Centering on Equity: Transforming the Health Science Knowledge System

Achieving health equity requires that we expand and enrich how knowledge is produced and shared for generations to come. Salzburg Global will collaborate with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on a program offering an open cross-sectoral, intercultural, and transdisciplinary exchange, which will go beyond critiques.

50 committed advocates from around the world will explore strategies and initiatives on cross-boundary knowledge production, use and accessibility in a highly interactive, hybrid program in Salzburg, Austria, which culminates with a five-day in-person residential program.

Together participants will develop new collaborations around existing forms of solidarity and collectivity with the support of bursary funds. Aligned with Salzburg Global’s design principles, participants will be involved in a dynamic process of program co-development and co-production. They will also be invited to give their views on the key questions during onboarding.

• Connect to a living, international community of outstanding leaders committed to investments for health, well-being, and climate resilience.
• Take inspiration and learnings from across the globe and gain foresight.
• Develop relationships for coalition building across organizational, professional, and national boundaries.
• Have open access to a vast network of Salzburg Global Fellows working on similar pursuits.
• Share promising practices and expertise, and draw on the group’s collective intelligence and experience to tackle challenges you face and leverage important opportunities.
• Receive and offer peer mentoring on ways to incubate, replicate, adapt, and scale good practices.
• Engage in a candid, safe, and open exchange with peers under the Chatham House Rule.
• Enjoy time and space to disconnect and reflect from a wider ecosystem perspective.

This program will bring together advocates, innovators, decision makers and other stakeholders from Indigenous communities, communitybased advocacy groups, research and academia, journals, arts and culture, grant making, national and local government, private sector, and communications and the media.

Participants will address the following questions:

1. How can the future of health science knowledge production be reimagined to achieve greater health and racial equity and community well-being?
2. What strategies are going beyond the biomedical model and centering wellbeing (e.g. harmony with nature, rights-based approaches, arts, narrative change as it relates to this broader interpretation of health, participation/power)?
3. What are examples and applications of local ways of knowing, including but not limited to Indigenous knowledge?
4. What specific contexts and conditions favor health knowledge generation and application processes that are reflective and inclusive of non-mainstream ways of creating health and wellbeing?
5. What sectors have seen significant progress in “decolonizing knowledge” (E.g. housing, urban planning, food systems, other determinants of health) and how?
6. What narrative approaches outside the US have provided legitimacy and validation for other ways of knowing?

This program will seek to:

• Build a larger and stronger network of actors engaged in expanding the HSKS and producing and sharing knowledge and data.
• Capture and promote approaches, strategies and ideas that lift up wellbeing, harmony with nature, arts, culture, and narrative approaches to health across various communication channels, including through a media partnership, Salzburg Global programs and networks, and participant suggested platforms.
• Develop a respectful and collaborative space to experiment and learn from new forms of knowledge production, with the intention to create greater respect for new forms of knowledge among policymakers and academicians.
• Shift mindsets, spur new thinking, and seed new collaborations, initiatives and network among participants and the institutions they represent.
• Co-create action plans designed and agreed by participants for them to take forward as appropriate at community, city, or national levels and influence policies, programs, practices and/or public opinion.

Who Should Apply?

You should apply if you...

• are an advocate, innovator, decision-maker and other stakeholder from Indigenous communities, community-based advocacy groups, research and academia, journals, arts and culture, grant making, national and local government, private sectors, and communications and the media or a young leader with a role in centering equity and communities in health science knowledge systems. 
• bring experience of working on cases of impactful or promising (or research on) interventions steering equity for the above-mentioned communities.
• are interested and open to exploring new ways of approaching complex "wicked" issues.
• are strongly committed to engaging actively with a community of peers and experts.
• are deeply committed to building equitable, inclusive, and healthy communities.
• available between October 7 and 12, 2024, and committed to attending the in-person, immersive four-and-a-half-day residential meeting in Salzburg.

How to Apply?

Fill out our brief application online (a five-minute activity) by May 17, 2024.

To help you prepare, here's what to expect from Salzburg Global's application portal. Note our recommended guidance for applying to this program. Responses should be short (1,000 characters max.)

1. Describe how you would make use of this program and network of 50 global practitioners to centre equity in health sciences and knowledge for health and wellbeing. 

2. Describe an example of a new idea, experience, strategy or practice in which you are involved that center equity in health science knowledge creation, use and accessibility for health and wellbeing. 

In your response, please share how it is or will concretely bring about greater health, equity, and community wellbeing. What makes this initiative or experience an important example for other contexts (e.g., ability to be adapted in other contexts, the transformational impact, sustainability of the impact)? If possible, please share links and attachments about your work.

3. Describe how participating in this program will help you meet your personal and/or professional goals.

4. Share a bio, CV/resume, or video describing your professional experience.

Selection Process

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling admission. We will select applications based on the most exceptional case presented and the diversity of context represented. Our team may get in touch for further information on your application and will inform applicants of the status of their application by August. 

If you have any questions about the application process, please contact Charlotte Müer, Program Manager, Health, Salzburg Global Seminar, and/or Mary Helen Pombo, Director, Health, Salzburg Global Seminar.