To extend our influence on decision makers at the national level it is important to influence the agenda of global platforms and events where broader agendas are set by governments and others. Among these decision making fora are the World Health Assembly, the G7, the UNGA, the G20. This year we engaged in all four events. We issued a joint public statement with our private sector partner the Digitally Connected Care Coalition for the World Health Assembly, that was subsequently picked up by our regional partners RECAINSA.
We set up two working groups with coalition partners to engage in the G7 and in the G20. This ensured collective decision making on key issues, in particular the positioning that Transform Health was taking in relation to the G7 and G20. It also enabled the effective sharing of knowledge and information on government positions across different countries.
We met with UK government representatives in advance of the G7 summit to present them with our recommendations, which we also shared with our civil society partners. We then worked with civil society partners to encourage them to adopt our recommendations. We were pleased to see digital health included in the Final Leaders Statement for the first time and we issued a public statement cautiously welcoming this.
For the G20 we actively engaged through the Civil Society 20 Group, contributing to their position papers and statements, and ensuring digital health was prioritised in particular in the policy pack that represents global civil society’s collective call on G20 leaders. We ensured all information was fed back to our coalition partners in the G20 Working Group. We developed a set of recommendations that we circulated to all our partners engaged in the G20 Working Group for them to use in their government lobbying. We then issued a statement in response to the final Health Ministers’ Declaration expressing our disappointment with the final outcome. Through these engagements Transform Health is actively engaging in global conversation that have national level consequences on policy and funding priorities.
Other events we participated in include the Global Digital Health Forum, the African Health Agenda International conference (AHAIC), the AeHin Annual Conference, the Women in Technology Global Forum, the Medicus Mundi Symposium, International Planned Parenthood’s East and South East Asia Regional Forum, the Resilient Health Futures event, the Johnson and Johnson (J&J) Forum for the Future, and the Edison Alliance Health Meeting, the UN75 dialogue, and the World Health Summit.
#DigitalHealth was included as a priority in the #G7Summit Health Track for the first time. @Trans4m_Health welcomes this inclusion and encourages the #G7 to work closely with the G20 & G77 countries to implement these commitments. #HealthForAll https://t.co/1ldzmoVTLA
— Transform Health (@Trans4m_Health) June 9, 2021
A great success of 2021 was the launch of Digital Health Week, a moment that brought together our partners and other organisations worldwide to champion the role of digital health in their countries and contexts.
Transform Health created this space for organisations to set up and run their own events in their country and region. Digital Health Week is a moment, and an opportunity for organisations to tell their own stories, promote their own work, champion successes and highlight challenges, and importantly, to collaborate with others to accelerate the adoption of digital health to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
The events held during Digital Health Week brought together organisations such as the World Health Organisation, GIZ (German Development Cooperation), the Indonesian Public Health Association (IAKMI) and the Brazilian Association of Telemedicine and Telehealth. Organisations convened key stakeholders such as government ministers, CEOs of private companies, civil society organisations, youth and marginalised groups, including the participation of the Ministries of Health of Indonesia, Zanzibar, Bhutan, Lao PDR, India and Ghana.
Organisations also ran campaigns, published articles and podcasts, and shared best practices. Digital Health Week saw important conversations and shared learnings from digital health programs in low and middle income countries, the funding of digital health transformation, power imbalances in the collection and use of health data, how to govern health data ethically, and the interoperability of different platforms to strengthen health systems.
DHW gave AeHIN the opportunity to share member country knowledge, their current digital health projects, and create awareness on the importance of digital health foundations, especially governance.
Transform Health’s initiative has come at the right moment. We are at a point where mobile and e-health must be integrated into the delivery of health services. The benefits of digital health are enormous – so much so that we need to all come on board to put in the driving force.
The 2021 Digital Health Week reinforced the commitment of Transform Health Indonesia to achieve the digitalization of primary health care services in Indonesia by harnessing digital technology and use of health data to achieve UHC by 2030.
Transform Health launched a 🚨 new report w/ key calls to action.
— Transform Health (@Trans4m_Health) December 1, 2021
We're calling on political leaders, tech companies, international donors & other #DigitalHealth partners to accelerate progress to #UHC.
🧵THREAD on our key asks👇🏾 this #DigitalHealthWeek.https://t.co/pim8WLuov1
