2024 saw a growth in innovation to improve the health of women, highlighting the potential for transformative change — but the path to lasting impact will require sustained collaboration, increased funding, and unwavering commitment to center women’s voices in every decision

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In early 2023, the Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health partnered with Camber Collective to establish the Innovation Equity Forum (IEF)—a global coalition of women’s health experts, innovators, and advocates. The IEF was launched to identify and prioritize critical opportunities to advance women’s health innovation worldwide. Its flagship initiative, the Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map, serves as a strategic blueprint to accelerate innovations that reduce women’s morbidity and mortality. 

A year after the Opportunity Map’s launch, Camber was re-engaged to produce a progress report tracking advancements in women’s health innovation over the past year. The report aims to promote accountability, assess how effectively partners are targeting under-resourced and high-priority areas, and provide insights to guide stakeholder decision-making within the context of the Opportunity Map. It focuses on three key areas: the broader women’s health research and development (R&D) ecosystem, Opportunity Map topics, and organizational success stories. 

Over the past year, women’s health innovation has gained momentum, fueled by increased advocacy, new partnerships, and growing funding commitments. Substantial progress has been made in six of the 50 high-impact opportunities identified in the 2023 Opportunity Map: Innovation hubs expanded in both HICs and LMICs to accelerate solutions to improve women’s health. Burden of disease and cost estimates improved through sex- and gender-intentional data practices, alongside ROI data that bolstered the case for investment. Breakthroughs in vaccines, diagnostics, and preventive measures addressed several communicable diseases, including STIs, RSV, and GBS, and the inclusion of pregnant and lactating individuals in tuberculosis clinical trials marked a pivotal step toward equity in research. Progress in female-specific conditions included new drug approvals for uterine fibroids and PCOS, while advancements in maternal health research delivered tools to improve outcomes for mothers and infants. In non-communicable diseases, a deeper understanding of sex- and gender-specific differences in cardiometabolic conditions has paved the way for more precise prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies.

More modest progress was made across 33 additional opportunities, reflecting important but incremental advancements in women’s health innovation. Medical institutions in some regions began incorporating gender considerations into training curricula. Advances in sex- and gender-intentional research gained traction in some regions, and regulatory actors increased their application of sex- and gender-intentional policies and frameworks. Encouraging developments also emerged in vaginal microbiome research, contraceptive technology, fertility optimization, menopause, autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders, and mental health. The remaining 11 opportunities stalled or experienced setbacks.

These advancements underscore the bold vision of the IEF’s 250+ members, but persistent barriers in the systems enabling innovation continue to hold back more significant progress in improving women’s health. Notably, a lack of accountability for the systematic collection, analysis, and reporting of sex- and gender-specific data limits understanding of the true burden of women’s health issues and the impact of interventions, impeding evidence-based decision-making. Gaps in ecosystem indicators prevent visibility into the breadth of the women’s health R&D pipeline, particularly for conditions beyond sexual and reproductive health. Pathways to market remain a critical obstacle, particularly in LMICs, where barriers to accessing innovations are most pronounced. Compounding these challenges are deep-rooted societal and structural inequities that have historically limited women’s participation and advancement in R&D careers. These inequities contribute to the ongoing attrition of women from the research field, stalling progress toward a more inclusive and representative research ecosystem. Finally, while promising funding commitments and partnerships have emerged, efforts remain fragmented.

To accelerate progress for women’s health innovation across conditions, the report highlights four immediate action areas: 

• Close epidemiological and accountability data gaps, including data on social and structural determinants and conditions beyond sexual and reproductive health to ensure innovations better address the diverse health needs of all women [Opp. 1.2, 1.3, 5.2]. 
• Create new market pathways and de-risk investment for women’s health innovation [Opp. 3.5, 4.3, 4.5]. 
• Enhance the participation and funding of diverse populations across the R&D continuum to ensure that women’s needs and voices guide national and global research agendas [Opp. 5.1, 5.4, 6.3]. 
• Activate the IEF as an action and accountability engine to translate opportunity areas to action and accelerate harmonized advocacy that unlocks new partnerships for women’s health innovation [Opp. 4.5, 10]. 

