Balanced response

A leadership presence at the table means little without mutual respect and a consistent, reliable, collaborative presence. Healthcare leadership does require influential action, not just parental correspondence or command.  As global health improves on leadership and collaboration in an increasingly small world, we can help balance global health work for maximum influence and leadership presence. *List and detail international health agencies, by charitable organization and governing status. Detail the duplication, reach and leadership. *Evaluate world health organization (WHO) and other agency credibility, respect and influence. Evaluate this by peer organization, inter-industry organization and by country.  *Dedicate a strategic plan to extend global health into national health and partner agency collaboration. Create action with urgency, require commitment from global organizations and countries and set expectations for global health representation – even if just a listenin...

  It’s difficult to deliver cohesive healthcare with discongruence in the regulation and scope of medicine. We cannot anticipate, plan for, solve for, intervene with or efficiently standardize healthcare without some evenness to healthcare.  For all the global health coordination, and all the international research collaboration, there is no movement toward scope of practice, labor regulation, prescribing regulation or biotechnological responsibility standardization.  We should encourage measured, quantitative progress toward accountability in medicine regulation, and we should require quality to the process.  *What are the medical professions, credentials, approved education and scope of practice in healthcare, per country? What are the community healthcare worker (CHW) roles if allowed, per country?  *Which procedures are allowed for each healthcare profession?  *What are the differences in approvals and guidelines for medicine safety, and for who can pre...

Responsiveness in healthcare affects psychological safety, physical safety, customer service and quality.  Responsiveness is often dropped, or not followed through, or placed as a one-time play. This is an unfortunate allowance especially during urgent and emergent threats. Hold organizations accountable and evaluate agencies on responsiveness, across the international borders that house agency offices. To standardize this, keep it simple:   Quantity  How often are concerns raised to the organization, and to global health, by experts in medical fields? In other fields? How often are concerns raised by general members of the public?  How many concerns are raised and what are the types?  What is the average response time, defined by subsequent meetings or follow through? What is the average response time, defined by reciprocated communication to those who raised concerns? How often is anticipatory response practiced?  Quality  What types of concerns can ...

Biomedical laboratory processes should be safe, with quality and quantity to safety reporting.  Global coordination can provide a balanced response, particularly after emergencies that induce confusion and suspicion, and particularly after emergencies tied to reports of suboptimal laboratory management.   Quality Quality to biomedical laboratory safety can be drastically improved, worldwide. Quality should emphasize third party oversight, improved details in biomedical laboratory safety manuals and consistency across health organization manuals.  * Approve the risk assessments through third party review. Most governments, administrations, organizations and healthcare guidance (including WHO) assign the responsibility of Risk Assessments to the Biomedical Laboratories. If there are standards to risk assessments, and standards to operations in laboratory science, a third party should weigh in. Risk, based on animals, vectors and biotissue studies, based on diseases stu...

  Roads Transportation barriers, and alternatives to transportation in healthcare, remain opaque in delivery focus. Given the sophistication in global citizenry and global policy, as well as the sophistication of climate science evolution, oversight for transportation in healthcare can be improved. Healthcare transportation oversight should focus on improvement to both quantity and quality.   Quantity *Collaborate and clarify the impact of transportation on healthcare. How much healthcare is missed due to lack of transportation? Estimates of deferred visits due to transportation barriers are available as piecemeal [1,2]. Be specific for populations, too. Global health data may isolate specific case studies. United States or other high-income countries may research healthcare transportation as a social determinant of care [3], without specifics on cost, cost savings, or the barrier’s impact on healthcare. It would be best to have ongoing, reliable data on health burden and impa...

Pause and reflection on gratitude is so good. And today, gratitude is enough.  We can quantify it, we can qualify it, we can disregard all forms of analytics and crowd surf the observation that not all things can be measured.   In the end, there is just you and me, and I am grateful. International collegiality at the UN, global leadership at the World Bank, continued hope in common good with the hard work of the World Health Organisation, efforts in a fairer world with the OECD and the fortitude of the World Trade Organisation to make decisions, as well as cope with outcomes, change us. In a great tug and pull of progress, they and their partners inch progress along.    When we look at moments where the public seeks global leadership, or when global giving connects with these international groups, or when concerns are entrusted to global governance, perhaps we will even find all the nonverbal ways each individual is thankful to global health partners. ...