational mechanism capable of mobilizing the workforce in the current context. This article examines how digital peer learning-to-action networks offer a potential mechanism to address the operational deficits of conventional technical assistance and capacity building.

Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies: moving from blanket coverage to allocative efficiency

The rationale for SNT rests on the recognition that transmission heterogeneity – driven by ecology, urbanization, and human behaviour – renders national averages insufficient for operational planning. The WHO guidance codifies a ten-step “Data-to-Action Loop,” designed to be embedded within the National Malaria Strategic Plan (NMSP) cycle. This process moves beyond simple risk mapping to a rigorous cycle of optimization:

• Granular stratification: This involves using composite metrics (combining prevalence, incidence, and mortality) to segment operational units, rather than relying on broad national averages.
• Tailoring and prioritization: This requires developing “ideal scenarios” (what is epidemiologically required) versus “prioritized scenarios” (what is financially feasible). For example, this might involve restricting expensive indoor residual spraying (IRS) to high-burden zones while deploying next-generation nets solely in areas of confirmed pyrethroid resistance.
• Resource optimization: This entails using cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to scientifically justify trade-offs, such as cutting lower-impact interventions to preserve life-saving commodities in the face of budget shocks.

The implementation gap: systemic blind spots in subnational tailoring of malaria strategies

While the WHO framework is technically robust, its execution faces systemic “blind spots” that threaten to undermine the strategy:

• The private sector void: In high-burden nations such as Nigeria, the private sector acts as the primary entry point for febrile patients yet remains largely absent from national surveillance data. Without integrating these providers, SNT models risk being built on incomplete datasets, leading to flawed stratification.
• The incentive crisis: The operational culture of many national malaria programmes (NMPs) relies on donor-funded per diems to motivate training and data review. As funding from major donors contracts, this transactional motivation model is fracturing, threatening workforce retention and data quality.
• Centralization of analysis: There is a risk that SNT becomes an extractive process where districts feed data upwards to central planners without retaining analytical ownership. This centralization disempowers the district health teams (DHMTs) expected to execute the tailored strategies.

Operationalizing the subnational tailoring of malaria strategies: the role of digital peer networks

To operationalize SNT in a resource-constrained environment, national malaria programmes require a low-cost mechanism to drive district-level ownership and data quality that goes beyond traditional cascade training. The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has developed a digital peer-learning model that warrants examination by technical specialists as a complement to standard capacity-building approaches.

• Shifting from incentives to intrinsic motivation: Traditional training workshops often rely on per diems to ensure attendance. In contrast, the TGLF model connects health workers in digital cohorts to share problem-solving strategies without extrinsic financial incentives. Empirical data from recent cohorts involving 1,715 health workers indicate that participants report high levels of practice application (rated 5.13 on a 6-point scale) based purely on professional recognition and peer accountability. This suggests that intrinsic motivation can be sustained digitally, a critical finding as external funding for operational costs diminishes.
• Validating granular data through ground-level intelligence: SNT models depend entirely on the quality of input data. Digital peer networks can serve as a listening mechanism to surface “tacit knowledge” from the frontline that quantitative surveillance misses. For instance, during recent Teach to Reach sessions, health workers provided over 400 narrative accounts of specific local barriers – such as cultural resistance to bed nets due to associations with burial shrouds – that would not appear in DHIS2 reports. This qualitative intelligence provides a necessary layer of validation for stratification maps.
• Devolving analytical capacity to the district: True SNT requires districts to function as data users, not merely data collectors. The peer-learning platform employs a structured “Impact Accelerator” methodology, which guides frontline staff to conduct their own root-cause analyses (for example, using the “Five Whys” technique) rather than receiving top-down instruction. In Nigeria, working with UNICEF and NPHCDA, The Geneva Learning Foundation supported 4,300 health workers to identify and resolve local bottlenecks in a matter of weeks, effectively decentralizing the “tailoring” process to the community level.
• Cost-efficiency and sustainability: Traditional face-to-face training and supervision are resource-intensive. Comparative data suggests the peer-learning model delivers capacity building at approximately 90% lower cost than traditional technical assistance methods. This is primarily by virtue of scalability: costs very little whether there are 10 or 1,000 participants. Furthermore, in a country-specific study, 82% of a cohort reported using TGLF’s peer learning model for their own needs, and 78% said they needed no further assistance from TGLF. More than half of participants stay in touch because they want to. This aligns with both the value for money and sustainability mandates of malaria partners.

We need more than technical precision to overcome operational inertia

The WHO’s Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions guidance provides the necessary technical standards, stratification algorithms, and modeling tools for the next phase of malaria control. However, technical precision alone cannot overcome operational inertia.

TGLF’s peer-learning model demonstrates that it is possible to shift from top-down instruction to lateral learning, and from extrinsic financial incentives to intrinsic professional motivation. For technical partners and epidemiologists, integrating these two approaches – rigorous technical stratification coupled with broad-based workforce mobilization – could provide an innovative path to sustaining gains in a fragile funding landscape.

Image: “Contours of Local Knowledge”, The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. This installation stretches organic planes across a web of taut, intersecting lines, echoing how malaria responses must adapt to the distinct shapes of local realities. The tension between each form –sometimes pulling apart, sometimes holding together – mirrors the work of tailoring strategies to varied terrains, communities, and transmission patterns. By revealing strength in flexibility and coherence in diversity, the piece evokes a central truth of subnational action: health systems become most effective when they align with the textures of the places and people they serve.

