By Savina Chham. Katrien Danhieux and Monika Martens
The Seventh Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR2022) took place in Bogota, Colombia, 31st October until 4th November. This event brought together health system researchers from around the globe including several members of the SCUBY team (Josefien, Savina, Monika, Phuong and Katrien).
Talking about Bogota, there was a lot to consider: safety, language barriers and distance (Big Challenge!!). But for the sake of representing SCUBY and showcasing our research findings at this global event, our team made it to all the way across the Atlantic. Let’s me tell you how my 30+ hours journey began from Cambodia to Colombia!!
My journey is a bit bumping along the way (1) I forgot to fill in CHECK-MIG and got stuck at check-in counter for two hours, (2) my flight got delayed by 4 hours at Suvarnabhumi airport (Thailand), (3) immigrant officers kept checking the validity of my travel documents from Suvarnabhumi airport to Schiphol airport (with Cambodian passport, but my EU and UK visas proved them right, they let me pass 😊), (4) I had to run to the boarding gate and arrived 10 minutes before boarding closed, and (5) upon arrival, I ended up losing luggage, but luckily/at least it arrived a day after landing!!
Lesson learnt: A BUMP IN THE ROAD DOES NOT END THE JOURNEY!!
Then followed our worthy journey in Bogota:
I myself gave a presentation on “Scaling-Up Integrated type-2 diabetes and hypertension care in Cambodia: what are the barriers of health system performance?” on the 2nd of November 2022 in the afternoon session “Tools of the Trade: strengthening critical health system functions for pandemic times and beyond”. At the end of all the presentations, a panel discussion was conducted with the presenters. A discussion was going on with questions from the audiences and the session
Figure 1: Savina gave her oral presentation at HSR2022, Bogota, Colombia
ended very well. Thank you to the SCUBY family and Cambodia colleagues (from General Secretariat of Social Protection Council, Ministry of Economic and Finances) who came to support. The most heart-warming last message from one of the presenters “I am looking forwards to reading your paper”. Worth Savina’s 30+ hours journey!
Katrien had a poster on “COVID as a magnifying glass on primary healthcare” which was the three countries’ works, this poster cost Katrien a thousand miles. She traveled a thousand miles for data collection in Slovenia and Cambodia, and a thousand miles to present the poster in Bogota. But it is worth it!
Figure 2: Katrien and her poster
Monika gave her oral presentation on “Who is scaling up integrated care and how? Realist evaluation on the role of country-specific policy dialogues and scale-up roadmaps in Cambodia, Slovenia, and Belgium.” on the 4th of November 2022 in the morning session “Health Policy and systems research: cutting edge research to inform transformational practice”. It was a very well-done presentation about a multiple case study evaluation and well-applauded by the audience.
Figure 3: Monika gave her oral presentation at HSR2022, Bogota, Colombia