Project Background:
The Program in Global Surgery and Social Change (PGSSC) is a collaborative effort between the Harvard teaching hospitals, Harvard Medical School/ Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) and Partners In Health (PIH). This organization emerges from work of the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, which was led by Dr. John Meara at Harvard Medical School (Dr. Mearas is a 1986 ND graduate). PGSSC’s objective is to advocate for Universal access to safe, affordable surgical, obstetric, and anesthesia care when needed. The strategy is two-fold: 1) Global Surgical Systems Strengthening through Research, Advocacy, and Implementation Science, using the Frameworks developed as part of the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, and 2) Developing Leaders in Global Surgical and Health Systems through Research, Advocacy, and Care Delivery. PGSSC's research focuses on surgical and health systems strengthening that is measurable, transparent, and locally-driven. Click here for the Strategic Plan that focuses on implementation science, research, advocacy, and training leaders.
Opportunity:
The Pacific Community (SPC) and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) are working with the PGSSC to support the development of National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anesthesia Plans (NSOAPs), as outlined at the 2019 Pacific Health Ministers Meeting and in alignment with the regional vision of the World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO). For this past year, an i-Lab team and other colleagues have been working with PGSSC to help do baseline research on a series of Pacific Islands (Cook Islands, Fiji, Tonga, Palau, and Vanuatu) to help prepare to build out NSOAPs for each of the islands. One of the products of their work is to synthesize collected data and help produce the NSOAPs. An important part of the process is to work with and share all the information gathered with key stakeholders, through a series of stakeholder meetings, as part of the process of building out the NSOAP.
PGSSC is interested in developing a standard process and templates for developing the stakeholder meetings across the work that they have done to date in more than a dozen countries, with particular focus on the on-going work in the Pacific Islands. This DAT may also assist the i-Lab and PGSSC teams in finishing the situational analysis in several countries (particularly in Palau) and/or specific research in preparation for the stakeholder meeting.
Definition of Success:
The development of research to support a set of the models for the most effective pathways for engaging stakeholders and carrying out the stakeholder meetings, that will lead to the development of a model template for conducting stakeholder analysis that both provides concrete structure and advice, while also allowing flexibility to adapt to different situations.