References

1. Goodman, C., Tougher, S., Shang, T.J., Visser, T., 2024. Improving malaria case management with artemisinin-based combination therapies and malaria rapid diagnostic tests in private medicine retail outlets in sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review. PLoS ONE 19, e0286718. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286718
2. Sadki, R., 2024. Ahead of Teach to Reach 11, health leaders from 45 countries share malaria experiences in REACH network session. https://doi.org/10.59350/vhky9-fvf32
3. The Geneva Learning Foundation, 2024. World Malaria Day 2024: We need new ways to support health workers leading change with local communities. https://doi.org/10.59350/yrn1r-hpz62
4. Thawer, S.G., Chacky, F., Runge, M. et al. Sub-national stratification of malaria risk in mainland Tanzania: a simplified assembly of survey and routine data. Malar J 19, 177 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-020-03250-4
5. The Geneva Learning Foundation. Teach to Reach 11 – Malaria: Turning the tide. Listening and Learning report 19, 2025. The Geneva Learning Foundation, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15126588.
6. Venkatesan, P., 2025. WHO world malaria report 2024. The Lancet Microbe 6, 101073. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanmic.2025.101073
7. World Health Organization. Guiding principles for prioritizing malaria interventions in resource-constrained country contexts to achieve maximum impact. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/B09044
8. World Health Organization. Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions: reference manual. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2025. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240115712
9. World Health Organization. World Malaria Report 2024. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024.

#globalHealth #guideline #implementationGap #learningStrategy2 #malaria #peerLearning #snt #theGenevaLearningFoundation #worldHealthOrganization

Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions: bridging the gap between planning and implementation

The global malaria response is currently navigating a convergence of crises. Epidemiologically, the reduction in mortality has plateaued. Biologically, threats from Anopheles stephensi and partial artemisinin resistance are accelerating. Financially, the 2025 landscape is defined by a severe contraction in foreign assistance, necessitating a radical optimization of resources. In this context, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) new guidance, Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions (2025), offers a necessary technical framework.

However, the manual relies on an implementation architecture that remains fragile. To succeed, the technical rigor of subnational tailoring (SNT) should be coupled with an operational mechanism capable of mobilizing the workforce in the current context. This article examines how digital peer learning-to-action networks offer a potential mechanism to address the operational deficits of conventional technical assistance and capacity building.

Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies: moving from blanket coverage to allocative efficiency

The rationale for SNT rests on the recognition that transmission heterogeneity – driven by ecology, urbanization, and human behaviour – renders national averages insufficient for operational planning. The WHO guidance codifies a ten-step “Data-to-Action Loop,” designed to be embedded within the National Malaria Strategic Plan (NMSP) cycle. This process moves beyond simple risk mapping to a rigorous cycle of optimization:

• Granular stratification: This involves using composite metrics (combining prevalence, incidence, and mortality) to segment operational units, rather than relying on broad national averages.
• Tailoring and prioritization: This requires developing “ideal scenarios” (what is epidemiologically required) versus “prioritized scenarios” (what is financially feasible). For example, this might involve restricting expensive indoor residual spraying (IRS) to high-burden zones while deploying next-generation nets solely in areas of confirmed pyrethroid resistance.
• Resource optimization: This entails using cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to scientifically justify trade-offs, such as cutting lower-impact interventions to preserve life-saving commodities in the face of budget shocks.

The implementation gap: systemic blind spots in subnational tailoring of malaria strategies

While the WHO framework is technically robust, its execution faces systemic “blind spots” that threaten to undermine the strategy:

• The private sector void: In high-burden nations such as Nigeria, the private sector acts as the primary entry point for febrile patients yet remains largely absent from national surveillance data. Without integrating these providers, SNT models risk being built on incomplete datasets, leading to flawed stratification.
• The incentive crisis: The operational culture of many national malaria programmes (NMPs) relies on donor-funded per diems to motivate training and data review. As funding from major donors contracts, this transactional motivation model is fracturing, threatening workforce retention and data quality.
• Centralization of analysis: There is a risk that SNT becomes an extractive process where districts feed data upwards to central planners without retaining analytical ownership. This centralization disempowers the district health teams (DHMTs) expected to execute the tailored strategies.

Operationalizing the subnational tailoring of malaria strategies: the role of digital peer networks

To operationalize SNT in a resource-constrained environment, national malaria programmes require a low-cost mechanism to drive district-level ownership and data quality that goes beyond traditional cascade training. The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has developed a digital peer-learning model that warrants examination by technical specialists as a complement to standard capacity-building approaches.

