The changing dynamics of mixed health systems in low and middle-income countries (LMIC)
Professor Kabir Sheikh discusses how social trends shape health systems in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on the complex mix of public-private, traditional-modern, and digital-nondigital axes. Health systems are social systems, and are shaped by broader trends such as urbanisation, commercialisation, the information revolution, and the post-pandemic social reordering. Against that backdrop, the configuration of health systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is often deeply heterogeneous or “mixed” across different intersecting axes, for instance: public-private, professional-lay, traditional-modern, and digital-nondigital. These dynamic and contested intersections influence health system performance and equity, and also create unique policy challenges and opportunities. Professor Sheikh will outline key inferences from his body of research on the governance of mixed health systems in LMICs, and reflect on the changing character of health systems, and implications for the future of the field of health policy and systems research (HPSR).
Professor Kabir Sheikh is a field leader in health policy and systems research (HPSR) with over 20 years’ experience of research in diverse settings across Asia and Africa. His interests lie in the domain of equity-oriented, contextually relevant health policy and systems research (HPSR) that generate insights and solutions for health systems problems, using social science approaches (policy and implementation analysis).
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Healthcare Within a Humanitarian Crisis: Experiences from Gaza
Mr Khaled Dawas shares his recent experiences of working in Gaza as a surgeon providing emergency care. In this episode, Mr Khaled Dawas reflects on the targeting of health facilities and health workers during the conflict, the implications for medical education in Palestine and the role of global health students and practitioners world-wide.
The main lecture is delivered by Mr Dawas and will also feature perspectives of other health workers who have experiences of working in Gaza, including Dr Brenda Kelly (women's health doctor) and Dr Jane Crawley (paediatric doctor).
Mr Khaled Dawas is a consultant surgeon and associate professor at University College London Hospitals. He chairs the board of the medical education charity, Al Quds Foundation for Medical Schools in Palestine. He has been to Gaza twice with emergency medical teams since December 2023.
Dr Brenda Kelly is a consultant obstetrician who has also been to Gaza and is part of the Gaza Medical Teaching Group.
Dr Jane Crawley is a paediatrician who has worked in global child health for the past 30 years. As a member of the Oxford Gaza Group of clinicians, she has visited Gaza several times over the past 8 years in order to teach medical students and young doctors.
This talk is part of the Translational Science and Global Health course on the Translational Health Sciences programme.
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Politics, Innovation and Change: The Path to Net Zero
Professor Nick Watts explores net zero in the context of health care. Working at the intersection of politics, policy, industry, healthcare and academia, Professor Nick Watts will reflect on his time as Chief Sustainability Officer of the NHS, on the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Health Care, and his current role at the National University of Singapore. He will explore what net zero means in the context of health care, the influence of national (and transnational) politics, industry, and other stakeholder interests on advancing towards net zero across different geographical settings and unpack what works and what doesn't. He will critically reflect on the role of innovation in reaching net zero and on what is needed to bring about change and to translate solutions into practice within the boundaries of what is politically, financially and technologically possible.
Professor Watts is the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Medicine, leading NUS's efforts to accelerate the transition to net zero and resilient healthcare systems, across the world.
Prior to NUS, he worked as the Chief Sustainability Officer for the NHS in the UK, where he spearheaded their efforts to efforts to deliver low-carbon healthcare, leading the Greener NHS team with a budget of almost S$1 billion. He is a medical doctor, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians' Faculty of Public Health, and has worked as the Executive Director of the Lancet Countdown, and as the founder of the Global Climate and Health Alliance and the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change.
This talk is part of the Sustainable Health Care course on the Translational Health Sciences programme.
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What kind of a problem is loneliness? Studying technology to understand policy concerns
This talk by Dr Gemma Hughes is intended to show how problems, such as loneliness, can be understood and researched in multiple ways. By outlining the methodology of the research programme Virtual Presence, and explaining the qualitative methods used to study the adoption of telepresence technologies designed to prevent loneliness, Dr Hughes will argue for the importance of interpretive approaches in health research.
Dr Hughes is a social scientist concerned with the intersections between organisational practices, health and social care policy and people's experiences. She has a professional background in the UK public sector, which informs her interest in tackling 'real world' problems of how to best organise care. Dr Hughes completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2019 under the supervision of Professors Sara Shaw and Trish Greenhalgh, after which she worked as a researcher in the IRIHS group until 2023 when she joined the University of Leicester School of Business as Associate Professor in Healthcare Management.
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Knowledge for bright ideas – how research can support innovative health systems
Guest lecturer Dr Nick Fahy is a research group director for health and wellbeing at RAND Europe, where he oversees research in such areas as health systems and healthcare innovation, and the behavioural and social determinants of health and wellbeing. Innovation is the central challenge facing health systems. The constant expansion in our ability to improve health has brought us benefits of length and quality of life that would have been unimaginable a hundred years ago. But this also creates challenges for our health systems. This lecture will explore three challenges in particular. First, what do we get? How well do our systems for generating innovations meet the health needs that we want to see addressed? Second, how do we make the best use of the innovations that we have; through understanding the value they bring, and making best use of them in practice? And third, how do we pay for this challenge - and how long will we keep being able to?
Our guest lecturer is Dr Nick Fahy, research group director for health and wellbeing at RAND Europe, where he oversees research in such areas as health systems and healthcare innovation, workplace wellbeing, and the behavioural and social determinants of health and wellbeing.
Nick Fahy joined RAND Europe from the University of Oxford, where he was a senior researcher in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and a research fellow at Green Templeton College. As a researcher and consultant in health policy and systems, he looked at how health systems work; lessons learned by comparing health systems across countries; and how to bring about constructive change in health systems.
Alongside his Oxford role, Nick was also an expert advisor on innovation and implementation for the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, working with policymakers across Europe to support evidence-informed policy-making. This built on wide-ranging experience in international health policy, including over a decade in the European Commission, most recently as head of the health information unit.
Nick Fahy has a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in evidence-based healthcare, specifically examining psychological theory and its role in the model of diffusion of innovations in healthcare. He is also a Chartered Psychologist and continues to contribute to research and teaching at the University of Oxford and more widely.
Turning innovations into practical solutions for healthcare needs is an imperative – and one that can only become more urgent as demands on health systems increase. Our key focus in this series is the ‘downstream’ phases of translational health sciences – the human, organisational and societal issues that impact on the adoption, dissemination and mainstreaming of research discoveries.
Talks are taken from the Oxford Translational Health Sciences Programme and delivered by leaders in the field of Translational Health Care.
South Africa