Reflections on Meaningful Youth Engagement at the World Health Summit 2022
Melvine Anyango Otieno: Planetary Health Alliance Senior Next Generation Fellow /Founder, Planetary Health Eastern Africa Hub/Assistant Lecturer, University of Eldoret, Kenya
Meaningful youth engagement “is the overarching concept of bringing young people to create and be a part of the decision making at all levels, be it local, national or international” — Hamaiyal Sana, IFMSA, Liaison officer WHO.
In my opinion, meaningful youth engagement and its meaning gives the passionate youth (from diverse backgrounds, different ethnic groups, race, color and in the space of health) a chance to be a voice on behalf of fellow youth by sharing brilliant ideas, acting at different levels by working closely with adults or independently in all stages of decision-making in organizations they are involved with trust, love and believing in their capabilities.
Working closely with the Planetary Health Alliance organization (based at Harvard, Boston Massachusetts), as a Senior Next Generation Fellow in supporting the Next Generation Leaders i.e. Planetary Health Campus Ambassadors from all over the world. It has given me an opportunity to interact directly with the youth who matter in our communities, nationalities, region and also the continent as a whole to champion for Planetary Health. Meaningful youth engagement is very crucial and through our ongoing SOPHEA project-Strengthening One Health and Planetary Health in Eastern Africa, we are working closely with PHCAs from the region.
The Planetary Health Campus Ambassadors and any other youth forums across the globe could also learn alot from the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA), which builds the capacity of over 50 impressive youth advocates around the world through workshops with high-level speakers and prepares them as delegates at the World Health Assembly (WHA) of World Health Organisation on how to engage in health activities at national, regional and global level in decision making process.
At the 2022 World Health Summit (WHS), I was able to attend the panel discussion on “Meaningful Youth Engagement with Global Health Governance” Here, the speakers shared their experiences, challenges and opportunities based on their different activities/programs in progressing and strengthening meaningful youth engagement for future generations. The key highlights from the WHS 2022 panel on were as follows:
Experiences and Opportunities
- Advocacy opportunities: Act on planning and raising awareness of vaccines at the hospital centers within the Ministry of Health.The pandemic played a role, youth were the key actors in fighting for the pandemic.
- Working closely with the Ministry of Health:Work with the ministry to finalize a sustainable youth delegation programme that would participate in the World Health Assembly and other external meetings such as WHO meetings.
- Engagement in National Context: In a national context, youth engaged and participated in the national governmental meetings where they participated in signing memorandum of understanding.
- Volunteership programs: The youths can volunteer at the Ministry of Health program for example and participate in health related opportunities. Support in data management and risk, communications, community outreach and strengthening primary health care centers, working on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) alongside not limited to drafting and implementation of UHC framework, helping and getting guidance of certain cases of Non-communicable diseases by being part of the administrative and practical units.
- Opportunity for participation in International organization meetings: Opportunity to be involved in inaugural global meetings (WHO, UN meetings) that help the young people to get exposed with stakeholders, give them orientation of how to gain trust with the official partners, ignite or start of many brilliant young people to be a part of a cohesive, goal oriented dream team.Through these meetings the youth delegates have been given opportunity to issue statement, organize delegation preparation meeting and also participate in morning briefing.
- Youth empowerment: Empowering young people with the skills to be effective partners and to lead and drive change in their communities and their lives. This empowerment will be achieved if the youth get useful skills and instruments such as tool kits. Capacity building is an important aspect where they can join and engage in the youth council, global youth mobilization, and apply for equitable internship programmes (young professional program) especially for youths from LMIC. Encourage youths to work with the health and non-health centers. Support youth delegates and allow them to learn about UN and WHO modeling experiences.
- Implementation at grassroots level: Once the youth have acquired these experiences, implementing it to their own communities afterwards on a grassroots level becomes easier, and they can become the change agents. This way moving from local to national and even to global level becomes easier for them to engage in global action to global mobilization and eventually interacting with the global agent. Bringing local experience at WHAssembly by sharing member organization activities locally, speak for them, share border experience, exchange programmes and push forward for engagement with the UN system.
- Strategies working with policy makers: Public health policy is really important, how to engage with policy makers with medical students in the World Health Assembly.
Challenges
- Experience challenges with working with local and national actors: Lack of support from local and national actors, no impacts/implementation on their driven ideas
- Finance and funding challenge: Lack of finances, where passionate youth who are students can’t afford travel expenses and funds for implementing activities at local levels.
- Inclusivity challenge: The world is still not global, documentation issues where getting visa from some countries in the Global South becomes an issue to allow youth to travel and be at in-person meetings.
- Advocacy challenge: The youth face struggles during advocacy period due to lack of resources and enough support especially at local and national level to push forward for change.
- Educational challenges: Due to less or lack of mentorship and guidance to make changes, a number of youth might not have enough skills and training that requires engagement in real-world issues and projects where they can see the consequence of their efforts on the larger community.
- Lack of trust: from the government by youth due to corruption, trust is needed from both sides. Trust in young people for meaningful engagement with various stakeholders and different global health actors.
Key Insights about WHS 2022 from the Next Generation leaders
“As a youth, I had the opportunity to attend the WHS 2022 with support from the International Sustainability Academy and the Akkon University/ Institute for Research in International Assistance. I met many people from different parts of the world working on impactful projects that are changing lives in their communities. I have learned a lot during the summit and I also had the opportunity to broaden my network and share the work I do with my team at Girls’ Pride in The Gambia.”- Fattoumatta Kasama (Gambia), Founder Girls’ Pride.
