About Emerging Voices for Global Health

Emerging Voices for Global Health (EV4GH) is an innovative multi-partner blended training program that includes face-to-face training and virtual training components, for young, promising and emerging health policy & systems researchers, decision-makers and other health system professionals with an interest in becoming influential global health voices and/or local change makers, particularly in LMIC.

The EV4GH venture was initially conceived by the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp in 2010 with the aim of empowering health systems researchers from the global South by providing them with intensive skills training and facilitating their participation in global health symposia. After initial success with a small cohort of researchers aspiring for local change and global impact, the EV4GH venture began to involve more institutions from across several LMICs. Five previous EV4GH editions have been organized, all linked to an international or regional global health event. In 2010, EV4GH was linked to the First Global Symposium of Health Systems Research in Montreux, in 2012 to the Second Global Symposium in Beijing, in 2013 to the International Conference on AIDS and STDs in Africa (ICASA) in Cape Town, in 2014 to the Third Global Symposium of Health Systems Research in Cape Town and in 2016 to the fourth Global Symposium of Health Systems Research in Vancouver.

Recently, EV4GH was accepted as a Thematic Working Group of Health Systems Global (HSG). The key activities of the group include: organising EV4GH events at global health conferences; hosting webinars; arranging young researcher workshops; facilitating networking between different EV cohorts & regions; and Google Group thematic discussions.

Over time, the emerging voices (EV) initiative has acquired a life of its own with over 230 EVs from 5 cohorts (2010-16) representing close to 53 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin, North and Central America. EV4GH has reconfigured itself with a globally representative elected governance board and a secretariat based at the Institute of Public Health, Bangalore (IPH).