• Shifting from incentives to intrinsic motivation: Traditional training workshops often rely on per diems to ensure attendance. In contrast, the TGLF model connects health workers in digital cohorts to share problem-solving strategies without extrinsic financial incentives. Empirical data from recent cohorts involving 1,715 health workers indicate that participants report high levels of practice application (rated 5.13 on a 6-point scale) based purely on professional recognition and peer accountability. This suggests that intrinsic motivation can be sustained digitally, a critical finding as external funding for operational costs diminishes.
• Validating granular data through ground-level intelligence: SNT models depend entirely on the quality of input data. Digital peer networks can serve as a listening mechanism to surface “tacit knowledge” from the frontline that quantitative surveillance misses. For instance, during recent Teach to Reach sessions, health workers provided over 400 narrative accounts of specific local barriers – such as cultural resistance to bed nets due to associations with burial shrouds – that would not appear in DHIS2 reports. This qualitative intelligence provides a necessary layer of validation for stratification maps.
• Devolving analytical capacity to the district: True SNT requires districts to function as data users, not merely data collectors. The peer-learning platform employs a structured “Impact Accelerator” methodology, which guides frontline staff to conduct their own root-cause analyses (for example, using the “Five Whys” technique) rather than receiving top-down instruction. In Nigeria, working with UNICEF and NPHCDA, The Geneva Learning Foundation supported 4,300 health workers to identify and resolve local bottlenecks in a matter of weeks, effectively decentralizing the “tailoring” process to the community level.
• Cost-efficiency and sustainability: Traditional face-to-face training and supervision are resource-intensive. Comparative data suggests the peer-learning model delivers capacity building at approximately 90% lower cost than traditional technical assistance methods. This is primarily by virtue of scalability: costs very little whether there are 10 or 1,000 participants. Furthermore, in a country-specific study, 82% of a cohort reported using TGLF’s peer learning model for their own needs, and 78% said they needed no further assistance from TGLF. More than half of participants stay in touch because they want to. This aligns with both the value for money and sustainability mandates of malaria partners.

We need more than technical precision to overcome operational inertia

The WHO’s Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions guidance provides the necessary technical standards, stratification algorithms, and modeling tools for the next phase of malaria control. However, technical precision alone cannot overcome operational inertia.

TGLF’s peer-learning model demonstrates that it is possible to shift from top-down instruction to lateral learning, and from extrinsic financial incentives to intrinsic professional motivation. For technical partners and epidemiologists, integrating these two approaches – rigorous technical stratification coupled with broad-based workforce mobilization – could provide an innovative path to sustaining gains in a fragile funding landscape.

Image: “Contours of Local Knowledge”, The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025. This installation stretches organic planes across a web of taut, intersecting lines, echoing how malaria responses must adapt to the distinct shapes of local realities. The tension between each form –sometimes pulling apart, sometimes holding together – mirrors the work of tailoring strategies to varied terrains, communities, and transmission patterns. By revealing strength in flexibility and coherence in diversity, the piece evokes a central truth of subnational action: health systems become most effective when they align with the textures of the places and people they serve.

References

1. Goodman, C., Tougher, S., Shang, T.J., Visser, T., 2024. Improving malaria case management with artemisinin-based combination therapies and malaria rapid diagnostic tests in private medicine retail outlets in sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review. PLoS ONE 19, e0286718. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286718
2. Sadki, R., 2024. Ahead of Teach to Reach 11, health leaders from 45 countries share malaria experiences in REACH network session. https://doi.org/10.59350/vhky9-fvf32
3. The Geneva Learning Foundation, 2024. World Malaria Day 2024: We need new ways to support health workers leading change with local communities. https://doi.org/10.59350/yrn1r-hpz62
4. Thawer, S.G., Chacky, F., Runge, M. et al. Sub-national stratification of malaria risk in mainland Tanzania: a simplified assembly of survey and routine data. Malar J 19, 177 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-020-03250-4
5. The Geneva Learning Foundation. Teach to Reach 11 – Malaria: Turning the tide. Listening and Learning report 19, 2025. The Geneva Learning Foundation, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15126588.
6. Venkatesan, P., 2025. WHO world malaria report 2024. The Lancet Microbe 6, 101073. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanmic.2025.101073
7. World Health Organization. Guiding principles for prioritizing malaria interventions in resource-constrained country contexts to achieve maximum impact. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/B09044
8. World Health Organization. Subnational tailoring of malaria strategies and interventions: reference manual. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2025. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240115712
9. World Health Organization. World Malaria Report 2024. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024.

#globalHealth #guideline #implementationGap #learningStrategy2 #malaria #peerLearning #snt #theGenevaLearningFoundation #worldHealthOrganization

Register • November 19 @ 3:00 pm EST

The Community College Consortium for OER #CCCOER launches Open Exchange, a webinar series for open education peers to engage in informal, candid discussions about challenges and ideas—no recordings; just open dialogue.

Register now to join and suggest topics!
https://twp.ai/E6DXp8

#OpenEducation #OERCommunity #HigherEd #PeerLearning #CCCOER

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

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

Video-Podcast »Gemeinsam wachsen: Peer Learning für Solopreneure« 01

https://doschu.com/2025/11/podcast-gemeinsam-wachsen-peer-learning-solopreneure-01/

Video-Podcast »Gemeinsam wachsen: Peer Learning für Solopreneure« 01

https://doschu.com/2025/11/podcast-gemeinsam-wachsen-peer-learning-solopreneure-01/

Video-Podcast »Gemeinsam wachsen: Peer Learning für Solopreneure« 01

https://doschu.com/2025/11/podcast-gemeinsam-wachsen-peer-learning-solopreneure-01/

Video-Podcast »Gemeinsam wachsen: Peer Learning für Solopreneure« 01

https://doschu.com/2025/11/podcast-gemeinsam-wachsen-peer-learning-solopreneure-01/

Video-Podcast »Gemeinsam wachsen: Peer Learning für Solopreneure« 01

https://doschu.com/2025/11/podcast-gemeinsam-wachsen-peer-learning-solopreneure-01/

