Youth take part in World Health Summit Regional Meeting 2023

Photo from World Health Summit

On April 13, our Youth Leadership Board Member Alison Collard de Beaufort joined the World Health Summit Regional Meeting in a panel titled “Emerging Leaders in a Globalized World”. The Summit focused on uniting different sectors and organizations for global health and created an opportunity for knowledge exchange and partnership building. 

Under the theme of “Bridging the Science to Policy Gap for Global Health”, the World Health Summit Regional Meeting highlighted the essential role of evidence-based science in the development of global health policy.

The topics for the Meeting include; (1) global health in a political world, (2) climate change, pandemics, and social determinants of health, (3) confronting the burden of non-communicable diseases, (4) gender and power, (5) racism in global health, (6) technology for global health, and sustainable giving in global health.

Alison joined speakers; Dr. Abdul Ghaffar of the JUNAID Family Foundation, Dr. Milagro Sanchez Cunto from F.J. Muniz Hospital in Buenos Aires, Ms. Torrine Creppy from Safekids Worldwide, and Matthre Carvalho from Georgetown University.

During her intervention in the panel, Alison spoke about why road safety is interconnected with public health. She shared her experiences as a youth advocate for road safety and gave young leaders advice on how to get involved in the global advocacy movement. 

“I think youth are the strongest voice that we have as a society. We are the most interconnected generation, not only because of social media but also because we have the knowledge that has been built on throughout the last centuries and we have the energy to continue building that capacity.” - Alison Collard de Beaufort 

Alison talked about the strength young people possess, being prepared to take charge of situations that affect them. Talking about road safety, she points out that “road safety is something that has been largely overlooked since cars have been built and it's not an issue people like to talk about because it's just accepted as fact.”

Alison emphasizes that she is not willing to take the increasing number of road-related deaths as a reality, saying “no” to how the situation is seen as “normal”. 

On the SDGs, Alison points out that a lot of the targets are interconnected and fit within a globalized framework. She touched on how road safety is noted as a target on two SDGs, specifically SDG 3.6 and SDG 11.2.

“They’re not individual targets we need to solve on their own but they are things we need to address as a whole.”

The World Health Summit Regional Meeting 2023 was held in partnership with the Annual Conference of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) CUGH 2023 and the Global Innovation Forum organized by the Association of Academic Health Centers International (AAHCI)