By centering equity in innovation, the global women’s health R&D ecosystem can drive meaningful progress toward a healthier, more equitable future for all women. 

The term “women” in the context of “women’s health,” is inclusive of both sex as a biological variable and gender as a social variable across the life course. This definition includes people assigned female at birth, transgender women and men, and non-binary people affected by the topics covered by the Opportunity Map. We recognize that not all people who identify as women have the same reproductive anatomy, and not all people assigned female at birth identify as women. 

The post Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map appeared first on Camber Collective.

Thirty years ago, the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993 was passed, changing the trajectory of women’s health research in the US by requiring NIH (National Institutes of Health)-funded clinical research to include women and underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities. In the last three decades, women have seen major advancements in health, including greater, more efficacious family planning methods [1] and global reductions in maternal mortality. [2]

And yet, too many women still die or live in poor health due to social and structural inequities, often exacerbated by crises such as conflict, climate change, and COVID-19. [3] In the US, women’s reproductive rights were transformed overnight by the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, with dissenting Justices stating that “young women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers.” [4]

Against this backdrop, 2023 was a milestone year for the women’s health research community. In early 2023, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women’s Health engaged Camber Collective to help bring together a partnership of women’s health experts, innovators, and advocates that, over nine months, produced the inaugural Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map. This report, launched in October at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Dakar Senegal, highlights 50 high-impact opportunities to advance innovation for the health of women globally.

A core principle shared by BMGF, NIH, and Camber was to ensure an inclusive and collaborative approach to develop the Opportunity Map. To that end, Camber helped design and facilitate an approach by which over 250 stakeholders—known as the Innovation Equity Forum (IEF)—collectively generated, evaluated, and prioritized opportunities. BMGF, NIH, and Camber worked to ensure diverse perspectives were not only represented but elevated within the IEF: members spanned over 50 countries and a variety of sectors, age groups, races, and ethnicities, and IEF leadership positions were held equally by members from low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries. To promote equitable engagement among members worldwide, Camber designed creative collaboration methods like virtual white boarding, asynchronous drafting and feedback, and a hybrid convening with in-person and virtual participants. Throughout, Camber, BMGF, and NIH took a highly iterative approach by sharing interim results alongside a variety of input- gathering activities so that members saw their feedback reflected.

 

Since publication, the Opportunity Map— alongside landmark studies that demonstrate the economic and societal value of women’s health research [5]—has been widely referenced, including in a ground-breaking report by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with McKinsey Health. [6]

The momentum to coalesce global leaders, researchers, and communities around the importance of women’s health continues to increase: the World Economic Forum recently launched the Global Alliance for Women’s Health, and the Biden Administration established the first-ever White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research.

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Notes

[1] www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2023/Feb/undesa_pd_2022_world- family-planning.pdf
[2] https://www.who.int/news/item/08-03-2020-women-s-health-and-rights-25-years-of-progress
[3] https://www.who.int/news/item/18-10-2022-staggering-backsliding-across-women-s–children-s-and-adolescents–health-revealed-in- new-un-analysis

[4] https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1102305878/supreme-court-abortion-roe-v-wade-decision-overturn
[5] Wham report WHAM report: https://thewhamreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/TheWHAMReport_crosscutting- compressed.pdf
[6] WEF report: https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Closing_the_Women%E2%80%99s_Health_Gap_2024.pdf

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We’re biased. The focus of our work at Camber Collective over the past decade has been on the human element – thriving communities supported by effective, equitable, and just systems that promote health, economic opportunity, rights, and democracy. And while it’s widely accepted that the repercussions of climate change put all of these goals at risk, continued siloization — among health, development and rights — impedes the progress that is so urgently necessary.