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

• Sadki, R., 2023. Investing in the health workforce is vital to tackle climate change: A new report shares insights from over 1,200 on the frontline. Reda Sadki. https://doi.org/10.59350/3kkfc-9rb27
• Sadki, R., 2024. Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
• Sadki, R., 2025. A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action. https://doi.org/10.59350/gr56c-cdd51
• 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
• Sadki, R., 2025. Eric Schmidt’s San Francisco Consensus about the impact of artificial intelligence. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21109
• Sadki, R., 2025. Why peer learning is critical to survive the Age of Artificial Intelligence. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21123

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

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

• Sadki, R., 2023. Investing in the health workforce is vital to tackle climate change: A new report shares insights from over 1,200 on the frontline. Reda Sadki. https://doi.org/10.59350/3kkfc-9rb27
• Sadki, R., 2024. Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
• Sadki, R., 2025. A global health framework for Artificial Intelligence as co-worker to support networked learning and local action. https://doi.org/10.59350/gr56c-cdd51
• 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
• Sadki, R., 2025. Eric Schmidt’s San Francisco Consensus about the impact of artificial intelligence. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21109
• Sadki, R., 2025. Why peer learning is critical to survive the Age of Artificial Intelligence. https://doi.org/10.59350/redasadki.21123

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

Development is adaptation: Bill Gates’s shift is actually about linking climate change and health

Bill Gates’ latest public memo marks a significant shift in how the world’s most influential philanthropist frames the challenge of climate change. He sees a future in which responding to climate threats and promoting well-being become two sides of the same mission, declaring, “development is adaptation.”

Gates argues that the principal metric for climate action should not be global temperature or near-term emission reductions alone, but measured improvement in the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

He argues that the focus of climate action should be on the “greatest possible impact for the most vulnerable people.”

The suffering of poor communities must take priority, since, in his view, “climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.”

Climate change is about the health of the most vulnerable

This position resonates with a core message that has emerged across global health over the past several years: climate change is about health.

New data from the 2025 Lancet Countdown draw a stark picture:

• Heat-related mortality has risen 63 percent since the 1990s.
• Deaths from wildfire smoke and air pollution caused by fossil fuels continue to climb.
• Food insecurity, driven by erratic weather, is destabilizing health and economies at once.
• Thirteen out of twenty key health indicators linked to climate impacts now signal urgent action is needed.

Health professionals, policy coalitions, scientists, and patient advocates have succeeded in bringing this nexus between climate and health squarely to the global agenda, culminating in recent summits where health finally shared the main stage with energy and economics.

Yet just as the science and advocacy align, political attention risks fragmenting.

Despite sweeping reports, evidence, and high-level declarations, momentum can ebb.

There is now a risk that the transformative potential embedded in the climate-health linkage may not be fully realized.

Here, Gates’s pivot could actually be the inflection point that the field needs.

The case for health workforce-centered adaptation

For nearly a decade, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has been advocating and demonstrating that meeting complex humanitarian, health, and development challenges requires strengthening not just technical capacities or disease programs, but the underlying connective tissue of the health system: its workforce.

TGLF’s digital peer-learning platform now connects over 70,000 health workers across more than 130 countries.

These practitioners – mostly in government service, often in low-resource or crisis-affected settings – are the first to observe, and often the first to respond to, the local impacts of climate change on health.

Their reports show that health impacts are immediate and multi-faceted: rising malnutrition from crop failures, increases in waterborne diseases following floods, new burdens from air pollution and heat, and psychological distress from repeated disasters.

What sets this approach apart is its systemic focus.

Climate change is not a threat that can be “verticalized”.

It demands responses that are adaptive, distributed, and coordinated across all levels of the health system.

TGLF’s innovation lies in harnessing a distributed network to surface and scale locally-grounded solutions:

• Peer learning accelerates uptake of proven local adaptations – health workers share and adapt practices in near real time.
• Digital networks enable early warning and rapid, cost-effective dissemination of context-appropriate strategies, even in remote settings.
• The workforce is not merely the channel for external solutions but is positioned as a community of problem-solvers and trusted communicators, leaders in building and sustaining resilience.

Data from these initiatives demonstrate that such networked learning delivers results at scale, often with return on investment superior to parallel vertical programs, and increases system resilience and flexibility.

Development is adaptation: the need for human capital investment

The urgency and logic of these approaches are reinforced by ongoing policy developments ahead of COP30:

• WHO’s Global Action Plan on Climate Change and Health, adopted at the World Health Assembly in May 2025, recognizes that without context-sensitive system strengthening, existing approaches are insufficient, and positions knowledge and workforce mobilization as strategic imperatives.
• The COP30 Belem Health Action Plan establishes adaptation of the health sector to climate change as an international priority, calling for holistic, cross-sectoral strategies, and “community engagement and participation as foundational to implementation.”

Without empowered and connected health workers, no global action plan will reach those most at risk or maintain public trust.

A strategic investment imperative: why the next breakthrough must be human-centered

The philanthropic search for cost-effective, scalable, and measurable impact has built immense legacies in reducing child mortality and combating infectious disease.

Gates’ own approach of pioneering “vertical” innovations, optimizing delivery through metrics, and prioritizing technical solutions has been transformative, especially at the intersection of science and delivery.

