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Certificate peer learning programme for equity in research and practice

Equity matters: A practical approach to identify and eliminate biases

Every day, unfair treatment affects who benefits from health systems. Discover how you can identify and eliminate biases.

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Watch the live Special Event on YouTube

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Why should you care about bias?

Lives depend on it

When health systems have bias, people suffer and die unnecessarily. When certain groups are left out of research, we miss important knowledge about how diseases and treatments affect them. When policies ignore some communities, those people face greater health risks.

Resources are wasted

Programs that do not work for all groups waste limited resources. When we need to fix failed programs later, it costs more than designing them right from the start.

Your work becomes more effective

Understanding bias helps you:

  1. Reach more people with your services.
  2. Design better research that gives more accurate results.
  3. Create policies that actually solve problems.
  4. Build trust with communities that have been left out.
  5. Use your resources more wisely.

It is the right thing to do.

Everyone deserves fair treatment in health systems. As community members, health professionals, researchers, and planners, we have a duty to ensure our work benefits all people equally.

This means not only serving all populations fairly but including them as active participants in designing and implementing the systems that affect their lives.

What we will learn together

During this special event, we will explore:

  1. How to quickly spot the three main types of bias in any health work.
  2. Simple questions you can ask to check if your work treats all people fairly.
  3. Practical ways to fix problems once you find them.
  4. How to talk about bias with colleagues who may not see the problems.
  5. Tools to measure if your changes are making a difference.
  6. Ways to share what works with others in your field.

We will learn these skills through real examples shared by participants like you.

Every situation is different, but the patterns of bias are often similar.

By examining many examples together, we will build skills that work in many settings.

What you will get from this event

  1. Discover how the BIAS FREE tool can help you find and fix unfair treatment in your research, planning, policy work, or direct care.
  2. Meet others who care about making health systems fair for all people.
  3. Get respect for your knowledge and experience.
  4. Learn new ways to make your work better right away.
  5. Build connections across different levels of the health system - from community care to national policy.

This is for everyone who cares about equity and dignity.

Every day, we see how unfair treatment affects who benefits from health systems. Some groups get better care, more research attention, and more resources in policies and plans because of who they are or where they come from. This creates health problems that could be prevented.

When we share what we see in our work, we can learn together. We can find better ways to make health research, policies, planning, and care work for everyone. Your experience gives you important knowledge that can help transform health systems to serve all people equally.

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Communities and those who work for them

The leadership of community members is essential at every stage of research, policy, and program development. As experts in their own lived experience, community members understand how health systems truly function and why they succeed or fail. Meaningful change cannot happen without community members driving the process from conception through implementation and evaluation.

  • Health professionals: Discover practical tools to immediately identify and address hidden biases in your practice that may be preventing certain patients from receiving the quality care they deserve.
  • Humanitarian responders: Learn rapid-assessment techniques to ensure your emergency response efforts reach all affected populations, especially those most vulnerable during crises.
  • Civil society leaders: Strengthen your advocacy impact by identifying hidden biases that might be limiting your organization’s effectiveness with certain communities.
  • Program managers: Uncover how simple adjustments to your program design can dramatically increase your reach, effectiveness, and impact across all the diverse communities you serve.

People who plan, research, and make decisions that affect communities

  • National planners: Learn how to spot critical gaps in your national frameworks that data alone won’t reveal, enabling you to design more responsive policies that truly reach everyone.
  • Researchers: Transform your research methodology to eliminate biases that compromise validity and impact, making your work more rigorous, relevant, and powerful in driving health improvements.
  • Policy makers: Gain frameworks to analyze your policies for hidden inequities, helping you craft approaches that successfully reach those most often left behind by well-intentioned initiatives.
  • Global and regional health partners: Hear directly from frontline workers about what really works on the ground, challenging your assumptions and helping you design global initiatives that respect local contexts.
Mary Anne Burke

Guide on the side: Mary Anne Burke

We are honored to welcome Mary Anne Burke, co-author of the BIAS FREE Framework, as a “Guide on the Side” for this Special Event. She will provide context and insights as we explore real-world experiences and build collective knowledge.

Guide on the side:
Brigid Burke

As a sociologist passionate about championing equity, diversity, and accessibility, Brigid Burke brings extensive experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating strategic D&I initiatives. Her expertise spans professional learning, employee resource group development, and strategic program design. Brigid excels at engaging stakeholders at all levels and will provide valuable feedback as we explore practical approaches to identifying and eliminating bias in health systems.

Brigid Burke
BIAS Free Framework

Get the BIAS FREE Framework when  you register

The BIAS FREE tool is powerful because it works across all types of differences - not just one. Many tools only look at gender or only at disability or only at tribal differences. The BIAS FREE tool looks at all these together. The problems of unfair treatment follow similar patterns everywhere, even though the specific details may differ. This makes the BIAS FREE tool useful for everyone, everywhere. 

GET THE FRAMEWORK

Listen to the 15-minute overview of the BIAS FREE Framework

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What is bias?

Bias is not always obvious. Often, well-meaning health workers, researchers, and planners create bias by following standard practices without questioning who benefits and who is left out. 

Here are some signs you might have hidden biases in your work

  • Some groups consistently do not use your services
  • Certain communities show worse health outcomes
  • You often need to convince people to follow your advice
  • You find yourself frustrated with “difficult” patients or communities
  • Your programs work well in some areas but not in others
  • You use the same approach for everyone despite different needs

Bias happens when we treat people unfairly based on who they are, often without realizing it. In health, bias shows up in many ways:

  • When research studies only include certain types of people

  • When people affected by health issues are excluded from the research, policy-making, and planning processes

  • When health messages only work for people who read well

  • When clinics are built where some groups cannot reach them

  • When we blame people for health problems caused by larger issues

  • When we collect data that misses important differences between groups

  • When health plans ignore the needs of certain communities

  • When we fail to recognize community members as experts in their own lived experience.

