Originally posted on the Global Health Knowledge Collaborative blog, Kris Horvath from IntraHealth discusses the importance of knowledge management practitioners to use our own tools, techniques, and approaches to explore how to reach our goals. His experience at the GHKC Share Fair encapsulated the spirit of the event, which allowed participants to "create their own experiences" and have meaningful interactions.

 

Global Health Knowledge Management Share Fair: Challenges and Opportunities

From the beginning of last week's Global Health Knowledge Collaborative (GHKC) Knowledge Management Share Fair, it was clear that this gathering was not afraid to head into some uncomfortable territory -- in that spirit of candid inquiry and collaboration that marks us KM types, of course. Keynote speaker Stacey Young hit right away on an important conundrum. Namely that we, as KM practitioners, know well that efforts that fall short have plenty to teach us; on the other hand, the pressure to tell tales of success is real, and with a client sitting across from us, it seems unavoidable.

This post, by Sylvia Vriesendorp, originally appeared on the Global Heatlh Knowledge Collaborative Blog. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communications Programs is the current chair organization of the Global Health Knowledge Collaborative and the implementer of K4Health, with FHI 360 and Management Sciences for Health. Sylvia Vriesendorp, the emcee of the Share Fair, led the nearly 200 participants through a highly interactive day. Every session was participatory, from the audience response system in the plenaries to the hands-on demonstrations in the Marketplace and roll-up-your-sleeves design of breakout sessions. It was mentioned more than once that this should become an annual event, and a volunteer overheard a participant say she had sneaked into the event even though it was full. 

Global Health Knowledge Management Share Fair: Challenges and Opportunities utilized graphic facilitation by The Value Web to capture the key points of conversations throughout the innovative, participatory one-day event.

“What is important to you about KM and why?” was the first question that some 40 small groups discussed, sitting at paper-covered tables with colored markers that invited participants to doodle out loud. The papers and the host at each table captured their conversations, their questions, opinions and exclamation marks. Within seconds the room was abuzz, with energy, opinions, experiences and wisdom. Two graphic facilitators captured the essence of the conversation on a 24 by 8 foot mural that slowly filled over the next 6 hours.  

Another round of the World Café tapped the nearly 200 people to find out what they were not seeing, where more clarity was needed or what was in the way of making Knowledge Management an integral part of interventions aimed at improving public health.

Innovation is defined as a new idea, method, or device. Although I often think of innovations as successfully implemented ideas, the Merriam-Webster definition implies that innovations are also new ideas that fail. In global development, we have seen many innovations come and go and learned from them in the process. A few failed innovations that come to mind are TV programming in the 1960s, infant formula in the ‘70s and structural adjustment programs in the ‘80s.

The Global Health and Innovations Conference was a celebration and exploration of innovation. It was also a place for our community to raise questions and for innovators to address their skeptics. Converting skeptics into believers isn’t easy, especially with international development’s history of mixed results.

Family planning mobilizers speak to a client, Tope Olawuyi, during a visibility parade near Orolodo primary health centre in Omuaran township in Nigeria’s central state of Kwara.

© 2012 Akintunde Akinleye/NURHI, Courtesy of Photoshare

As one of the presenters delivering a social innovation pitch, I was expected to explain the evidence behind the innovation and why it was expected to succeed.

I presented K4Health’s eLearning for continuing professional development (CPD) work in Nigeria at the Clinic Based Social Innovations Pitches session. My fellow presenters and I took five minutes to explain what we were doing, why it was innovative, and what we hoped it would achieve. We each got five additional minutes to field questions and comments from the attendees who were happy to give us their impressions about the strengths of our ideas and where they saw gaps.

Dr. Karimou Sani, former USAID-HCI Advisor Tahoua, Niger; Dr Ekoye Saidou, Director General MOH Niger; Mr. Sabou Djibrina, UASID – HCI Niger; and Lauren Crigler, USAID HCI Bethesda, USA contributed to this blog post.

Faced by a severe shortage of health care professionals throughout Niger, the country’s Ministry of Public Health requested assistance from USAID’s Health Care Improvement Project (HCI) in 2009 to implement a program to address the health workforce crisis within the country.  In response, my team and I recognized this has an exceptional opportunity to implement a program to improve the management of human resources in selected facilities and management offices within the Tahoua Region.

As a part of the collaborative approach we adopted, quality improvement (QI) teams tested and implemented changes within their own facilities, while simultaneously monitoring performance with QI advisors and coaches from both HCI and the Ministry of Public Health. 

Applying quality improvement methods to HR performance management

As Quality Improvement Advisors, we recognized the importance of supporting the facility teams in strengthening their ability to recognize where they needed to improve their performance and helping them to have confidence in managing the quality of that service within their team. In order to address areas that were in need of improvement, we determined the variables that were adversely impacting health worker performance, engagement, and productivity.  The steps we undertook to address these areas are displayed in the diagram to the right. We began by aligning and clarifying tasks, and we measured progress in performance by tracking clinical indicators.