During a press briefing on COVID-19 the 8^th of April 2020, Dr Bruce Aylward, Special Adviser to WHO’s Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, highlighted the need for countries to understand that the virus can overwhelm even the most robust health systems, resulting in the need to entirely reconfigure health sectors in response (read more here)

The ongoing establishment of The Global Health Network's 'COVID-19 Working Groups' aims to address the discussion and gather consensus on the emerging COVID-19 research gaps across low-resource settings. This working group is set up to work around ways to strengthen health systems. 

Over 250 researchers from across the globe working or wanting to work in health systems have come together in this group to discuss ideas, form collaborations, access funding as well as share outputs and resources that others can use. There is so much experience that can be applied here - let's use that to help this immediate need to supporting research everywhere there are cases, now!

Current work

On the 16th of June, The Global Healh Netwok supported the first virtual team meeting for the 'Health Systems Research Open Working Group'. The meeting was organised in respose to questions raised in the COVID-19 workshops which highlighted the need for greated discussion regaring the impact on health systems. 

Following this first meeting, team leaders met on the 2^nd of July (minutes can be accessed here) and agreed that the best plan of action would be to identify 2 or 3 key topics for the WG to focus on and write protocols for. Using the themes identified in the report from the first meeting, a survey was disseminated asking the members of the Group to assert their areas of particular experience and interest. From this survey, which had 70 responses, the team identified 4 immediate priorities for the WG to work on (A report of these responses can be found here)

On the 16th July 2020, The Global Healh Netwok supported the second virtual team meeting for the 'Health Systems Research Open Working Group' (a report can be found here). Main outcomes of this meeting were:

1. Research priorities are agreeable to the members with some additions aspects 
2. WG were split into 3 sub-groups, each focusing on one research priority area. 

Three draft protocols were developed by the sub-groups leaders.

• COVID-19 Pandemic impacts on RMNCH health services across LMICs
• Impact of COVID-19 ON Malaria TB AND HIV/AIDS interventions
• Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices regarding COVID-19 among Healthcare Workers across LMICs

These were shared with the whole team and posted on this page (at the bottom) for the rest of the members to comment. Team members have download, read and comment on them by the 5^th of August. The coordinating team have considered these comments to finalise the protocols. 

A final version of the protocols and study materials have been shared and can be accessed in the form of a ‘study implementation map' on our the Health Systems Study page.

Team coordinators have worked since then on the rest of the study documentation. A call was held on September 3^rd(minutes here). Latest minutes discussing Study materials (13/10/2020 - 06/11/2020).  Final version of the protocols and study materials have been shared with TGHN. These will be shared soon on the COVID-19 HUB

Working Documents

Here you are able to find all the working documents from the different WGs for you to comment on;

Become a part of this Working Group

If you are interested please register and we will be in touch!

We look forward to hearing back from you and hope we can work together to support a strong and equitable global research response during this pandemic.