An Invitation to Join the Global Health Council Caucuses

The Global Health Council is committed to seeking opportunities for its members to become engaged and active with the organization in a way that will:

Enhance the value of membership for individual and organizational members;
Create active environments for communication and information exchange among GHC members across sectors; and
Provide GHC with additional avenues for tapping into the expert resources of its diverse membership.

As one means for achieving these objectives, GHC has adopted a process for members with interest and/or expertise in particular interest areas to form caucuses under the auspices and general oversight of the Global Health Council.

Anyone with an active GHC membership is eligible to join. If you are interested in joining, please send an email to membership@globalhealth.org.

Our three caucuses are:

The Faith and Global Health Caucus

The Spirit of Alma Ata 1978 Caucus

The Humanitarian Health Caucus

The Faith and Global Health Caucus

The Faith & Global Health Caucus encourages people of all faiths to develop and support health services for those in need.

The Caucus acts as a catalyst, bringing together diverse communities with common goals. It promotes interfaith understanding and mutual respect among those who provide services and between providers and those they seek to serve. It acts as a catalyst, enabling best practices to be identified and adapted by others. It also serves as a platform where challenges to implementing best practices can be identified and addressed.

Caucus members meet monthly to discuss areas of concern and areas of accomplishment. The proceedings of these meetings are sent to all Caucus members.

All Global Health Council members who are moved by their faith to help create a better world are encouraged to join the Caucus. Currently, more than sixty members, from five faiths and four continents, have begun to work together toward this shared vision.

The Spirit of Alma Ata 1978 Caucus

We believe that health is a social, economic and political issue, and above all a fundamental human right. Inspired by the Alma Ata Declaration from the International Conference on Primary Health Care (PHC) in 1978, we are interested in holistic approaches to health that address the underlying determinants of health and that are based on the concepts of equity, sustainability, and community empowerment.

The Caucus will bring together members of the Council with similar interests to:

Share experiences, perspectives, and resources regarding the implementation of this approach to health.
Research, analyze and document successes and challenges to this approach, and look at how to apply these lessons to future health activities.
Network persons and organizations with similar interests and to learn from each other.
Serve as a resource to the Council membership regarding this community empowerment approach to global health work.
Nurture leadership of younger international health professionals in these principles and practices of PHC.

The Humanitarian Health Caucus

The Humanitarian Health Caucus is a professional forum within which practitioners of public health in complex emergencies can meet to exchange experiences and compare methods and results. It aims to create an environment that is conducive for communication across sectors and disciplines in order to share and promote best practices in the design, implementation, and evaluation of humanitarian responses. The Humanitarian Health Caucus was specifically founded in order to:

Share information among humanitarian actors; for example, practical guidelines and field tools;
Discuss common problems regarding humanitarian health and pose potential solutions;
Design joint initiatives, for example, assessments or evaluations;
Promote best practices in humanitarian response incorporating the spectrum of interventions recommended in emergencies; for example, measles vaccination, emergency obstetric care services, food, triage, water, clinical management of rape;
Assure appropriate sessions at the annual conference.

The Caucus is intended to complement other collaborative activities within the Global Health Council by providing another venue where discussions can occur, tools and products can be disseminated, provider needs can be expressed, and solutions can be explored. We hope that the Humanitarian Health Caucus will attract new collaborators concerned with health issues in various settings that are similar to those experienced by displaced populations. We also hope that the Caucus will provide a new venue for collaboration across disciplines.