CGHE Director Dr. Lisa V. Adams invited her former mentees and now colleagues, Drs. Maryam Amour MPH’15 and Dr. Sirey Zhang MED’24 to co-author a review article on "the critical need for equitable collaborations to uphold robust and enduring pediatric global health programs to improve child health worldwide.” Dr. Amour, now a Lecturer at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Tanzania, is also an alum of our Center’s bilateral medical student exchange program, a trainee of our NIH/Fogarty Center research training grant, and a current NIH-funded researcher studying TB in adolescents. Dr. Zhang is a former Global Health Scholar and now starting his residency in Pediatrics at the University of Utah.
Purpose of the Review
This review underscores the critical need for equitable collaborations to uphold robust and enduring pediatric global health programs to improve child health worldwide. We advocate for the core tenets of reciprocity, longitudinal relationships, and resource redistribution in developing equitable global child health partnerships.
Recent Findings
We reviewed evidence signifying how local and global inequities adversely affect child health. In this review, we provide three examples of successful collaborations between high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries— the Rwandan Human Resources for Health Program, the Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery, and the Baylor College of Medicine International Pediatrics AIDS Initiative— that effectively address these inequities and result in improved child health outcomes. Common themes to equitable partnerships include: (1) prioritizing community voices to inform program development and ensure local needs are met; (2) practicing intentional reciprocity; and (3) challenging outdated and harmful approaches in global health by advocating for a decolonial, socially just, and solidarity-oriented mindset.
Summary
Global pediatric health partnerships must be based on equity to be effective and sustainable. Examples exist whereby programs prioritize community engagement and in-country ownership throughout, ensure reciprocity, and build longitudinal relationships that consider context, historical legacies, systemic inequalities, and promote necessary resource redistribution. These criteria should be used to assess current global child health partnerships and to train the next generation of pediatric global health practitioners, thereby paving the way for a more equitable and sustainable future in pediatric global health.