What if you are convinced you do not have any biases?

Many excellent health professionals believe they treat everyone the same.

Research shows that even the most fair-minded people carry hidden biases they do not see.

What is bias?

How does this Special Event work?

How does this Special Event work?

Before the event: Share your experience

  1. Request your invitation to join this special event. When approved, you will receive the BIAS FREE Framework itself to review.
  2. Share your experience about bias you have seen in your work. This is not a questionnaire - we want to hear your real stories and insights.
  3. Invite your colleagues to join this learning journey. When we learn together as a community, we create more powerful solutions.

During the event: Learn together

  1. Listen to selected stories from participants about bias they have found and fixed in their work.
  2. Engage with Mary Anne Burke, co-author of the BIAS FREE Framework, who will serve as a "Guide on the Side" to help connect patterns across participant experiences.
  3. Connect with others facing similar challenges and discuss practical solutions you can use right away.

After the event: Turn knowledge into action

  1. Receive a certificate based on your contribution to collective learning, not just your attendance.
  2. Access all the resources created during the event, including the compiled experiences from participants and recorded session.
  3. Apply what you learned in your own work, and stay connected with the community to continue learning together.

Your participation will determine if we develop the programme

Your participation helps determine if TGLF will develop a full program on identifying and removing bias in health systems. When more than 1,000 people participate, it shows there is enough interest to create a more comprehensive learning opportunity.

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How does this complement gender analysis?

We need many lenses to see the whole person.

Instead of separate tools for gender bias, disability bias, or ethnic bias, we propose to explore how all these factors work together. This creates solutions that work better for real people with complex identities and challenges. 

The limits of single-focus approaches

Many health programs now use gender analysis, which is an important step forward. However, looking at gender alone can miss many important issues.

For gender specialists

The BIAS FREE Framework expands your gender analysis by revealing how gender interacts with disability, ethnicity, and age. Explore why some women benefit from your gender programs while others remain excluded due to compounding factors beyond gender alone.

For emergency responders using Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA)

Your Rapid Gender Analysis captures critical gender dimensions during crises. The BIAS FREE Framework helps you identify which women, men, girls, and boys face multiple exclusions during emergencies due to disability, ethnicity, or displacement status—ensuring no one is overlooked.

Real people are not just one thing.

A person is never just their gender. They also have an age, a physical ability or disability, a tribal or ethnic identify, a location, an education, a wealth status, religious beliefs.

When we focus only on gender:

  • We might collect sex-disaggregated data but continue to treat male experiences as the norm.

  • We might improve women's access to services without questioning why systems were designed without women in mind.

  • We might increase women's representation in research without challenging power structures that devalue their contributions. 

Problems compound and intersect

When someone belongs to multiple groups, their problems are not just added together—they multiply and create unique challenges.

For example, a poor woman with a disability faces barriers that neither poor men with disabilities nor better-off women without disabilities experience. 

Why learn with people who are very different from you?

1. No one can see everything

  • Community members understand firsthand why systems succeed or fail in practice.

  • Community health workers see barriers that researchers miss.

  • Global researchers spot patterns invisible at the local level.

  • Policy makers understand system constraints that affect implementation.

  • Patients and families understand firsthand why systems succeed or fail in practice.

When these perspectives connect, we find solutions no single group could discover alone.

2. Break knowledge hierarchies

  • Traditional systems value some knowledge over others
  • The frontline worker's daily experience is as valuable as the researcher's analysis
  • Diverse backgrounds reveal biases invisible to homogeneous groups

Equal exchange builds more effective and fair health solutions

3. Activate collective intelligence

  • A rural health worker identifies exclusion patterns unseen by urban professionals.
  • A researcher helps connect local observations to global trends.
  • A program manager translates insights into actionable systems change.

Together, we create knowledge that transforms health for everyone

Our approach follows the World Health Organization’s recommendations

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified key actions needed to create fair health systems that work for everyone. Our approach directly supports these recommendations.

We bring diverse voices together.

WHO calls for meaningful participation from all communities in health decisions. TGLF’s approach creates a space where community members lead conversations with frontline workers, researchers, and policy makers as equal partners, breaking down traditional power differences.

We support action, not just talk.

WHO emphasizes that equity requires moving from awareness to concrete action. TGLF’s approach gives you practical tools to find bias in your work and clear steps to fix these problems.

We focus on root causes.

WHO emphasizes looking beyond immediate health problems to address the deeper social causes of poor health. Our approach helps you identify how social systems create unfair treatment in health, not just its symptoms. 

We focus on people, not just diseases.

WHO recommends designing health systems around people's needs rather than diseases alone. TGLF’s approach helps you see the whole person with their unique set of needs based on gender, ability, ethnicity, age, and other factors.

About The Geneva Learning Foundation: our commitment to equity in action

The Geneva Learning Foundation is a Swiss non-profit. We research, develop, and implement new ways to transform how knowledge is created, shared, and applied. In global health, we connect health workers across 137 countries through digital networks that recognize local expertise as essential for effective action.

TGLF believes that those closest to challenges hold the most valuable solutions. Our peer learning approach:

  • Values knowledge from all sources—whether from community health workers or researchers
  • Creates spaces where diverse voices lead as equals, challenging traditional power hierarchies
  • Makes learning accessible across contexts, regardless of geography or resources
  • Demonstrates that including more diverse perspectives leads to better health outcomes

We don't just talk about equity—we design systems where it happens, connecting local action to global impact through networks of practitioners who both teach and learn.