PHM-Exch> Essay competition: Call for Emerging Voices in Global Public Health

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Andreas Wulf wulf at medico.de
 *Von:* global-fund-for-health at googlegroups.com

The Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium (ITM) - has launched
an essay competition for 'Emerging Voices in Global Public Health', on ideas
about 'Universal Health Coverage'.

Universal Health Coverage sounds like something everyone can agree with. Yet
it has different meanings to different people. For example: for some people
it means that all people, wherever they live, should contribute to financing
a basic package of health goods and services accessible to all people,
wherever they live. For other people it means that all countries should, one
by one, provide a basic package of health goods and services to all their
inhabitants: a package they can sustain without external assistance.
Depending on the perspective one uses, the package will be very different.

Universal Health Coverage is a crucial issue for the World Health
Organization. It is likely to guide the debates during the coming years. At
the ITM, we fear that the debates will be dominated by voices from rich
countries. And that is something we want to address.

This is a opportunity for academics based in poor countries, who have strong
ideas, but who do not benefit from the same kind of coaching academics based
in rich countries benefit from: for people who feel they have something to
add to the debate but fear they cannot live up to the expectations of
international journals, and for people who have tried to get their ideas
published, but who failed because of the way they formulated them.

We cannot improve your ideas, but we know they are strong. We can help you
to formulate them.

Please have a look at the message below, and act! Don't worry about your
essay not being perfect: if it were perfect, this call would not be for you.



***

Call for Emerging Voices in Global Public Health
"Towards Universal Health Coverage in developing countries"

The global health scene is still largely dominated by Northern stakeholders.
The Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium (ITM) wants to
encourage "Emerging Voices" from developing countries to participate
actively in international academic conferences and to raise their voice in
the scientific debate.

To identify those promising experts, we launch an essay competition for
"Emerging Voices" from developing countries on "how health research can
foster significant progress towards universal health coverage in low income
countries".

The theme of the competition is in line with the essay competition for young
researchers launched on March 5 in The Lancet: "health systems research:
towards universal health coverage" (Samarasekera & Jupp 2010) and advertised
on the Global Symposium's Website. We do however allow broader
interpretations of the theme.

We invite "Emerging Voices" from developing countries to submit a personal
single author essay. Authors must have been born on or after Jan 1, 1965.
The essay can be in English or in French, and should not exceed 1500 words.
It will be accompanied by a short CV and a cover letter. The submission of
an abstract related to the research the author is participating in is
encouraged. Potential participants must inform us about their intention to
participate by June 4, 2010. By July 30, 2010 we should receive the final
submission (by email at emergingvoices2010 at itg.be).

Authors of selected essays will be invited to present their work at the
colloquium of the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium (November
8-10, 2010, http://www.itg.be/colloq2010) and to participate in the First
Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (Montreux, Switzerland, November
16–19, 2010, http://www.hsr-symposium.org).

Selected Authors can benefit from didactic coaching. This includes
(1) distance support;
(2) intensive training in Antwerp during the first week of November 2010;
(3) constructive feed-back and advice from senior scientists and
participants in the ITM colloquium;
(4) finally, the authors of the essays can also receive coaching to finalise
their essays and research papers for submission to scientific journals.

A number of travel grants to participate in the Antwerp and Montreux events
in November 2010 will be awarded to Emerging Voices who lack sufficient
financial means.

We encourage potential participants to send us a pre-submission enquiry for
further orientation emergingvoices2010 at itg.be. Detailed rules and additional
information can be found on the website of the colloquium.
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