Ahmed Ehsanur Rahman1, Janet Perkins2, Tapas Mazumder1, Cecilia Capello2, Shams El Arifeen1, Carlo Santarelli2
1icddr,b, Bangladesh; 2Enfants du Monde, Switzerland
Achieving the ambitious goals set out in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development will require transformative and collaborative partnerships at various levels. This is particularly true within the health sector. In our session, we will explore what we know about transformative partnerships between health services and communities, how this can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal targets, and how can we promote the transformative partnerships to leverage its true potential.
We will bring together experts representing the research community, policy-makers, multilateral organizations and civil society for an interactive, experimental session with participants to achieve the following envisioned outputs of the session: (1) Advance the consensus of the importance of community engagement as a strategy for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals among research, policy and practice communities and identify pathways for a more synergistic collaboration of these stakeholders; and (2) Identify how the evidence can best be translated into policy and practice to transform the relationship between health services and communities into a collaborative partnership and leverage this partnership to ensure equitable access to health services, increase societies’ and individuals’ capabilities to improve health and ensure accountability.
The session will be divided into three thirty-minute segments. For the first two segments, participants will be separated into two groups. In segment one, two expert contributors will be assigned to each group, though rather than giving a traditional presentation, they will be interviewed by a designated interviewer, following which there will be an interactive discussion with other participants. In segment two, the experts will change groups and follow the same methodology. In segment three, the plenary group will work together to consolidate the work from the first two segments and develop the session outputs. Our session will provide a platform for moving forward the dialogue between researchers, policy-makers and practitioners on this front. It will allow for an interactive debate in which the needs, priorities and experiences of different communities are explored and discussed. This exercise will allow for building a broader consensus regarding way forward in operationalizing transformative partnerships between health services and communities towards sustainable development.