However, emerging science show the limits of technical “magic bullets” absent robust, interconnected local systems.

Trust, legitimacy, and action flow from the relationships health workers build in – and with – their communities.

If development is adaptation, what does this mean for the next phase in climate-health philanthropy?

If the measure of climate action’s value is the scale and speed at which lives are improved and disasters averted, investing in the human infrastructure of the health system is the most evidence-based, cost-effective, and legacy-ensuring play available.

1. Investing in the health workforce is itself a breakthrough technology: It increases the absorptive capacity of low-resource health systems, making innovations stick and catalyzing uptake well beyond single-disease silos or narrow infrastructure projects.
2. Long-term, system-wide resilience is built by equipping health workers – not simply with technology or training from above, but with platforms for peer learning, rapid response, and locally-driven adaptation coordinated through agile networks.
3. The network effect is real: A million motivated and networked health practitioners is likely to surface, refine, and implement interventions at a scale and pace that outstrips most top-down models. Digitally-enabled peer learning, tested by TGLF, could link to AI systems to provide distributed AI-human intelligence that supports effective action.

Without these bridges, even the best technology or policies will fail to gain a durable footprint at community level, especially as climate impacts deepen.

Health is where climate change action matters most

The world is waking to the reality that technical solutions alone cannot future-proof health against climate risks.

We need to focus on the highest-value levers.

This starts with a distributed, networked workforce at the coalface of the crisis, empowered to adapt, share, and lead.

In a world of accelerating climate shocks and retreating political will, the boldest, most rational bet for sustained global impact is to go “horizontal” – to invest in the people and the systems that connect them.

By helping build adaptive, digitally connected networks of health professionals, philanthropy can reinforce the foundation upon which all high-impact innovation rests.

This is not a departure from the pursuit of technology-driven change, but rather the necessary evolution to ensure every breakthrough finds its mark – and that trust in science and public health stays strong under pressure.

If ever there was a time for rigorous, data-driven engagement that bridges technology, health, and community resilience, this is it.

Every indicator – scientific, economic, social – suggests that communities will confront more climate disruptions in the coming years.

Investing in the people who translate science into health, who stand with their communities in crisis, is the most robust, scalable, and sustainable bet that any philanthropist or society can make.

By focusing on these vital human connections, the world can ensure that innovation works where it matters most – and that the next chapter of climate action measures true success by the health, security, and opportunity it delivers for all.

History will honor those whose support creates not only tools and policies, but the living networks of trust and craft upon which community resilience depends.

That is the climate breakthrough waiting to happen.

References

1. COP30 Belém Action Plan. (2025). The Belém Health Action Plan for the Adaptation of the Health Sector to Climate Change. https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-health/climate-change-and-health/advocacy-partnerships/talks/health-at-cop30
2. Ebi, K.L., et al. (2025). The attribution of human health outcomes to climate change: transdisciplinary practical guidance. Climatic Change, 178, 143. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-025-03976-7
3. Ebi, K.L., Haines, A. (2019). The imperative for climate action to protect health. The New England Journal of Medicine, 380, 263–273. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra1807873
4. Jacobson, J., Brooks, A., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R. (2023). Learning from frontline health workers in the climate change era. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7316466
5. Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Steed, I. (2024). Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action (Version 1.0). The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11194918
6. Romanello, M., et al. (2025). The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. The Lancet S0140673625019191. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(25)01919-1
7. Sadki, R. (2024). Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
8. Sadki, R. (2024). Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
9. Sadki, R. (2024). The cost of inaction: Quantifying the impact of climate change on health. The Geneva Learning Foundation. 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. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(25)00003-8
11. Storeng, K. T. (2014). The GAVI Alliance and the Gates approach to health system strengthening. Global Public Health, 9(8), 865–879. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2014.940362
12. World Health Organization. (2025). Draft Global Action Plan on Climate Change and Health. Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly. https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA78/A78_4Add2-en.pdf

#billGates #climateAndHealth #climateChangeAndHealth #development #humanCapitalInvestment #lancetCountdown #peerLearning #theGenevaLearningFoundation #workforce

Development is adaptation: Bill Gates’s shift is actually about linking climate change and health

Bill Gates’ latest public memo marks a significant shift in how the world’s most influential philanthropist frames the challenge of climate change. He sees a future in which responding to climate threats and promoting well-being become two sides of the same mission, declaring, “development is adaptation.”

Gates argues that the principal metric for climate action should not be global temperature or near-term emission reductions alone, but measured improvement in the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations.

He argues that the focus of climate action should be on the “greatest possible impact for the most vulnerable people.”

The suffering of poor communities must take priority, since, in his view, “climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause.”

Climate change is about the health of the most vulnerable

This position resonates with a core message that has emerged across global health over the past several years: climate change is about health.

New data from the 2025 Lancet Countdown draw a stark picture:

• Heat-related mortality has risen 63 percent since the 1990s.
• Deaths from wildfire smoke and air pollution caused by fossil fuels continue to climb.
• Food insecurity, driven by erratic weather, is destabilizing health and economies at once.
• Thirteen out of twenty key health indicators linked to climate impacts now signal urgent action is needed.

Health professionals, policy coalitions, scientists, and patient advocates have succeeded in bringing this nexus between climate and health squarely to the global agenda, culminating in recent summits where health finally shared the main stage with energy and economics.

