Health Professionals for Global Health presented a webinar in collaboration with Doctors of the World and Helen Bamber Foundation that explored the experiences of refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in accessing healthcare in the UK. The aim was to explore the barriers refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants encounter in accessing the UK healthcare system and the increasingly hostile environment which they face. They may experience language or cultural barriers, poor understanding of the UK health system or fear of stigma, costs or even deportation. We explored factors which inform healthcare seeking behaviours, care principles for those who have experienced trauma or torture and what the role of the UK health professional is in providing support and advocating for their patients.

This free webinar was in collaboration with @new_ic_sfgh Students for Global Health Imperial 

We heard from three experienced speakers about their adventures in remote and expedition medicine where practicing medicine brings vastly different challenges.

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Speaker profiles:

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Chair: Dr Saleyha Ahsan

Saleyha is currently working as an ITU doctor in Bangor Hospital, North Wales. She has also works as a humanitarian doctor in conflict zones and is passionate about the targeting of healthcare in war.

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Dr Daniel Grace

Daniel is a portfolio GP based in South Wales.

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Captain Scott Pallett

Scott is a microbiology and infectious diseases trainee doctor with a specialist interest in expedition medicine.

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In relation to global health, how secure are we? As a global population, 2020 has given us an opportunity to reflect on our preparedness, resilience and capacity to respond to challenges. Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic may seem like the most immediate threat to our global health security, there are many other issues that have an effect as profound if not more so.  In this webinar, which is a collaboration between the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH), Health Professionals for Global Health and Pansurg (Imperial College London), a diverse panel of speakers discuss three major global health security threats: pandemics, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and climate change.

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Read more in our blog here

4th December 2019, LSHTM

Health Professionals for Global Health in collaboration with LSHTM Friends of MSF ran their 24th Global Health Advocacy Seminar where we explored the role for health professionals to advocate for the health of their patients. Speakers shared their thoughts on the meaning of advocacy, how to do it well and when it needs to be done. We heard legal perspectives, discussed how to achieve real change and what our responsibilities are as health care professionals.

Listen here please skip forward to 37 minutes as the recording unfortunately captured pre-event noise.

Chair Dr Aula Abbara
Speakers: 

Emmanouil Athanasiou 
Dr Jenny Vaughan
Dr Rita Issa
Dr Sonia Adesara
Dr Carolyn Kavita Tauro

The first in our Evening Spotlight Seminar series on 25th April presented an evening of talks from three palliative care doctors, providing experience from their work and research in palliative care in Uganda and Kerala. 

Speakers: Dr Guy Schofield is a palliative medicine registrar currently doing his PhD looking at the ethical challenges experienced by palliative care practitioners in Uganda. Dr Libby Sallnow is a palliative medicine consultant with CNWL NHS Trust in London, UK and Associate Course Director for the new Fellowship in Palliative Care at the Institute of Palliative Medicine, Kerala, India and research lead for Public Health and Palliative Care International (PHPCI).

Dr Phoebe Wright is a palliative medicine registrar who has worked in Kerala with Pallium India Hospice, and then worked at Makerere Palliative Care Unit in Kampala, Uganda.

With thanks to the King's College London Student's for Global Health Society.

This event brought together UCL Institute for Global Health, Medact, Docs Not Cops, and Health Professionals for Global Health to find out about the impact of NHS charging regulations on migrants and the role healthcare workers have in improving access to care for all. The event launched Medact’s Patient’s not Passports Toolkit and showcased a variety of speakers who discussed how the policy may directly contravene the principles of universal healthcare.

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine 18th October 2018

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Chair:
Dr Jennifer Palmer - Co-Director of the Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre, LSHTM
Speakers:

Dr Afsana Safa - GP and Clinical Commission Group Governing Body member, London. Overview of the crisis: history and background

Dr Vanessa Yarwood - GP Trainee, London. Dr Yarwood has worked in Greece with the Syrian American Medical Society, and volunteered as a supervising clinician in Bangladesh with Medical Teams International. First hand experience of working in the refugee camps for Rohingya

Kerrie Holloway: Research Officer, Overseas Development Institute. Kerrie has undertaken extensive research within the humanitarian sector focussing on dignity in forced displaced populations.

