A decade of THET Conferences: Celebrating Global Health Partnerships

THET Conferences are a highlight of my year, and I never take this for granted.  

The conferences are a reminder that THET is a network as well as an INGO, working to increase the flow of learning across continents between different health systems. Mutuality is our passion, partnership our conviction. 

We convene through conferences, to cheer and applaud, and it is the motivated, highly skilled professionals involved in Health Partnerships who then inspire, inform, educate and disagree. THET conferences are tools for understanding our place as Health Partnerships in a shifting world where absolutely nothing can be taken for granted. They are also a chance to connect with others on a personal level. They challenge us and inspire us to improve the quality of our contributions to global health. 

Over the years, several things stand out, which I describe below. One above all others, and that is the tremendous growth in participation. THET conferences today are larger and representation is far more diverse, both in geography and profession than they were when I first became involved in 2015. In recent years, I have particularly valued the surge of interest from those who have migrated and bring a knowledge of two or more health systems – the people we call the Experts in Our Midst, and this has recently been re-enforced through our invitation to host the UK Africa Health Summits.  

Those of us who attend regularly feel very fortunate to be involved, each time inspired by the speakers and participants more generally. Thank you.  

A decade of THET conferences 

This year will be my 15th conference since I arrived at THET in 2015 – in 2020 we began running two conferences a year. Each year feels more momentous than the last. Now in my tenth year of THET conferences I realise that they must never lose this sense of urgency. Too much is at stake. 

Progress in health since 2015 has been remarkable. Malaria deaths decreased by 27% from 2015 to 2021. Maternal mortality rates decreased from 211 deaths per 100,000 live births to 182 in the same timeframe.  

We are, however, off-track to deliver on the promise of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The legacy of COVID, conflict, an erosion of human rights, an emphasis on national self-interest, reductions in Official Development Assistance have all contributed to this slowing of pace. And there are new challenges around climate, antimicrobial stewardship, catastrophic shortages of health workforce driven by poor working conditions and national budgets eviscerated by debt. All this is contributing to increased health inequities. As people gather in New York this month for the Summit of the Future I am tempted to agree with someone I met the other day, who argued we should simply extend the deadlines for the SDGs. There is too much unfinished business. 

The speakers 

As I reflect on the THET Conference to come, this November, and those now past, here are a few of my highlights: 

I will never forget the standing ovation for Edna Adan at the end of our conference in 2019. Edna is an exceptional speaker, and she was describing her exceptional life chronicled in her autobiography A Woman of Firsts. So inspiring was her speech, that the whole conference stayed for the reception; a logistical disaster which sent THET colleagues scrambling to buy additional refreshments from the shops around South Kensington.  

There have been other such inspiring speakers, including politicians such as Rory Stewart, who turned his keynote address into a Town Hall meeting asking more questions than he gave answers. Dr Jane Aceng, Minister of Health in Uganda, who spoke brutal truths about the breakdown of trust between the UK and our partners in Low- and Middle-Income Countries as a result of COVID. Professor Zaw Wai Soe who brought home the devastation of the coup in Myanmar. Andrew Mitchell, whose passion for the Health Partnership approach, shone through his speech at our most recent conference. Titilola Banjoko, who has spoken so comprehensively on how we can move beyond the racism and colonialism that continues to shape so much of our thinking. 

I will never cease being grateful to Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus for his annual address to our conference, rooting us firmly in our admiration for his leadership and the work of the World Health Organization. 

Too many to name because we have consistently convened over 50 speakers for each of the 14 conferences that I have been a part of, always with an eye to avoiding repetition and duplication, and always which an eye to diversity of profession, geography, and thought.  

A very few speakers have returned regularly, notably our Patron, Lord Crisp, whose thinking expressed in his book Turning the World Upside Down has done so much to shape our work. It was Nigel who in September 2015, my first THET conference, challenged us to see ourselves as a movement, working collectively to advance health globally. I have worked to realise that vision. 

THET reports 

Aside from the speakers, there have been the reports we have launched, stretching back to In Our Mutual Interest in 2017 with its stunning endorsement of the Health Partnership approach by Dame Sally Davies: “There is genius in this… Those who travel overseas, bring home fresh ideas about leadership, innovation and service-delivery, which directly benefit our work in the UK.” Since then we have launched numerous reports, from Students in Global Health Toolkit to Experts in Our Midst celebrating the expertise international recruited NHS staff bring to improving health globally. 

Working through lockdown 

And there have been watershed moments. The ‘Partnerships in an Era of COVID-19’ conference we organised in June 2020 was one of these. Lockdown had arrived and we moved online. I propped my computer on top of books stacked on my piano because, at that time, the only room in my house that had reliable internet was the sitting room. 25 speakers from three continents took part, and over 750 people registered from 54 countries. It was terrifying, and brilliant, and showed us what could be achieved using technology. This gave us the confidence to act in response to COVID and in turn, this confidence, and our growing fluency in technology, were crucial factors when it came to responding to the coup in Myanmar on February 1st, 2021, and in starting our work in north-west Syria. Technology is now transforming the Health Partnership approach as it is THET. 

The conference in 2021 was a watershed for a different reason. Lest we forget, that was the year in which THET experienced a £48m cut in its funding for Health Partnerships. We needed to lean on each other that year.  

Behind the scenes 

Behind every conference there is of course, what I call the bunker. Online conferences need to be produced with the fluency of a TV programme, and that takes an enormous amount of planning as well as skill. In-person conferences can be a little more elastic, but they still require that rigour of purpose, planning and delivery.  

Successive generations of THET staff have been involved in these conferences and I will never cease to be grateful to them. There is always a significant team ‘in the bunker’ as I call it, but the wider team also get involved alongside Trustees and our Honorary Advisors. 

THET’s 2024 Annual Conference 

This year the theme of our conference is: “Strengthening Collective Action on Global Health”. There is no better time to join the fight to achieve universal health coverage. Buy your tickets today, we would love to see you there. 

We would also love to hear from Health Partnerships who would like to share their work on the second day of our conference, and businesses looking to sponsor our conference. ( Click here to see sponsorship pack. )