Much of the response to climate change to date has focused on spurring technology innovation, providing incentives, and developing approaches to reduce further industry-driven harm to the climate and environment.[ii] These types of investments are critical to stop climate change and to reduce further harm to communities, but they are not sufficient. To reach climate neutrality, repair harm to communities, and avoid re-entrenching the power structures that led us to the brink of disaster in the first place, organizations focused on climate and environment and those focused on health, economic mobility, and governance need to change their practices. Three equally critical places to start:    

1. Embed equity and justice in climate and environment efforts.

There is a fundamental, inequitable mismatch between who is bearing the brunt of climate change and environmental degradation, and who is benefiting from efforts to address it. Historically oppressed communities are more likely to be subjected to extreme weather, drought, disease, pollution, and lack of basic public services. Yet public and private funding for clean energy, adapted infrastructure, and clean-up disproportionately benefit more advantaged localities – communities whose consumption habits are primarily responsible for climate damage. We see this in the communities where Camber’s offices are based: Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Paris, and in the communities each of us call home: Michigan, Pakistan, North Carolina, Togo, France, and Texas, to name a few.[iii] For example, in the environmentally conscious Puget Sound where Camber is headquartered, environmental clean-up efforts historically moved more quickly in wealthier, whiter communities, whereas communities of color, which tend to be poorer and less-structurally resourced, have suffered the most damage.[iv] At the national level, climate venture capital, clean energy jobs, climate-adapted infrastructure, and even tree-planting efforts have disproportionately gone to wealthier communities — while the consequences of climate change and environmental degradation has disproportionately hit poorer communities.[v][vi] At the global level, most climate funding is distributed to organizations in high-income countries even as low-income countries suffer greater damage and risk.[vii]

Current decision-making structures about how and where to focus climate and environment efforts unfortunately replicate the same asymmetric power structures that have exacerbated climate damage all along. Those with decision-making power skew white, college-educated, upper middle class, and from the Global North. Communities which are disproportionately impacted by climate damage – people of color, community-educated, poverty and lower-middle class, and often from the Global South – are excluded from the decision-making that deeply affects their own communities.

Climate and environment equity and justice efforts work to repair the historic and present inequities in the distribution of climate change and environmental burden relative to those responsible for causing it, and in the distribution of resources, benefits, and responsibilities for addressing the problem.  

Such efforts are largely led by grassroots organizations and activists, which have been on the forefront of raising awareness and garnering legislative wins despite chronic underfunding and marginalization by policy makers.[viii] Mainstream nonprofits and philanthropists, governments, and technologists, are playing a difficult game of catch-up – and starting to think through how to integrate equity and justice into their decision-making, strategies, and processes. One example is Carbon 180, an organization dedicated to carbon removal. In 2021, this Washington, D.C.-based NGO worked with environmental justice leaders to define five principles for integrating environmental justice as a fundamental component to its work.[ix] We are now working with them to integrate those principles into the design of a partnership to fund global carbon removal efforts.

2. Adapt health and development programs to be “climate smart”.

There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between climate and environment and progress in other sectors such as economic mobility and poverty reduction, agriculture and nutrition, humanitarian relief, political stability and democracy, and health.[x] While organizations focused on health and development recognize this interconnectedness, relatively few have taken the next step: to interrogate their strategies and programming to identify places to reduce their own impact on climate and “future proof” for continued climate degradation.  

At best, programs based solely on yesterday’s data fail to position communities to adapt to present and inevitable future changes that affect the food they can grow, the health issues they will face, and the potentially destabilizing social and political impacts they will encounter as a result of climate change. At worst, they exacerbate and accelerate challenges by creating disincentives for adaptation or even contributing directly to environmental decline.

Adapting programs to be climate-smart requires first assessing the mutual interdependencies between climate, environment, global health and development programs and structures, and the communities they seek to impact. Based on this assessment, organizations can identify which linkages are most critical to address, what options for strategic shifts in programming seem most promising, and what optimal approaches might be based on costs, impact, and potential consequences of those options.

An example of this approach can be found in the body of work executed by a global maternal and child health foundation to map the interplay between climate and food systems. Based on this conceptual map, we worked with this client to clarify their role within ecosystem of stakeholders and how best to influence a transformation towards a more resilient, adaptable, and equitable Sub-Saharan African food system.[xi] Another example at a more programmatic level is United Mission for Relief and Development, a humanitarian relief organization that is in the process of modifying their efforts in Wajir county, Kenya, to counter climate impact on the agriculture, nutrition, and generational stability of the local community.

