Experts from China, France and the United States convened on Grounds for a three-day conference that ended yesterday to discuss how non-governmental organizations help to shape public health polices.
The Trilateral Conference on HIV/AIDS and Public Health Access, hosted in Newcomb Hall's South Meeting Room, was co-sponsored by the University's Center for International Studies and the Paris-based Institute for Research and Debate on Governance, an organization that in part aims to analyze the interaction taking place between NGOs and state authorities, especially through forums such as the one on Grounds, according to the conference proposal.
"A Franco-Chinese forum was organized in Beijing in 2007 concerning the role of NGOs in education and health care," the conference proposal states. "The IRG, in collaboration with the University of Virginia, is now proposing to spread this approach beyond the Franco-Chinese framework and to confront it with the US experience, this time focusing on the issue of health."
Center Associate Director Majida Bargach said conference participants focused on two main objectives during the three-day event, which allowed for "the exchange of experiences and comparative analysis of the successes and failures of this action of the non-state actors" and also gave "participants materials to stimulate non-state actors [and to] discover a new participation arena."
Twenty-one delegates from the three participating nations, as well as four representatives from international organizations and six staff members, opened a policy dialogue meant to highlight critical differences and potential areas for improvement around the globe.
"We have been helping to plan talks and invite speakers so that we can capture the spirit of what public health means today in a global context," said Ruth Gaare Bernheim, director of the division of public health policy and practice in the Medical School's department of health evaluation sciences. "We have much to learn from our international colleagues."
Public Health Sciences Prof. Margaret Riley said delegates from each nation tried to inform other conference participants about their countries' health care lessons and developments - "not information you could learn in a book, but policy structures and how things work."
On Monday, for example, Gowher Rizvi, vice provost for international programs and director for the Center of International Studies, focused specifically on America's ongoing health care reform process.
"I don't know what is the state of the voting in Congress right now," he said. "When we planned this, we had no idea that such a momentous event would be taking place in the United States. I hope this conference will bring some luck; I hope we get something to come out of it so that we can look straight into the eyes of the French and say, 'We too have a working health care system.'"
Moving forward, Riley said the next step for the sponsoring organizations and participants would be to publish a summary of the event's various discussions and conclusions, and to determine if there are areas of potential further policy research. She also said she noticed NGO and advocacy group members finding common ground during the conference, and added that several agreements were made among different delegates to continue research in parallel or in communication with one another.
"Now I think somewhat differently about how I might teach public health law or what I might integrate into public health law, and people I could integrate too," Riley said.
Bargach likewise expressed confidence that the conference's proceedings will prove helpful to students and faculty at the University. Transcripts of the event will be archived in the Center for International Studies.
"I think that this is an example that can be used by many developing countries and countries trying to get many non-state actors and the society in general to take power of this health issue," she said. "I also think our faculty will be interacting with other researchers in China and France, as well as practitioners and NGOs, which is part of our mission at the Center of International Studies - to build bridges between our faculty across disciplines at U.Va"
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