About the platform

The Geneva Health Forum has gained its place as an international event bringing together – in a spirit of equality and open debate – a broad range of actors in the ‘global access to health’ problematic. After two successful editions, the Geneva Health Forum was ready to launch a more ongoing and meaningful platform that continues to share best practices, monitor evolution and breakthroughs, and gain deeper practical understanding of the main thematic axes of global access to health.

The Global Access to Health Platform aims at developing a strong community of practice that has the critical mass to influence policy development. The platform, while initiated by the Geneva Health Forum and its international partners, truly belongs to all actors in global access to health. An online working, knowledge sharing, and networking space, this platform uses a system adapted to the most simple internet technology so as to be fully accessible to all. It aims to bring together the broad range of actors in global access to health in innovative ways on the web under broad thematic groupings, while also encouraging partners, notably in lower income countries, to freely establish their own (net)working space. The platform provides the means to bringing field experience to international attention.

The Global Access to Health Platform’s mission consists of three main axes, notably:

• Convening: this simply means bringing people together. The platform allows for encounters that only modern yet simple internet technology can provide. Actors from any region of the world and any discipline come together to create the links often missing between policy and practice.
  
• Community building: groups of individuals and organizations with a commitment to improving access to health become communities that can provide best practices, support to members, common activities and projects, and a sense of belonging to a group with shared values.
  
• Identifying-amplifying: the groups on the platform can synthesize ideas, evidence, and experience from diverse sources, and categorize information in a way that is relevant to members. Messages necessary to keeping global access to health on the international agenda can thus be distilled and fortified.
  

Functions of the Global Access to Health Platform:

• Networking
• Produce evidence
• Identify, select, and diffuse knowledge
• Provide an easily accessible online system, including common working space with functions such as shared calendars, exchange of documents, etc.
• Bring together a critical mass of engaged actors
• Create direct links amongst actors in the field and between these actors and academia
• Offer information and opportunities for partnerships, internships, job vacancies, and project development 
  
  
  
  
  http://globalaccesstohealth.net

Dernière modification le 22/10/2009