Yet just as the science and advocacy align, political attention risks fragmenting.

Despite sweeping reports, evidence, and high-level declarations, momentum can ebb.

There is now a risk that the transformative potential embedded in the climate-health linkage may not be fully realized.

Here, Gates’s pivot could actually be the inflection point that the field needs.

The case for health workforce-centered adaptation

For nearly a decade, The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) has been advocating and demonstrating that meeting complex humanitarian, health, and development challenges requires strengthening not just technical capacities or disease programs, but the underlying connective tissue of the health system: its workforce.

TGLF’s digital peer-learning platform now connects over 70,000 health workers across more than 130 countries.

These practitioners – mostly in government service, often in low-resource or crisis-affected settings – are the first to observe, and often the first to respond to, the local impacts of climate change on health.

Their reports show that health impacts are immediate and multi-faceted: rising malnutrition from crop failures, increases in waterborne diseases following floods, new burdens from air pollution and heat, and psychological distress from repeated disasters.

What sets this approach apart is its systemic focus.

Climate change is not a threat that can be “verticalized”.

It demands responses that are adaptive, distributed, and coordinated across all levels of the health system.

TGLF’s innovation lies in harnessing a distributed network to surface and scale locally-grounded solutions:

• Peer learning accelerates uptake of proven local adaptations – health workers share and adapt practices in near real time.
• Digital networks enable early warning and rapid, cost-effective dissemination of context-appropriate strategies, even in remote settings.
• The workforce is not merely the channel for external solutions but is positioned as a community of problem-solvers and trusted communicators, leaders in building and sustaining resilience.

Data from these initiatives demonstrate that such networked learning delivers results at scale, often with return on investment superior to parallel vertical programs, and increases system resilience and flexibility.

Development is adaptation: the need for human capital investment

The urgency and logic of these approaches are reinforced by ongoing policy developments ahead of COP30:

• WHO’s Global Action Plan on Climate Change and Health, adopted at the World Health Assembly in May 2025, recognizes that without context-sensitive system strengthening, existing approaches are insufficient, and positions knowledge and workforce mobilization as strategic imperatives.
• The COP30 Belem Health Action Plan establishes adaptation of the health sector to climate change as an international priority, calling for holistic, cross-sectoral strategies, and “community engagement and participation as foundational to implementation.”

Without empowered and connected health workers, no global action plan will reach those most at risk or maintain public trust.

A strategic investment imperative: why the next breakthrough must be human-centered

The philanthropic search for cost-effective, scalable, and measurable impact has built immense legacies in reducing child mortality and combating infectious disease.

Gates’ own approach of pioneering “vertical” innovations, optimizing delivery through metrics, and prioritizing technical solutions has been transformative, especially at the intersection of science and delivery.

However, emerging science show the limits of technical “magic bullets” absent robust, interconnected local systems.

Trust, legitimacy, and action flow from the relationships health workers build in – and with – their communities.

If development is adaptation, what does this mean for the next phase in climate-health philanthropy?

If the measure of climate action’s value is the scale and speed at which lives are improved and disasters averted, investing in the human infrastructure of the health system is the most evidence-based, cost-effective, and legacy-ensuring play available.

1. Investing in the health workforce is itself a breakthrough technology: It increases the absorptive capacity of low-resource health systems, making innovations stick and catalyzing uptake well beyond single-disease silos or narrow infrastructure projects.
2. Long-term, system-wide resilience is built by equipping health workers – not simply with technology or training from above, but with platforms for peer learning, rapid response, and locally-driven adaptation coordinated through agile networks.
3. The network effect is real: A million motivated and networked health practitioners is likely to surface, refine, and implement interventions at a scale and pace that outstrips most top-down models. Digitally-enabled peer learning, tested by TGLF, could link to AI systems to provide distributed AI-human intelligence that supports effective action.

Without these bridges, even the best technology or policies will fail to gain a durable footprint at community level, especially as climate impacts deepen.

Health is where climate change action matters most

The world is waking to the reality that technical solutions alone cannot future-proof health against climate risks.

We need to focus on the highest-value levers.

This starts with a distributed, networked workforce at the coalface of the crisis, empowered to adapt, share, and lead.

In a world of accelerating climate shocks and retreating political will, the boldest, most rational bet for sustained global impact is to go “horizontal” – to invest in the people and the systems that connect them.

By helping build adaptive, digitally connected networks of health professionals, philanthropy can reinforce the foundation upon which all high-impact innovation rests.

This is not a departure from the pursuit of technology-driven change, but rather the necessary evolution to ensure every breakthrough finds its mark – and that trust in science and public health stays strong under pressure.

If ever there was a time for rigorous, data-driven engagement that bridges technology, health, and community resilience, this is it.

Every indicator – scientific, economic, social – suggests that communities will confront more climate disruptions in the coming years.

Investing in the people who translate science into health, who stand with their communities in crisis, is the most robust, scalable, and sustainable bet that any philanthropist or society can make.

By focusing on these vital human connections, the world can ensure that innovation works where it matters most – and that the next chapter of climate action measures true success by the health, security, and opportunity it delivers for all.

History will honor those whose support creates not only tools and policies, but the living networks of trust and craft upon which community resilience depends.

That is the climate breakthrough waiting to happen.