Ronan Lee - PhD candidate, Deakin University, Irish-Australian politician. The legal aspects, history, identity, and politics of the Rohingya

Royal Society of Medicine, London 19th February 2018

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Speakers:

Dr Ged Byrne, Chair and Director of Global Engagement, Health Education England

Dr Matt Harris, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Public Health, Imperial College London

Dr Oliver Johnson, Partnerships Development Lead, King’s Centre for Global Health and Health Partnerships

Dr Osman Dar, Project Director, One Health Project, Centre on Global Health Security, Chatham House and Public Health Consultant, Public Health England

Dr Ayesha Ahmad, Lecturer in Global Health, St George's University of London and Honorary Lecturer, Institute for Global Health, University College London

HPfGH collaborated on two episodes with United for Global Mental Health to discuss these hugely important and under-explored areas. 

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Please visit https://unitedgmh.org/ for other upcoming webinars and to be able to read the content of past webinars. 

Our speakers discussed their different experiences in humanitarian and global health settings across a range of specialties and continents, how they accessed these opportunities and what they have learnt from the process.

Speakers: 

Dr Adam Gray, an infectious diseases/general internal medicine registrar, will discuss his experiences working on TB/HIV projects with MSF in central Asia. 

Dr Gavin Stead, an anaesthetics SHO will share stories from his time spent in South Africa working in emergency medicine, anaesthetics and obstetrics. 

Dr Safia Akhtar, a GP trainee will discuss her experiences conducting research in Cameroon and Ghana for the Vision 2020 project. 

The covid-19 pandemic has brought global health to our doorsteps and, as in other high income countries - it has shown fractures in our health system and has challenged health professionals to adapt, respond in real time to a changing situation and manage insufficient resources. For health professionals who have worked in global health in different settings e.g. with refugees in Greece, Ebola in west Africa, palliative care in Uganda, they have felt able to draw on these prior experiences to support the response to covid-19 preparations and case management in the UK setting. In this webinar, we heard from speakers with extensive field experiences about how their work in global health prior to the pandemic has contributed to their work during the covid-19 outbreak in the UK. Click here to watch. 

HPforGH and the MARCH Centre presented: 

Maternal health affects hundreds of thousands of families and communities, and maternal morbidity is the leading cause of ill-health in this age group. Whilst many of the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth are avoidable, progress in creating an enabling environment to implement these obstetric care interventions remains challenging.

Chair: Dr Alice Fulton

Speakers: Dr Ben Black

Maria Garcia de Frutos

Emma Simpson

Wouter Bakker 

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On April 9th we held a live streamed Global Health training day. This was delivered by HPforGH, in conjunction with Health Education England and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The day, which was held at LSHTM, was open to all of London's higher specialty medical trainees (any doctor who is currently in postgraduate training and who has completed F2 or equivalent).

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There were fantastic speakers from around the UK, who talked on a range of topics, including climate change, mental health, refugee health, epidemic response and ways in which doctors in training can get involved with Global Health.

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

1st March 2019

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Protracted conflicts in the Middle East have displaced millions of civilians and strained health systems across the region. Both conflict affected and host health systems have struggled to respond to the population movements and are increasingly underfunded, uncoordinated and politicized leaving them unable to respond effectively to the needs of their own populations or displaced people. In this seminar, academics and humanitarian practitioners will share their experiences working in the region in such contexts.

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Chair: Dr Natasha Howard, LSHTM

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Speakers:

Dr Maryam Omar

Dr Richard Sullivan 

Dr Yamama Bdaiwi

Dr Henry Dowlen

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Click here for the recording.

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine 3rd May 2018

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Chair:
Dr. Miriam Orcutt, Institute for Global Health, University College London and Affiliate, Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre, LSHTM 
Professor Richard Sullivan, Kings College London

Speakers:
Dr Jessica Potter, Clinical Research Fellow, Barts Institute of Population Health Science, Queen Mary University London
Dr Mark Stevenson, ex lead analyst at NHS improvements (he is no longer a representative of the organisation)
Anna Miller, UK Policy & Advocacy Manager, Doctors of the World
Sue Collins, TB specialist case worker, Homerton Hospital.

University College London Medical School 24th January 2018

Chair: Gareth Walker, Humanitarian Health Programme Manager and former Head of International Programmes for Médecins du Monde UK

Speakers:

Dr Nasser Yassin, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Dr Clare Shortall, Health Coordinator for Première Urgence Internationale in Iraq
Dr Aula Abbara, Project Lead for Greece, Syrian American Medical Society