Happy Holidays from CORE Group! |
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Dear CORE Group colleagues,
Thank you so much for your support and engagement throughout 2021! It has been another challenging, yet productive year during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are grateful for all of your collaboration and hard work working with communities, and all the work you do across the globe.
As we start another year of partnership toward better health for all, we would like to look back at the successes of 2021 and share exciting opportunities for 2022.
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2021 Highlights & What's in Store for 2022
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Working and Interest Groups and Young Professionals Network
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CORE Group Membership
With your support, 29 new organizational members joined CORE Group in 2021. Our membership has now grown to include more than 270 nongovernmental organizations, students, advocates, academia, and private sector working together to advance community health. Learn more and become a CORE Group member!
2021 New Members include:
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- Nivi Inc.
- Kenya Association for Maternal & Neonatal Health
- Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit
- Society for Entrepreneurship Integrated Development
- Kati Collective
- ChildFrontiers South Sudan
- Haiti Cholera Research Funding Foundation
- MiracleFeet
- Community Development and Humanitarian Network (CoDHNet)
- Concern Health Education Project;
- What to Expect Project
- GOAL
- OneHeart Worldwide
- New Incentives
- Amref Health Africa USA
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- Voice of the Girl-Child Trust
- PATH
- Pivjet International
- Seeds of Mercy Water Development Organisation
- DAI
- Safe Surgical Aid
- Action pour la Solidarité, l'Urgence et le Développement (Action SUD)
- GemHub Initiative
- Kotagiri Womens Welfare Trust
- Primary Health Care Development Agency (PHCDA)
- Save Somali Women and Children
- Department of Humanities, Health, and Society-Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
- International Institute for Primary Health Care - Ethiopia
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SRMNCAH Small Grants Program
In 2022, CORE Group will implement a participatory small grants program to advance sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health (SRMNCAH) programming, policy, and interventions in three priority countries. The program will provide financial, technical, and organizational resources to local organizations led by women, youth, and people with disabilities, and other community-based organizations. This approach will strengthen local and national organizations' technical and organizational capacity to design and implement community-based solutions to SRMNCAH challenges, focusing on gender transformation, quality of care, and health equity. We will share more details of the launch and initial activities in early 2022.
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Reaching Zero-Dose Children Advocacy Project
CORE Group is excited to announce the launch of our new Reaching Zero-Dose Children Advocacy Project; with the support of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, we will implement this project in 2022. The three main activities of the project are a live webinar series on crucial immunization and advocacy topics, roundtable discussions with traditional and non-traditional immunization partners, and a short-video animation on zero-dose children. Our first webinar will be in early 2022. Stay tuned for the invitation, and check our website for more details about this project.
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COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy to Confidence Project
CORE Group launched its COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy to Confidence project in mid-2021 to promote COVID-19 vaccine confidence in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. In consultation with country advisors, we have convened webinars with speakers from across world regions for our Vaccine Confidence Live series, one on “The Role of Media and Communications in Building Public Confidence in the COVID-19 Vaccine” and one titled “Lessons Learned and the Way Forward for COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence in Kenya and Uganda.” An online survey on vaccine acceptance has been conducted among in-country groups such as frontline health workers, patient advocacy groups, civil society, health officials, and community leaders to assess gaps in COVID-19 vaccine confidence messaging at the country and community levels. These messaging needs will inform the development of a social media toolkit and a short animation for in-country dissemination in early 2022. CORE Group has also added more than 100 new resources to its a consolidated, online COVID-19 Pandemic and Vaccine Resource Library. A visual refresh for this digital library, to be unveiled in 2022, is in process to ensure that it is more user-friendly.
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Climate Action, Inclusivity, and Health Initiative
CORE Group's new climate and health initiative commemorated International Youth Day (IYD) by hosting a social media campaign to elevate the voices of youth leaders engaged in climate action. The campaign, supported by PMNCH, the International Youth Alliance for Family Planning, and YOUNGO, included a Twitter chat, a video campaign, and the dissemination of climate change and health facts for IYD in August. CORE Group, in collaboration with Pathfinder, also hosted the United Nations General Assembly and United Nations Food Systems Summit side event "Food Security, Climate Change, and Health: Women Leading the Response" in September. Participants discussed why food security is a gender issue, the links between climate change and food security, and initiatives to tackle these challenges. Subsequently, CORE Group’s Strategic Partnerships and Programs Coordinator participated in the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, in November. Look for more opportunities to engage with this timely initiative in 2022!
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Global Leadership
CORE Group continues to engage in high-level platforms to raise visibility and awareness of community health and women's, children's, and adolescents' health. Executive Director Lisa Hilmi and Strategic Partnerships and Programs Coordinator David Imbago both sit on the PMNCH Board and Executive Committee as Chair of the NGO Constituency and Chair of the Youth Constituency, respectively. Lisa is a Member of the Gavi CSO Steering Committee and Co-Chair of the COVAX CSO platform. David recently became a member of the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing.
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CORE Group Polio Project
Among the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, CORE Group Polio Project (CGPP) teams in seven countries persisted with critical community-based surveillance activities for polio and other priority zoonotic diseases, shared their expertise at global conferences, and published high-impact journal articles. CGPP maintained strong connections to communities through community volunteers who adhered to COVID-19 prevention protocols while implementing social mobilization and surveillance activities, supporting the vaccination of millions of children through polio campaigns.
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Conferences
CORE Group hosted our Global Health Practitioner Conference in January; convened a second Institutionalizing Community Health Conference (ICHC) in April in collaboration with UNICEF, USAID, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Community Health Roadmap, and the Community Health Community of Practice (CH-CoP); and co-sponsored a third virtual Lives in the Balance conference with PMNCH in May. We also held our first Global Health Practitioner Institute workshop series for CORE Group members, in collaboration with the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations, in October. Our 2021 conferences and events were attended by more than 8,400 individuals from more than 100 countries. CORE Group is planning a hybrid Global Health Practitioner Conference (virtual and in-person) for the second half of 2022. Stay tuned!
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New and Re-elected Board Members
The Board of Directors play a critical role in the successes and new directions of the CORE Group. This year, CORE Group welcomed three new and re-elected members of the board, expanding our commitment to a gender-balanced Board of Directors with youth representation.
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Thank you,
Lisa Hilmi
CORE Group Executive Director
Sheetal Sharma, Daniel Meboya, Comfort Siodlarz, Robert Yamoah, Urszula Chomicka, Elías Enenbach, Avani Duggaraju, David Imbago Jácome, Sandra Yu, Sana Khan
CORE Group Staff
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