CUGH 2024 Conference Plenary 4

IMPACT in Global Health: The Case of African Forum for Research and Education in Health (AFREhealth)
The term “Impact” is overly utilized in global health (GH) with a variety of implied definitions among academicians, practitioners, funders, policy makers, publishers, and manufacturing industry. But all too often, it is applied to add thrust to whatever has been discovered or accomplished. The outputs of our work are rarely explicitly connected to people living longer or better. Case studies can illustrate the differences in usage which may result from a combination of practical structural challenges at country/ international levels including the nature of funding that runs through cycles of less than 12 months to a few years. This does not motivate long-term outlook and sustainability of efforts to link long-term GH “impacts” in capacity development, research, service delivery and policies.
This plenary session will use AFREhealth to reflect on the following challenges:
a. What do the ultimate beneficiaries of global health work expect as “meaningful impact” and are different “levels or degrees of impact” inevitable?
b. How should individuals, leaders, institutions, countries, funders and grass-root and international organizations tackle the practical structural barriers to achieving “impact” that conforms to beneficiaries’ expectations?
c. Can global health actors be more intentional and commit to project/program designs that link global health work to the last mile that makes a greater difference to quality and longevity in people’s lives?
d. Should the impact in global health be assessed more uniformly?