Tonya Nyagiro is the Director of the Department of Gender, Women and Health at the World Health Organization. This is a follow-up to a session at the Aspen Institute earlier this week on women and health. We asked her what is WHO’s advocacy agenda in the next year.
Here are some ways that WHO is planning to take forward the report Women and Health: Today’s Evidence, Tomorrow’s Agenda:
*Advocacy and Dissemination: WHO is working with partners at country, regional and global levels to raise the visibility and advocate on women’s health through the key action areas of policy, health systems,
data and knowledge and leadership. Plans for dissemination in over 30 venues for 2010-2011;
*Policy Dialogues: Increasing political commitment for the key actions at regional and country level will enable action for women’s health. WHO is planning two regional dialogues in 2010 that will focus on
evidence for action. 1) The first dialogue will focus on Engendering Health Statistics by bringing together users and producers of data to generate better evidence on women’s health. The workshop will be one of
the first in a series of policy dialogues on Women and Health and responds to the fourth action area identified in the Women and Health Report on the need for better systems to generate data on common health problems faced by women.
The second dialogue will be undertaken through the WHO supported Evidence Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet) in the Africa Region based on the theme of gender and Primary Health Care. Through a call for
proposals, WHO will support select countries in Africa to develop policy briefs and plans advance women’s health through actions at the country level. Planning for other regional dialogues are underway.
I thought Monday’s seminar was excellent as is the WHO report, “Women and Health: Today’s Evidence, Tomorrow’s Agenda.” I would like to see planners at donor agencies explore disbursing foreign aid dollars to countries ministries of health directly as an incentive for governments to identify problems themselves and design and implement locally appropriate solutions. Governments would then be awarded more funding as they make progress on mutually agreed upon goals. Nancy Birdsell of the Center for Global Development has been working on this idea for awhile now, and I think it has particular promise for such culturally sensitive problems as violence against women and female genital cutting.