This blog is ever so slightly adapted from the original post which I did write, but was edited by the careful hand of Gabrielle Prager – found here.
It has already been a month since we all met in Sheffield’s Diamond for the latest Global Emergency Care Collaborative (GECCo) event – in fairness, some of us met much earlier that day in an unsuspecting Caffè Nero for a quick team brief (queueing outside at 7 am like an odd fan group wearing GECCo t-shirts!).
The striking venue was ideally equipped for our first event in the hilly city, and even as we encountered the usual pre-event glitches, the building support team went above and beyond to get us all fixed up and good to go. If this description fits a venue in your city and you can pull some strings to keep costs minimal, just tell us and we’ll bring ourselves to you in 2026!
As with every event, we respond to delegate feedback – we had been told a research-centred event would be ideal, so we got our heads together to see what stellar cast we could pull together. We were incredibly fortunate to find our speakers, facilitators, and panelists willing to be very generous with their time and help us create a truly memorable event.
We invited Taj Hassan, Chair of the RCEM Global Emergency Medicine (GEM) committee, to open proceedings. A fitting choice, Taj has been a longstanding GECCo supporter, speaking at several of our previous events. Moreover, having the RCEM GEM chair on stage tells the important story that whilst GECCo as an entity is independent, it is collaborative with, synergistic to, and supportive of all relevant bodies who bring together emergency care and global health, especially in the UK – no siloes here!
Taj was briefly followed by myself : I supported in founding GECCo and have also had a keen research interest in global emergency care throughout Emergency Medicine (EM) training. My job was to remind us of what GECCo gets up to, welcome delegates and set out the plan for the day.
The first keynote was delivered by Lee Wallis, World Health Organisation (WHO) Lead for Emergency & Critical Care. Lee’s extensive experience in global emergency care has seen him lead in numerous positions, notably developing EM in South Africa and working as President of the International Federation of Emergency Medicine. His presentation emphasised the WHO’s approach to integrated emergency, critical & operative care, showcasing the myriad of tools and toolkits ripe for validating and building into research planning, which will have a much broader influence and impact.
Our delegates had a wide range of experience levels, in both research and global emergency care; therefore, this insight created some real food for thought and triggered some new ideas. We recognise, of course, that for those who have yet to set foot into research or who have had limited exposure, as much as people like Lee are inspiring, it can feel like a giant leap to imagine coming close to that level or to be delivering large-scale projects. This is why we created our following panel: “Steps into global health research: stories within reach”. Here we were equally inspired by Alex Taylor, EM & Pre-hospital EM registrar in the Severn deanery, Silas Webb, EM ST4 in North West London, and Rosa Gallop, EM Senior Sister in Leeds.
What was so humbling about these three was their genuine belief that they might not be qualified enough to speak alongside the other speakers with their more established research and global EM credentials. What transpired was that even though we’d deliberately chosen them as speakers who did not have decades of experience under their belts, they were already appearing remarkably well-versed in various aspects of global health and research! We heard about several research projects through which Silas and Alex had progressively built up their experience, both stemming primarily from the pressure of a Master’s Dissertation – a similar theme brought about by Rosa, who is quite literally taking those first research steps in developing scoping review methodology for her Global Healthcare Leadership Master’s. The fact that Silas tailored his EM & Resuscitation Master’s to a global health topic is a good indicator as to how flexible our speciality is in bending toward this area.
Of course, deciding to get involved in global health research in EM is all well and good, but the logistics of how to do this responsibly as a high-income country practitioner partnering with colleagues in other countries has its challenges. One of these challenges is navigating funding, especially in the current climate of budget cuts in all such related areas. The subsequent “Funding challenges & opportunities in Global EM research” panel presented a few perspectives.
I manage the RCEM Low and Middle Income Country (LMIC) grants as part of my role within the RCEM Research and Publications Committee. The growth of this grant over recent years in terms of reach, collaborative potential, quality of applications, and amount of money available to fund has been really positive. Eldho Baslin then told us of the emergency care research which Global Health Partnerships has funded. This is especially relevant in recent years as they have supported multiple emergency care projects, in particular in partnership with RCEM.
One such partnership brings us to the third speaker on this panel, Woldesenbet Waganew, who is the President of the Ethiopian Society of Emergency & Critical Care Professionals and was able to give us an excellent insight into the challenges and opportunities of funding in this space from the perspective of working with high-income country partners. Hannah Wilcock, from the RCEM International Team, completed the panel to bring her own experience of multiple grants and partnerships.
It should be added that Dr Waganew had planned to join in person for the event; however, disappointingly, challenges in visa approvals prevented this – he very graciously recorded his presentation for us, which was very well received.
Key to any work in the domain of global health is the avoidance of siloes and the development of networks and collaborations so that limited resources can be maximised and constant reflection is facilitated. This is why all face-to-face GECCo events include a designated networking session alongside the deliberately long breaks. It is our firm belief – and that of our delegates over years of feedback – that no matter how interesting the programme might be, there is nothing more important than the connections made and the conversations had in those spaces in between. By sprinkling a little bit of active networking magic using our ‘Window Shopping” activity, we managed to elevate and accelerate some of these interactions, which was clear from the buzz in the room.
