2024 Global Health Practitioner Conference

December 17, 2024

In by Cate Urban

Conference Overview

The 2024 Global Health Practitioner Conference (GHPC24), taking place in Nairobi, Kenya, from October 28-31, 2024, brought together over 300 participants from 30+ countries around the globe. Attendees included representatives from governments, health practitioners, UN agencies, the private sector, civil society, the media, researchers, and academia.

Building on CORE Group’s legacy of advancing community health, GHPC24 focused on discussing equitable solutions for pressing health needs at the interface between communities and climate. The conference explored how collaboration can improve health outcomes, enable quality programs, and advance coherent policies for Primary Health Care and beyond.

Objectives of #GHPC24

The objectives of the 2024 Global Health Practitioner Conference were to:

  1. Increase Knowledge: Enhance participants’ understanding of multi-sectoral technical areas in community health, climate, and collaboration to improve health outcomes.
  2. Strengthen Partnerships: Build and reinforce relationships among CORE Group members and other stakeholders in the region to advance health policies, principles, and programming.
  3. Foster Connections: Promote networking and professional engagement among participants to support the creation of healthy communities worldwide and achieve health equity.

Conference Themes

#GHPC24 focused on three critical themes:

  • Communities: Examining how community health workers, community engagement, community-based surveillance, and community approaches can promote health, deliver services, prevent disease, and prepare for future outbreaks and health emergencies.
  • Climate: Exploring how agriculture, animal health, food security, and climate change impact future health and well-being.
  • Collaboration: Highlighting the importance of partnerships between communities, practitioners, governments, the private sector, and multi-stakeholders across technical areas to share best practices and work more effectively for improved health outcomes in development and humanitarian contexts.

Conference Agenda at a Glance

General Information

Sessions and Presentations

  • Session Presentations: Monday| Tuesday| Wednesday| Thursday
  • Poster Presentation |Technical Roundtables| Appy Hour

Visual Highlights

  • Photo Gallery:
    • Monday
    • Tuesday
    • Wednesday
    • Thursday

2024 CORE Group Award Winners

Dr Roma Solomon

Dory Storms Child Survival Award Winner

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step“, goes the saying Dr. Roma Solomon, the architect of CGPP India, steps away from actie service after 24 years, the journey in its entirety – a path pived with unwavering dedication, etched with her footprints upon the soil of a polio-free nation.

Dr. Solomon’s first step wasn’t onto a pre-laid path but onto a blank page. Armed with no Terms of Reference, only a vision ablaze, she began knocking on doors, one NGO at a time.

“Too small”, some said, dismissing the nascent CGPP. But

Dr. Solomon’s commitment was not a flickering candle, but a burning sun. Fueled by her passion, CGPP forged its way, joining SMNet, a network that reached where others couldn’t, the furthest corners of India. She nurtured not just projects, but people. As colleagues speak of her, their voices tremble with admiration, not just for the leader who guided them, but for the mentor who shaped them into “competent professionals” and “responsive, good human beings”.

Margaret Odera

Community Health Champion Award Winner

Margaret Odera is a Community Health Worker and mentor mother, reporting at Mathare North Health Center, her neighbourhood, and is based in Nairobi, Kenya. She spents her day to daytime doing mobilizations,sensitization, referrals, linkages and follow ups. As a mentor mother, she follows up pregnant and lactating mothers to ensure their babies are HIV negative at 18 months. Being an example, another of 3 HIV negative sons whom I passed through PMTCT right from conception to 18 months.

Her husband is also HIV negative. PMTCT has worked very well in Kenya because of the mentor mothers and the positive rate has dropped to below 2 % Margaret Odera is also a CHW advocate whose objective is to see a professionalized, salaried, equipped and trained Community Health Worker. In the process, she was able to form CHW Champions Network (CHWCN) to unite the CHWs together for the purpose of advocacy, which has 6,000 CHWs countrywide. Margaret Odera is focusing on forming a national association, having 43 out of 47 countries on board. Since the advocacy network was formed in 2020 December, Margaret Odera has sent great milestones that the government has made through advocacy. As a heroine of Health 2022, Margaret Odera encourages the women to come out and advocate for themselves, because she believes #itspossible.

Meet Our Conference Sponsors