The Health Science Knowledge System (HSKS) has long addressed the treatment of disease. The system reinforces research, educational, and practice norms aligned with historically established practices of scientific integrity that come with embedded bias, contributing to inequalities and systemic failures. The glaring inequities from 21st compounding crises call for nothing less than a paradigmatic shift towards new ways of thinking and doing health science.
Health science knowledge requires a fundamental new trajectory to achieve greater health, racial equity, and community wellbeing. These longstanding reductive and biased practices include the exclusive focus on biomedical problems and sidelining determinants of wellbeing and voices who bring experiential knowledge, especially among non-dominant groups. Artificial notions of biological difference and similarity among people have long led to poor health science, especially for women. Often, the knowledge produced is disconnected from its practical application and wider community engagement.
The urgency for concerted action to center equity and communities in knowledge systems is mounting. Social movements around the world, such as Black Lives Matter, Indigenous self-determination, and the epidemic of mistrust in health information are proving that voices are rising for equity and wellbeing. Globally there is greater attention to community-led, participatory research, co-production, and equitable research approaches following calls for more fairness and justice in science research and halts to harmful past practices. Simultaneously, global efforts are steadily directed toward supporting a wider process of reconciliation and restorative justice in health.
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.
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:
This program will seek to:
You should apply if you...
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.
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.