3. Strengthen political will and public pressure for urgent climate action.

Public awareness of the global climate threat has outpaced public prioritization and pressure for climate action. This disconnect is partly due to the perceived weight of the near-term problems – most notably the global economy, but also global societal challenges around sexual and reproductive rights, racial justice, COVID-19, threats to democracy, and a host of other concerns – relative to the long-term impacts of a changing climate. The well-funded opposition has successfully used digital analytics, misinformation, social and traditional media engagement of grassroots groups, and culture wars tactics to politicize and polemicize the matter, further diminishing urgent pressure for climate action. Indeed, fossil fuel interests continue to successfully lobby for heavy subsidies globally, further increasing emissions and air pollution beyond amounts that would have been produced by efficient pricing.[xii]

It goes without saying that strengthening political will and public pressure for urgent climate action requires the right technical policy. Yet even beyond this, it requires strengthening the field’s communications infrastructure and its ability to counter the opposition. This counterattack also necessitates new means of support for frontline and community organizations working to broaden and mobilize different constituencies to demand climate action. We also need additional innovation: new approaches and messages that can cut across party lines and culture-war boundaries—all without diminishing the power of aligned communities including healthcare, climate justice, and immigration rights advocates. And climate action requires investing in building the strength and power of promising organizations, in much the same way the fossil-fuel-friendly opposition has funded the development of powerful institutions that hinder climate action.[xiii]

The William & Flora T. Hewlett Foundation is one organization which took up this mantle in 2019-2020 in bringing together a broad coalition of stakeholders engaged in climate communications infrastructure. This coalition of stakeholders was convened to help identify opportunities to strengthen their joint impact. Camber worked with them to landscape the field’s strengths and weaknesses relative to what worked for other successful movements, and to then bring together working groups of key funders, NGOs, and academia to jointly define where to focus their efforts. This work directly informed Hewlett’s climate communications strategy and led to collaborative investments strengthen the digital and social media capabilities of frontline communities, challenge digital disinformation, support connective tissue and coordination across the field, and expand resources for communications.[xiv]

Investing in these three critical areas can begin to fill the gap between the necessary investments in technology innovation and technical policy change, and the full scope of changes required to achieve climate neutrality, repair harm to communities, and prevent the risk of backsliding. If you agree that these interconnected issues require a different way of thinking, frank discourse, and bolder action, we are excited to work with you. Reach out to us at bethanie@cambercollective.com, sakina@cambercollective.com, or rozella@cambercollective.com. 

[i] Care about economic mobility, public health, or democracy? Climate change should be an integral part of your impact strategies – Camber Collective

[ii] CWF_Funding_Trends_2021.pdf (climateworks.org), Understanding Impact Performance_Climate Change Mitigation Investments (thegiin.org), Fast track to a low-carbon, climate resilient economy (climatepolicyinitiative.org)

[iii] Environmental injustice in Clean Water Act enforcement: racial and income disparities in inspection time – IOPscience

[iv] P5 – Equity and Justice – Puget Sound Final 2021-23.pdf; Revised toxic-cleanup rules will increase focus on environmental justice | Encyclopedia of Puget Sound (eopugetsound.org);  Washington Environmental Health Disparities Map Project | Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences

[v] Inequity in consumption of goods and services adds to racial–ethnic disparities in air pollution exposure | PNAS

[vi] Which came first, people or pollution? Assessing the disparate siting and post-siting demographic change hypotheses of environmental injustice – IOPscience

[vii] Projecting Global Emissions for Lower-Income Countries | Center For Global Development (cgdev.org)

[viii] Healthy Environment For All (HEAL) Act – Front and Centered

[ix] Carbon180+RemovingForward.pdf (squarespace.com)

[x] Care about economic mobility, public health, or democracy? Climate change should be an integral part of your impact strategies – Camber Collective

