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Kuala Lumpur and Geneva, 8 October 2026 – The United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU Global Health) and The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) have signed a three-year agreement to work together on how what health workers learn in practice can improve health outcomes.
The collaboration will span shared priorities, from equity, gender, and decoloniality to climate and health, immunization, malaria, and other topics, connecting more than 80,000 practitioners who learn together through TGLF with UNU Global Health’s global and country expert networks.
UNU Global Health, the United Nations think tank on global health, brings evidence to UN Member States, agencies, and programmes as they make and review commitments.
TGLF supports health and humanitarian workers to learn from each other, act on what they learn, and document what changes as a result.
The agreement combines this work, with the premise that the health workforce is key to shaping global health architecture – and that global funders, partners, and governments stand to gain by listening to the voices of health workers who serve local communities.
Partnering to listen and learn with health workers and communities, at scale
The agreement describes health workers as the people who adapt to circumstances that global frameworks do not fully anticipate, and who often invent what works before anyone documents it.
What does this look like in practice?
In TGLF’s equity certificate peer learning programme, Raymond Bernard Pallawo, a health worker in Mberra refugee camp, Mauritania, described a mother who nodded through his health talk during a diphtheria outbreak.
She told him later that she had not understood a word, because she spoke only Tamashek.
In TGLF’s equity certificate peer learning programme, he worked with colleagues to change his plan. It now runs through a community committee, translated messages, and mobile teams. His take-away:
“The system here is built for an ‘average’ camp resident, but in reality, no one is average.”
Pallawo was part of a global TGLF equity programme cohort with more than 5,000 participants from 41 countries.
Each participant took one act of unfairness they had witnessed, traced it to its root causes, and planned a response with their community.
TGLF’s research has shown that ‘peer learning’ is a powerful accelerator for those supporting their communities’ resilience in response to growing threats such as climate change.
Victoire Odia, a nurse in Lomami province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, described how a women’s group got pregnant women to the maternity hospital through increasingly-frequent extreme weather events.
“With the women’s group approach, we have set up a system of close monitoring through networking, which has enabled pregnant women from the age of 32 weeks to take a roundabout route to arrive at the maternity hospital in time for the assisted birth. Their stays were paid for by the women’s group solidarity fund.”
François Randria, district medical inspector and head of Farafangana district, pressed for the community health workers who mobilise families to be included in a measles campaign budget.
“Although the funds were not released immediately, collective pressure won formal recognition of the community health workers in mission reports.”
During a registration session, Teklebrhan Aregawi noticed that the women on the committee were not speaking.
“Men from the committee were dominating the conversation and decision-making. … I paused the session and proposed a break, using the time to speak privately with the women committee members.”
Each of these colleagues spoke from their own context, in dialogue with thousands of other participants.
What participants share belongs to them and their communities, and findings return to those communities in accessible formats.
Such stories have previously been dismissed as ‘anecdotes’, the lowest level of evidence in epidemiology.
UNU Global Health and TGLF share the conviction that such local knowledge is the missing link necessary to bridge global strategies and national plans with local leadership and action.
Health workers generate evidence of ‘what works’, and how
The partnership treats frontline health workers as generators of meaningful evidence and commits the partners to move knowledge in both directions and to strengthen existing government systems.
Initial work may focus where the two strategies meet: gender equality and intersectionality, climate justice and the determinants of health, power and accountability, and digital health, as well as immunization, malaria, and humanitarian health.
Karen E. Watkins, president of The Geneva Learning Foundation, said:
“Health workers already know a great deal about why a global commitment succeeds or fails where they work. Hearing from them is a start. What matters is what changes afterwards, in their practice, in policy, and in the health of the people they serve. Joining forces with UNU Global Health lets us work on that together, from both ends.”
Dr Revati Phalkey, Director, United Nations University International Institute for Global Health, said:
“Health workers witness every day where health policies work and where they fall short. Their lived experiences and frontline observations must help shape the evidence that informs policy. Through our partnership with The Geneva Learning Foundation, we will bring this knowledge together with academic research and connect it to policy-making, so that decisions on health reflect the realities of the people delivering care to communities they serve.”
About United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU Global Health)
UNU Global Health serves as the UN’s think tank on global health. The institute works to advance equitable, just and effective policies and practices by interrogating power and gender asymmetries in global health governance and accountability, health systems and workforces, digital health governance and security, climate health emergencies, and just transitions. Through collaborative policy research and training, UNU Global Health generates knowledge and strengthens capacities for decision-making by Member States, UN and other multilateral agencies and civil society groups for sustainable development of global health and well-being.
About The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF)
The Geneva Learning Foundation (TGLF) is a Swiss non-profit established in 2016. It enables health and humanitarian workers, supervisors, and managers inside national health systems to lead action on shared health priorities, using their own resources and supported by their peers. Since January 2021, more than 80,000 health workers from more than 70 countries have taken part in its Teach to Reach programme, the large majority at district, facility, and community levels, alongside leaders from more than 4,000 locally led organisations. TGLF’s programmes cover immunization, health security and outbreak preparedness, primary health care, infectious and noncommunicable diseases, mental health, maternal and newborn health, healthy ageing, and the use of artificial intelligence for health.
Media contacts
- UNU Global Health: Vithiya Sathivelu, Head of Strategy and Partnerships, UNU Global Health, vithiya@unu.edu.
- TGLF: Claude Cardot, senior communications officer, TGLF, claude.cardot@learning.foundation.