References

1. COP30 Belém Action Plan. (2025). The Belém Health Action Plan for the Adaptation of the Health Sector to Climate Change. https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-health/climate-change-and-health/advocacy-partnerships/talks/health-at-cop30
2. Ebi, K.L., et al. (2025). The attribution of human health outcomes to climate change: transdisciplinary practical guidance. Climatic Change, 178, 143. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-025-03976-7
3. Ebi, K.L., Haines, A. (2019). The imperative for climate action to protect health. The New England Journal of Medicine, 380, 263–273. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra1807873
4. Jacobson, J., Brooks, A., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R. (2023). Learning from frontline health workers in the climate change era. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7316466
5. Jones, I., Mbuh, C., Sadki, R., Steed, I. (2024). Climate change and health: Health workers on climate, community, and the urgent need for action (Version 1.0). The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11194918
6. Romanello, M., et al. (2025). The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. The Lancet S0140673625019191. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(25)01919-1
7. Sadki, R. (2024). Health at COP29: Workforce crisis meets climate crisis. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.59350/sdmgt-ptt98
8. Sadki, R. (2024). Strengthening primary health care in a changing climate. The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.59350/5s2zf-s6879
9. Sadki, R. (2024). The cost of inaction: Quantifying the impact of climate change on health. The Geneva Learning Foundation. 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. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(25)00003-8
11. Storeng, K. T. (2014). The GAVI Alliance and the Gates approach to health system strengthening. Global Public Health, 9(8), 865–879. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2014.940362
12. World Health Organization. (2025). Draft Global Action Plan on Climate Change and Health. Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly. https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA78/A78_4Add2-en.pdf

#billGates #climateAndHealth #climateChangeAndHealth #development #humanCapitalInvestment #lancetCountdown #peerLearning #theGenevaLearningFoundation #workforce

@floriandagner Danke für die Einblicke! Gibt es den in der #ByCS schulübergreifende Foren oder eine andere Möglichkeit Peers zu finden und auch asynchron zu kommunizieren ? Die Gruppe scheint ja eher über bestehende Kontakte entstanden zu sein oder täuscht der Eindruck? #peerlearning #peerfinder

neu auf #GadgetGedanken : lernOS Convention 2025: Mind the Knowledge Gap

Die lernOS Convention 2025 zeigte, wie gemeinsames Lernen m

https://www.gadgetgedanken.de/2025/07/loscon25-mind-the-knowledge-gap/

#Barcamp #CommunityLearning #CorporateLearning #DigitalWorkplace #DigitaleTransformation #HybrideArbeit #KnowledgeGap #KnowledgeManagement #KünstlicheIntelligenz #Lernkultur #loscon #loscon25 #loscon26 #Mitarbeitermotivation #PeerLearning #PromptEngineering #WeiterbildungImUnternehmen #Wissensmanagement

Many health leaders are highly analytical, adaptive learners who thrive on solving complex problems in dynamic, real-world contexts.

Their expertise is grounded in years of field experience, where they have honed their ability to rapidly generate insights, test ideas, and innovate solutions in collaboration with diverse stakeholders.

In January 2021, as countries were beginning to introduce new COVID-19 vaccines, Kate O’Brien, who leads WHO’s immunization efforts, connected global learning to local action:

“For COVID-19 vaccines […] there are just too many lessons that are being learned, especially according to different vaccine platforms, different communities of prioritization that need to be vaccinated. So [everyone]  has got to be able to scale, has got to be able to deal with complexity, has got to be able to do personal, local innovation to actually overcome the challenges.”

https://youtube.com/live/uvv-g0lXy4c

In an Insights Live session with the Geneva Learning Foundation in 2022, she made a compelling case that “the people who are working in the program at that most local level have to be able to adapt, to be agile, to innovate things that will work in that particular setting, with those leaders in the community, with those families.”

https://youtube.com/live/nCB20y49hBI

However, unlike Kate O’Brien, some senior leaders in global health disconnect their own learning practices and their assumptions about how others learn best.

When it comes to designing learning initiatives for their teams or organizations, these leaders may default to a more simplistic, behaviorist approach.

They may equate learning with the acquisition and application of specific skills or knowledge, and thus focus on creating structured, content-driven training programs.

The appeal of behaviorist platforms – with their promise of efficient, scalable delivery and easily measured outcomes – can be seductive in the resource-constrained, results-driven world of global health.

Furthermore, leaders may hold assumptions that health workers – especially those at the community level – do not require higher-order critical thinking skills, that they simply need a predetermined set of knowledge and procedures.

This view is fundamentally misguided.

A robust body of scientific evidence on learning culture and performance demonstrates that the most effective organizations are those that foster continuous learning, critical reflection, and adaptive problem-solving at all levels.

Health workers at the frontlines face complex, unpredictable challenges that demand situational judgment, creative thinking, and the ability to learn from experience.

Failing to cultivate these capacities not only underestimates the potential of these health workers, but it also constrains the performance and resilience of health systems as a whole.

The problem is that this approach fails to cultivate the very qualities that make these leaders effective learners and problem-solvers.

Behaviorist techniques, with their emphasis on passive information absorption and narrow, pre-defined outcomes, do not foster the critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative capacity needed to tackle complex health challenges.

They may produce short-term gains in narrow domains, but they cannot develop the adaptive expertise required for long-term impact in ever-shifting contexts.

To help health leaders recognize this disconnect, it is useful to engage them in reflective dialogue about their own learning processes.