[xi] Building a Climate-Resilient food system in Sub-Saharan Africa – Camber Collective

[xii] Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large: An Update Based on Country-Level Estimates (imf.org)

[xiii] Powerless: How Top Foundations Failed to Defend Their Values—And Now Risk Losing Everything — Inside Philanthropy

[xiv] Putting people first: Our climate communications grantmaking strategy (hewlett.org)

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This conceptual isolation of climate from other health, economic, and development objectives has pervaded decision-making bodies, leading to siloed and myopic climate planning. But, as with other environmental issues, climate change is not merely an environmental problem. The data is clear: climate change affects all dimensions of human life, including the economy, housing, immigration, public health, food systems, national security, and political stability. Its far-reaching effects mean that achieving carbon neutrality will require that climate be embedded into frameworks across all sectors and industries rather than existing as a standalone issue.

The economy, public health, and democracy are three areas of critical significance under threat from climate change that carry massive societal ramifications. When the ability to earn a living, lead a healthy life, and live in a society that affords agency and autonomy are endangered, we risk losing the very elements at the core of human flourishing.

Economic mobility

Climate considerations and economic needs are often treated as a zero-sum game. This tension has been made clear in France, where proposed gas tax hikes sparked violent nationwide protests, and in Brazil, where the commercial upside from plundering the Amazon rainforest eclipsed the historic environmental fallout.[1] Climate action is hindered by entrenched economic interests that not only perpetuate economic injustice and inequality but reap sizeable profits from the destruction of the planet.

In reality, climate and the economy are deeply interdependent. Many of the sectors and industries underpinning the global economy—including agriculture, tourism, fisheries, and real estate—depend on a stable climate. Climate change has already begun to threaten key industries and supply chains, hampering economic growth and exacerbating economic hardship and inequality. For developing countries whose economies rely almost entirely on natural resources, the situation is dire, threatening the livelihoods of millions of low-income people across the globe. In addition to impacting climate-dependent industries, the natural disasters brought on by rising global temperatures bring entire economies to a halt and cause billions of dollars in property and infrastructure damage each year. For homeowners living in disaster-prone areas (often marginalized groups), a changing climate can be catastrophic, costing many their homes and oftentimes only financial assets. On the global stage, these disruptions can translate into mass migration, placing even more strain on tight labor markets and dwindling public programs.

Fortunately, while climate change and economic prosperity face entwined challenges, they also face shared opportunities. Investing in renewable energy, climate technologies, and green infrastructure can not only help mitigate climate change, but also reinvigorate economies and create jobs, ensuring sustainable long-term economic growth. Empowering women and girls—touted as one of the best climate solutions at our disposal—is another vehicle for achieving the dual-objectives of advancing global economic development and combatting climate change. But while such common solutions are plentiful—and almost obvious—we need leaders and decisionmakers to execute them, and this requires adopting an interdisciplinary approach that factors climate into deliberations on the economy.

Public health

Climate change is intensifying a host of public health issues. Vector-borne diseases, such as Lyme disease and Zika virus, thrive in warmer conditions. Unstable climates and ecosystems increase the prevalence of pandemics caused by zoonotic diseases[2], the calamitous impact of which the world has witnessed over the past year. Noncommunicable diseases, such as heat strokes and respiratory illnesses, are on the rise. More than 10 million people die from pollution each year. Compounding these health concerns are the nutritional challenges brought on by a changing climate. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and warmer temperatures impede crop growth, affecting both the quality of produce and quantity of agricultural yields. This is not to mention extreme weather events that eliminate entire harvests at a time, robbing farmers of their already meager incomes. A warming climate will mean increasingly smaller yields and less nutritious crops, in a world where 690 million are already undernourished. While these effects will be most prominent in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), high-income countries will not be immune to rising food prices and diminished nutrient density. The health repercussions of a changing climate are also acutely and overwhelmingly female. Women are more likely to be killed in the event of a natural disaster. In the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, women died at four times the rate of men in highly affected areas.^[3][4] For those who survive, the unsafe conditions they endure in temporary shelters and camps leave them at a higher risk of gender-based violence and exploitation.

