In early February, the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator’s faculty director, Sue J. Goldie, kicked off the global health track at the 16th annual meeting of the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute (PVRI) with a keynote address titled “Conceptualising PH Through a Global Health Lens.”
The PVRI is a charity and research organization based in the United Kingdom and focused on pulmonary hypertension (PH) and pulmonary vascular disease (PVD), which refer to high blood pressure in the lungs and the progressive blockage of lung blood vessels. The PVRI holds a yearly congress for experts, researchers, industry and charity partners, drug regulators, and patients to learn about the latest research and efforts on PH and PVD. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the WHO’s first symposium on pulmonary hypertension, this year’s congress revolved around the theme “The next 50 years of pulmonary hypertension—a global view.”
In the year prior to the meeting, PVRI leadership approached Professor Goldie to provide advice on how they could integrate an educational initiative on global health into their meeting, and more broadly, how they could develop a thoughtful long-term strategy to build and strengthen clinical capacity in low- and middle-income countries to improve the quality of life and reduce mortality in patients with pulmonary hypertension.
Professor Goldie began the three-day congress with an opening keynote talk where she asked participants, “What do we mean by public health, international health, and global health?” The goal of her talk was an educational rather than technical one: to expose the participants to the population-level thinking and analysis needed to solve global health problems. Goldie presented a conceptual framework for thinking about global health challenges that considers the health problem, the context, and the ways we can respond, both from within and outside the health sector. She also provided an introduction to the types of metrics needed in global health priority setting and monitoring.
The challenge: the meeting was in London, but due to teaching obligations, Professor Goldie was unable to attend physically. Not only did Goldie have to present at 3 a.m., Eastern Time, but she had to present the material in a way that was relevant to the audience as a non-expert in the field. Goldie also wanted to make the talk both personal and engaging, which was difficult over Zoom, where audience members could see either slides or the speaker, but not both.
To address this issue, Professor Goldie prepared simple sketches to illustrate key points. “I elected to not use classic slides, but to sketch the ideas as if we were talking around a table and simply sketching on a napkin,” said Goldie. Using visuals alongside learning content not only helps make the material more engaging, but it also boosts retention. By providing a simple and memorable overview of global health, the program aimed to equip participants with the tools needed to think about PH at the population and global levels for the rest of the congress.
The global health track included three integrated sessions, each with multiple talks and a panel discussion. The first day focused on “PH as a global health issue,” with Professor Goldie’s keynote talk and other presentations on the challenges of existing classification systems, what is known and not known about the epidemiology of PH, and information about specific data sources. On the second day, a session titled “The Many Faces of PH” showcased a diverse set of speakers representing regional variation in disease burden and influential social determinants. On the final day of the meeting, a third session, “Tackling PH in LMIC,” was kicked off by Professor Rifat Atun, also from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who provided a keynote about how to think about value-driven health systems, service delivery platforms, and implementation with a global lens.
Professor Goldie’s presentation is available online for congress attendees, and anyone else interested in global health, to watch. Watch Professor Goldie’s keynote presentation on Vimeo.
The Global Health Education and Learning Incubator at Harvard University supports teaching and learning about cutting-edge, multidisciplinary global health challenges. We foster and evaluate new pedagogical tools and instructional strategies that bridge disciplinary fields, educational spaces, and groups of learners.