Advancing Maternal #HealthForAll at the 2017 Institutionalizing Community Health Conference

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By: Kayla McGowan, Project Coordinator, Women and Health Initiative, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Institutionalizing Community Health Conference 2017The Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) is delighted to participate in and support the Institutionalizing Community Health Conference (ICHC) in Johannesburg, South Africa, taking place 27-30 March 2017. The conference will bring together 350 leading experts in community health workforce from nearly 40 countries for a four-day, highly interactive event.

The conference, hosted by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID’s flagship Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP), aims to help countries strengthen partnerships with communities for improved maternal, newborn and child health. As stated in WHO’s Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030, maximizing the education and deployment of community-based health workers is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Agenda. The Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2030) affirms community health work as an essential component of health system resilience.

Join the discussion on social media and follow along virtually!

Participate in a Twitter Chat on 14 March to discuss why community health is crucial to achieving sustainable development and universal primary health care. Please see the Twitter Chat toolkit for full details.

Join the discussion and submit questions to panelists during the conference using the hashtag #HealthForAll. The MHTF will be live-tweeting select sessions, focusing on the link between community health and maternal newborn health. Please see the conference social media toolkit for full details.

Watch the live-streamed plenary sessions and host a viewing party with colleagues to promote the discussion on community health! Access the live-stream and viewing party toolkit here.

Attending the conference? Join us at the following MHTF-supported panels:

  • Session 26: Community empowerment and gender
  • Session 30: Building national capacity and demand for implementation research to take forward the community health agenda
  • Session 32: Selected topics in implementation research for community-based service delivery

Please see the conference program for full details.

The MHTF will be at the conference gathering the most relevant information on how advancing community health approaches can improve global maternal newborn health. Subscribe to receive key updates, takeaways and lessons learned from ICHC 2017!