Gender norms, roles and relations, and gender inequality and inequity, affect people’s health all around the world. This Q&A examines the links between gender and health, highlighting WHO’s ongoing work to address gender-related barriers to healthcare, advance gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in all their diversity, and achieve health for all.
Useful Resources
Probable futures
Probable futures collective: Video, 2022
Probable Futures is an online site for science, applications, and imagination. It was founded in 2020 by a group of concerned leaders and citizens who started asking climate scientists direct, practical questions about what climate change would be like in different places around the world: What does the world look like at 1.5°C of warming? What will it feel like? At 2°C? 3°C? Do these different levels of warming mean radically different outcomes for society? Could we communicate the consequences of each increment of warming so vividly that everyone—from parents and teachers to poets and CEOs—can better understand, prepare for, and address what is coming? This site provides maps and information so that climate change is no longer an abstraction. In the portrayal the results are stark, the consequences real and personal and the portrayals of the future useful, intuitive, and profound.
What is health policy & systems research and how can it strengthen health systems?
Health Systems Global: Video, 2017
A short film produced by Health Systems Global and the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research outlining the field of Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) and the role it can play in strengthening health systems around the world.
Interactive: Who's funding the COVID-19 response and what are the priorities?
Cornish L: Devex, Online, 2021
In this online resource Devex has tracked COVID-19 funding for combating the coronavirus, including the contracts, grants, new programs, tenders, and direct funding from global, bilateral, regional, state and non-state actors. Funding data is available through an interactive dashboard that shows where the funding is going, who is supplying the money, and what funding is focusing on.
Making Change Visible: Evaluating Efforts to Advance Social Participation in Health, An Implementer’s Resource
Loewenson R; Simpson S; Dudding R; Obando F; et al: TARSC, Shaping Health, 2021
If you are responsible for—or engaged or interested in—advancing social/community participation in health (SPH) in your local area, this resource was developed for you. There are a variety of resources available on how to organise SPH, but there is limited guidance on how to evaluate its effectiveness. This publication aims to fill that gap. It is thus not about how to implement SPH, but rather how to evaluate SPH efforts. The Resource outlines how to conduct a baseline assessment, creating a critical reference point at the start of the SPH intervention to plan work and enable you to track changes as they are achieved. It guides you in carrying out a performance evaluation, to assess how well the SPH intervention is performing during implementation, for you to review and make any 'course corrections' needed. Finally, it explains how to conduct an outcome or impact evaluation, assessing the changes achieved, directly and indirectly, as a result of the SPH intervention. The use of the Resource is being piloted in 2022, so if you are interested, please get in touch. .
Practical Epidemiology: Using Epidemiology to Support Primary Health Care
Vaughan JP, Victora C, , Chowdhury AMR: OUP, 2021
This book focuses on district health systems and is intended for those working in primary health care. It presents practical uses for epidemiological concepts and methods and how to use population information to strengthen planning, management and evaluation. It is available open access online as a downloadable pdf, and a hardcopy can also be purchased.
Reporting guidelines: simple and powerful tools to increase the impact and visibility of your research: a virtual course on enhancing the value of research with research reporting standards
PAHO: Virtual Campus for Public Health, Online, 2021
The EQUATOR Network and the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization (PAHO) has developed an online course aimed at increasing the value of research by enabling people who are planning to conduct, report, edit, publish or appraise research for health, with current research reporting standards. This introductory course is targeted at a wide range of actors interested in research quality and the use of reports for decision-making. The course provides an overview of good reporting practice at all stages of the research pathway. The ideal time to take this course is as an introductory activity before beginning and finalizing your research proposal.
Accredited and non-accredited short courses and programmesin health systems
Health Systems Training Institute: HSTi, South Africa
The Health Systems Training Institute (HSTi) is the training arm of the Health Systems Trust in South Africa. It offers a range of courses with different application dates, including in Primary Care; community healthcare stakeholder engagement; health information, indicators and analysis; Research methods for health; and other health system topics.
Asinakuthula Collective
Asinakuthula Collective: Online archive and resource, 2021
Asinakuthula Collective are a Collective of teachers, students, researchers and creatives invested in breaking the silences, marginalised narratives and vacuums of content surrounding the lives, roles, experiences and complexity of black African women in history. The collective has two public events every year, a memorial lecture and a masterclass, and carries out on-going archival work, knowledge production, teaching and learning that is made available online as a resource for those seeking to integrate women’s voices in their work.
Fast Facts on Climate Change and Health
World Health Organisation: WHO, Geneva, August 2021
Climate change is resulting in poorer health outcomes, increasing mortality and is a driver of health inequities. This fact sheet on climate change and health is part of the Climate Fast Facts series of the United Nations Climate Action team discusses how health is well placed to be a significant part of the solution; the positive health impacts from stronger climate change action can motivate stronger global ambition; how health systems which are resilient to climate change can help protect their populations from the negative impacts (in the short and longer terms); and how sustainable low carbon health systems can make a substantial contribution to reducing national and global emissions.