Another of GECCo’s familiar faces followed lunch, Ellen Weber, Professor and Vice Chair of Emergency Medicine and practicing clinician at the University of California, San Francisco, and Editor-in-Chief of the Emergency Medicine Journal. Ellen has a decade of experience supporting research in sub-Saharan Africa, most notably Tanzania. It was this experience which enriched her keynote speech, where we heard some very practical ideas and examples as to how to undertake high-quality research with low resources.
Practicalities took us nicely into our three workshop sessions, where we took another facet of research planning, i.e., navigating ethical approval. The focus of the three workshops was split into different areas of ‘global health’ and was led by the following colleagues with a wealth of exposure to their relevant areas:
- Humanitarian Emergencies – facilitated by Munzer Alkhalil, Chair of the Syria Public Health Network, supported by Aula Abbara, Consultant Infectious Diseases & MSF Advisor, London
- Refugee & Asylum Health – facilitated by Louise Tomkow, Consultant Geriatrician & Dean’s Prize Fellow, Salford
- High and low resource partnerships – facilitated by Najeeb Rahman, EM Consultant & Trustee of Doctors Worldwide, Leeds
Often, sessions on ethics of any description, research or otherwise, with respect to settings as described above can get stuck in circular discussions around power dynamics. These discussions, whilst integral and essential for reflection, can make it difficult to envisage how practical progress can be made. These workshops allowed delegates to explore real examples of research proposals and take on different roles in the approval process. This forced everyone to think about the practicalities of who grants approvals, where ethical barriers might lie, but also about when ‘ethics’ becomes more about protecting an institution than it does about ‘ethics’ in the truest sense of the word. Undoubtedly, all workshops threw up more questions than answers, but to have an opportunity to think deeply around this key tenet of research development, supported by experienced faculty, was priceless.
Experienced faculty were, of course, matched with some very experienced delegates, some of whom were invited to deliver the following lightning oral presentations following abstract submission earlier in the year:
- Civilian burns in armed conflict: a systematic review – Emma Butterfield
- Empowering Rural Clinicians: A Trauma Training Pilot in Zambia – Daniel Grace
- Triage Implementation to Nanyuki Hospital, Kenya by a Global Health Partnership – Grace Darmanin & Chintan Vora
- A qualitative study exploring how the UK EMLeaders Programme was received in the Ghanaian EM context – Alex Taylor
All presentations prompted a lively Q&A., the details of the abstracts themselves can be found within the supplementary presenter information document.
We were also fortunate to have nine e-posters on display during breaks and lunch. During the final break, all poster presenters were invited to accompany their poster so delegates could ask questions.
All nine posters can be viewed by flicking across the above slide-show.
Finally, we came to our last panel session of the day, which was arguably our most thought-provoking as it covered research as advocacy in humanitarian emergencies. This subject has never been more pertinent during a period in world history where research evidence is both crucial and yet finds itself struggling to make the advocacy inroads to create a shift in both policy and geopolitics so that human health is protected. We were joined again by Aula Abbara alongside Yasmeen Iraqi (Research and Policy Office at Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP)), James Smith (EM doctor, Lecturer in Humanitarian Policy and Practice, London), and Juan Cervera Serrano (EM doctor, MSF, UK-Med, MAP). Once again, challenges gaining a UK visa prevented Enas Tina (Medical Program Officer, also with MAP), who had planned to join us from Ramallah, from giving her presentation. The presentations gave examples specifically from Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank where research evidence has been used and presented to different audiences. Speakers highlighted tensions of language within research materials and what is considered ‘palatable’ for a so-called scientific audience, which can easily slide into complicit dilution of fact. The strong message from all speakers was the importance of aiming for rigorous research approaches, transparent methodology, and unambiguous reporting. In this regard, the truth is then able to speak for itself without any framing or need for comfortable language. It was very much highlighted that despite the strongest evidence for attacks on healthcare with clear contraventions of international humanitarian law, we have entered a period of time where moving such evidence as advocacy into immediate and effective influence has very visibly stalled based on where geopolitical power lies. For those who claim that healthcare and politics should be kept separate, that utopian vision exists no more in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or Syria than it does in the UK.
It was very much felt that this panel session warranted a moment all of its own for some ongoing discussion, which we could only really glimpse during this Q&A. There is, therefore, a planned online follow-up event.
What is so heartening about this growing community of colleagues within the UK and beyond is watching, year on year, whilst careers are developing and collaborations emerging, people still find the GECCo space one that they can both enrich and take away from. In fact, it has been colleagues with the most experience and exposure under their belts who have felt the most profound pull toward a group of people with whom a shared vision and values provide a much-needed soundboard and sense-check. This event spotlighted the very core of why GECCo was created, and we look forward to continuing this journey together!
For more speaker details and lighting oral abstracts, click here.*
*Note that Salehya Ahsan was unfortunately unable to present, but Rosa Gallop supported in her stead
