Harold Cottin: Very pleased to moderate with Pauline L’Hénaff this WHA77 side-event on multi-sectorial partnerships for Health equity hosted by City Cancer Challenge
Harold Cottin, Visiting lecturer – Global Health at
“I was very pleased to moderate with Pauline L’Hénaff from Access to Medicine Foundation this WHA77 side-event on multi-sectorial partnerships for Health equity hosted by City Cancer Challenge.
I can already hear you saying ‘Yet another event on multi-sectorial partnerships’ with a hazy catalogue of good intentions and usual buzzwords.
In reality, this one was different because:
We had a frank and open discussion on benefits AND challenges of partnerships with representatives of leading health organizations having significant experience in that field, such as NCD Alliance, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), UNICEF, World Economic Forum, Access Accelerated, Direct Relief, AMREF, Merck, Amgen, Siemens Healthineers and Astellas Pharma. The potential of multi-sectorial partnerships is sometimes untapped because of the lack of long-term commitment from funders, the suspicion of conflict of interest between sectors, and the limited available models for private sector participation in public sector-led interventions. We also fail to capture the diversity of partnerships. Some of them involve public authorities, but not always. Others include big international organizations or small and local civil society organizations. Some rely on the business Departments from private companies or their philanthropic branch;
We shared the key learnings from City Cancer Challenge’s partnership with Roche, without hiding pain points. The lessons learned are now documented in a report publicly available, with the hope it can guide and inspire further cross-sector partnerships.
The Access to Medicines Foundation presented important practices on how to measure the outcomes generated by multi-sectorial partnerships. These metrics are key, as we all know that ‘we cannot improve what we cannot measure’.
It is in our DNA as City Cancer Challenge to initiate and lead cross-sector partnerships. We are convinced this is the key to making a meaningful impact on patients’ lives and is the only way to make progress in improving health systems in Low- and Middle-income contexts.”
Source: Harold Cottin/LinkedIn