By unpacking real-world examples of how they have solved thorny problems or generated novel insights, we can highlight the sophisticated cognitive strategies and collaborative dynamics at play.

We can show how they constantly question assumptions, synthesize diverse perspectives, and iterate solutions – all skills that are essential for navigating complexity, but are poorly served by rigid, content-focused training.

The goal is not to dismiss the need for foundational knowledge or skills, but rather to emphasize that in the face of evolving challenges, adaptive learning capacity is the real differentiator.

It is the ability to think critically, to imagine new possibilities, to learn from failure, and to co-create with others that drives meaningful change.

By tying this insight directly to leaders’ own experiences and values, we can inspire them to champion learning approaches that mirror the richness and dynamism of their personal growth journeys.

Ultimately, the most impactful health organizations will be those that not only equip people with essential skills, but that also nurture the underlying cognitive and collaborative capacities needed to continually learn, adapt, and innovate.

By recognizing and leveraging the powerful learning practices they themselves embody, health leaders can shape organizational cultures and strategies that truly empower people to navigate complexity and drive transformative change.

This shift requires letting go of the illusion of control and predictability that behaviorism offers, and instead embracing the messiness and uncertainty of real learning.

It means creating space for experimentation, reflection, and dialogue, and trusting in people’s inherent capacity to grow and create.

It is a challenging transition, but one that health leaders are uniquely positioned to lead – if they can bridge the gap between how they learn and how they seek to enable others’ learning.

Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2024

https://redasadki.me/2024/06/30/why-health-leaders-who-are-critical-thinkers-choose-rote-learning-for-others/

#adaptiveLearning #coCreation #criticalThinking #healthLearning #immunization #ImmunizationAgenda2030 #KateOBrien #leadership #learningCulture #learningStrategy #peerLearning

#MeinZiel23 #Leadership #SelfLeadership #HumbleInquiry #HumbleLeadership #KI #LeadershipCoachingChallenge #Peerlearning #haltungentscheidet

Seit einiger Zeit beschäftige ich mich mit der Frage, wie ich mehr unvoreingenommene Fragen für eine wertschätzendere Kommunikation nutzen kann. #HumbleInquiry ist ein solcher Ansatz, der mehr eine Haltung oder gar eine Philosophie ist als eine Methode.

Wie kann #KI ich bei der Entwicklung eines dazu passenden #Peerlearning Konzeptes #KI nutzen?

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Save the Date: am 16.10. von 16:00-17:30 Uhr findet die erste Ausgabe des auf der #loscon25 angekündigten CONNECT Meetup statt. Das Meetup wird sich mit Themen rund um #lernOS, #Wissensmanagement, #CorporateLearning und #DigitalWorkplace beschäftigen. Im ersten Termin geht es um #PeerLearning mit dem #LearningCircle Konzept.

Traditional conferences are obsolete because a standardized approach for education & training to support creative work is obsolete.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2016/10/traditional-conferences-are-obsolete

#meetings #EventDesign #obsolescence #PeerLearning #eventprofs

Here's how to hold simple successful workshops that create memorable learning experiences and connections.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2018/07/simple-workshops

#meetings #EventDesign #workshops #SolutionRoom #PeerLearning #connection #eventprofs #assnchat

Here's how to hold simple successful workshops that create memorable learning experiences and connections.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2018/07/simple-workshops

#meetings #EventDesign #workshops #SolutionRoom #PeerLearning #connection #eventprofs #assnchat

💍#OER des Monats: Eine strukturierte Checkliste für das Onboarding neuer Tutor*innen in Tutorien, Übungen & Praktika – mit Themen wie Organisation, Aufgaben, Kommunikation, Einführungsgespräche, Rollenverständnis, Qualifizierungsangeboten & Peer-Formaten. Ideal zur Unterstützung in der hochschulischen Lehre.
📄 Zum Material und Download: https://www.twillo.de/edu-sharing/components/render/adb89fa0-457b-48dc-b64c-343572774ee0

#OERde #CCLde #hochschuldidaktik #OpenEducation #FediCampus #FediLZ #AcademiaEdu #AcademicMastodon #openscience #bildung #PeerLearning

Traditional conferences are obsolete because a standardized approach for education & training to support creative work is obsolete.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2016/10/traditional-conferences-are-obsolete

#meetings #EventDesign #obsolescence #PeerLearning #eventprofs

Auf der #loscon25 habe ich mit Christian und Shakil zum Thema " #PeerLearning groß machen" gepodcastet. Podcast ist verfügbar unter https://podcasts.cogneon.io/@loa/episodes/peer-learning-gros-machen-loscon25 (und überall, wo es gute Podcasts gibt) und in die KI-Basierte Dokumentation eingebettet: https://cogneon.github.io/loscon25doku/de/4-3-dueckert-kaiser/ - viel Spaß damit!

Die Moderator:innen Victoria Köstner und @haraldschirmer kurz vor Ende der #loscon25.
Save The Date für die #loscon26: 30.06. - 01.07.2026
#lernos #peerlearning

Marcel Kirchner teilt seine Erfahrung mit einer erfolgreichen Peer Learning Initiative auf der #loscon25 #lernos #peerlearning

@ewingo13 und @ThomasJenewein in der Schlange zum Mittagessen mit ihren Eindrücken zur #loscon25 #lernOS #peerlearning