“I had a great opportunity to participate in WHS 2022. My main takeaway from the summit is that we need to translate our concerns into action looking at the cost of inaction rather than the economic cost of action. Every life matters beyond statistics.” — Ikeoluwapo Lydia Oluwayemu (Nigeria), Student, Health Science (MHSC), Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and a member of the Child Health Community of the Global Health Hub Germany.
“There were many insightful presentations and discussions at WHS 2022 that also showed the need to move away from a solely technical and biomedical approach to holistic understanding and solutions for current and future global health issues. This includes prevention, health systems strengthening, a holistic ecosystem model, equity approach, and the disruption of current systems to achieve sustainable change. I am very grateful to have met so many old and new friends and to connect with each other through interesting and thought-provoking discussions.” — Maresa Neuerer (Germany), member of the AMR-Community of the Global Health Hub Germany.
“The WHS 2022 has been a remarkable event in my career. As an opportunity that sheds light on different health systems issues, as well as the global trends in health policies, gathering together the health professionals, academia sector and political leaders from all over the world, it really opens eyes on how to spark a true change in health situation. I believe it is the place for everyone interested in driving health to the right path.” — Omer Abdelaziz (Sudan), 6th year student, Faculty of Medicine, University Khartoum.
“I was invited to the meaningful youth engagement with the global health governance panel at WHS 2022 where I was pleased to be joined by the Director of Multilateral Partnerships, Dr. Gaudenz Silberschmidt and the WHO EB Chair Dr. Vesna Petric alongside my peers at IFMSA and IPSF. It was an insightful panel where we raised points of discussion around channels to meaningfully engage youth in global health decision making on a national and international scale. We also identified the barriers that young people face across different contexts to get the support they need to achieve their outcomes and that there is a need for commitment from all stakeholders involved to put youth as equal partners of the public health agenda. It was a great opportunity to raise the issues relevant to us as youth and also highlighted the importance of creating such opportunities across global health events such as this.” — Hamaiyal Sana (USA), IFMSA, WHO Liaison Officer and student, Harvard University.
“As a Climate Activist, being at the WHS 2022 was an opportunity to highlight the urgent need to recognize the climate crisis as a health crisis. We are facing a triple planetary crisis, endangering public health progress we have made in physical and mental well-being. WHS 2022 brought people from around the world together after the pandemic to discuss and share knowledge including on how climate action can prevent future pandemics. It was a chance to connect with diverse individuals from the health sector and engage in constructive, trans-disciplinary conversations. I was honored to speak on a panel, which fostered an intergenerational dialogue, and I was motivated by the power of youth in the audience, doing their best to address the health and environmental challenges in their contexts. I spoke to the organizers emphasizing that youth and women especially from Africa and the Global South in general deserve to be leaders in global health, not victims.” — Rose Kobusinge (Uganda), Climate Change Activist.
“It was the third time at the WHS and I am always happy to meet friends who are working all over the world for more health and environmental protection. These meetings are especially important for us young people to motivate and support each other and to build trusting relationships. Besides, I am very glad that topics like Planetary Health are now becoming more and more part of the discussions. In the future, I look forward to the support of the organizers to bring more countries from Central Asia and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) such as Iraq and Yemen and to participate in these important discussions.” — Sina Winkel (Germany), Project Manager, Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO).
“My participation at the Global Health Talk 2022 motivated me further to discuss global health and planetary health issues at the WHS 2022. Many thanks to Dr.Kim Gruetzmacher and the WHS committee for inviting me at the WHS 2022 as a speaker on the panel session-Engaging Globally for Planetary Health. Participation gave me an opportunity to share my experiences in engaging Planetary Health in the Eastern African region. I was able to learn from experts from different disciplines specifically how to continuously act locally in synergising One Health and Planetary Health concepts in tackling global health issues like climate change. Food security and Nutrition in relation to food systems being one of my research areas of interest, I was able to acquire knowledge from high level speakers. I am also glad I was able to connect with my amazing friends/colleagues from all over the world that I worked closely with during COVID-19 times in 2020 onwards, hence strengthening and building new networks to advance my career and continuously engaging my region to act.” — Melvine Anyango Otieno (Kenya), Founder, Planetary Health Eastern Africa, Planetary Health Alliance Senior Next Generation Fellow, Assistant Lecturer at University of Eldoret, a member of Global Health Hub Germany and Associate team member of Women Leaders for Planetary Health.
Recommendations and Conclusion
An increased level of youth empowerment in the community’s major transformation enforces experiences that shift the young people’s perceptions about the possibilities. Youth engagement that is meaningful offers youths enhanced skills, knowledge, self-esteem, sense of connection, belonging, and a sense of value and purpose resulting in healthier, more just, and socially progressive communities. It also reduces bias and fosters positive attitudes toward youths among adults. Although the WHS provided an opportunity for networking, the level of meaningful engagement with young people needs improvement. Most sessions did not have a young speaker on the panel. This then leaves the Q&A section as the only opportunity for young voices to partake in the debate. Unfortunately, at the vast majority of sessions I attended there was not enough time left for a proper Q&A. This left very little space for engagement. I would like to call on the WHS organizers to ensure proper engagement of youth in all panels as young voices are crucial towards solving today’s health challenges. All in all, we appreciate WHS’s ongoing progress towards inclusivity as they promised to even do better this year’s participation, especially from African and Global South regions. We as the youth across the globe eagerly look forward to the WHS 2023 with much anticipation of more intergenerational, youth and women-led sessions in finding solutions for global health.
