Photo: © WHO

This week the Institute's Global Health Programme (GHP) began to train the first cohort of 40 Heads of World Health Organization (WHO) offices worldwide through an online course in global health diplomacy. This online course is based on experiences from the many executive courses on global health diplomacy around the world which were pioneered and implemented by the Global Health Programme, headed by Ilona Kickbusch. It is specifically designed to meet the needs of the WHO and focuses on the changing system and methods of global health diplomacy and developing participants’ analytical skills in global health governance.

The WHO senior staff participating in this course will interact together during ten weeks through an online learning platform developed and managed by the DiploFoundation. Each week will introduce a new substantive topic, such as the evolution and history of health diplomacy, health and foreign policy, global health governance, multi-stakeholder diplomacy, international negotiation processes in and for health, South-South cooperation, and national global health strategies. Peer-to-peer learning is an important feature of this course which will be enabled through hypertext entries, online chat sessions and short assignments – both individually and in group. The course is led by Michaela Told from the Global Health Programme together with Professor Graham Lister and a pool of high-level guest experts.

The World Health Organization’s Department of Country Focus (CCO) commissioned the Global Health Programme to develop and deliver this course. The course is part of a wider two-year project of the Global Health Programme with WHO to deliver capacity-building activities to all 146 Heads of WHO Offices. A first public online course on global health diplomacy will be carried out in 2013.

For further information please contact the course coordinator.