It is imperative that global health institutions center climate considerations as core to their agenda and priorities. Funding research on climate-induced disease burden would ensure proper planning for pressing health needs in the years to come. Risk analyses must be conducted to adapt public health services and allocate resources towards climate-sensitive public health concerns. Funding is needed for adaption and mitigation. Investing in systems and structures that shield against climate change’s harshest effects (e.g., infrastructure that minimizes the urban heat island effect) will be needed to counter rising temperatures. Climate smart-agriculture can help safeguard our food supply and the livelihoods of millions while sequestering carbon, conserving water, and preserving biodiverse ecosystems.

Democracy & governance

Finally, climate change intersects strongly with issues of democracy and governance. By disrupting ecosystems and economies, climate change threatens to provoke violent conflict and destabilize systems of governance. Such troubling trends have already begun to unfold in parts of the Middle East. In Syria, severe droughts that decimated agricultural production and forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians into poverty and near famine set the stage for the political unrest that prompted the country’s civil war. Similarly, in Iraq, drought-induced poverty afflicting farming populations fueled extremism and sectarian violence, enabling terrorist networks to exploit economic desperation and expand their recruiting base. Conversely, problematic systems of governance also threaten to aggravate climate change. Given that climate-forward agendas and policies are often driven by citizen demands, weak democracies undermine climate action.[5] The rise of nationalist movements and governments in the past decade has eroded democracies and consequently debilitated climate efforts. The increasing spread of disinformation and propaganda through social media has added fuel to the fire, not only endangering the world’s democracies, but also undermining a climate agenda, particularly in the US.

As with other spheres of interest, climate and democracy share commonalities in their path forward. Strengthening democracy, and in particular citizen-climate movements, is key to advancing a climate agenda. Combatting counter-narratives and propaganda, which are core to enhancing democracy and governance, will also be essential in gaining broad support and creating appetite for climate initiatives. And finally, an effective and equitable plan of action that is backed by broad constituencies will require democratizing climate discourse and centering female, BIPOC and LMIC voices, as well as those of rural and resource-based communities.^[6][7] An environmental movement led predominantly by White, urban, Global North institutions will invariably fall short by failing to address the needs and challenges of those most affected by the climate crisis.

The path forward

Understanding is growing of the interconnectedness between climate and a wide variety of sectors – from economic prosperity, health, and democracy, to gender equality and racial equity. Some early adopters in these sectors have begun to revisit their social impact strategies through a climate-smart lens, identifying ways in which they may inadvertently be contributing to the climate crisis and how to adapt their approaches to reduce climate shocks. Players like Wellcome Trust and the Belmont Forum have made forays in this area—albeit small ones.[8] More recently, the European Commission has recognized the gaps in climate and health planning, funding projects like ENBEL (‘Enhancing Belmont Research Action to support EU policy making on climate change and health’), which brings together leaders from both spheres to make coordinated advances in knowledge generation and integrated policymaking.[9] USAID has also funded intersectoral climate programming. In 2014, it launched ATLAS (Adaptation Thought Leadership and Assessments), a 5-year program to “integrate climate risk analysis and adaptation strategies across its portfolio”.[10] USAID’s Gender, Climate Change and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN), which identifies synergistic policies and technologies at the nexus of the three sectors, is another example of the kind of interdisciplinary programming that will move the needle on climate.

While such efforts are laudable, more ambitious efforts are needed to beat climate change, and its host of negative outcomes in other sectors, this late in the game. Other philanthropies, government entities, and the private sector should proactively identify opportunities to support and fund work at the intersections of climate and other sectors and incorporate climate frameworks into existing programs and portfolios. Besides funding, influential organizations can go a long way in effecting change through field-wide agenda-setting and prioritization.[11] Addressing climate helps ensure that progress made in other areas is not lost in a matter of years or decades, and thoughtful planning and execution will be needed to adapt strategies, policies and programs to intentionally address their intersections with climate change and its effects. We at Camber are committed to utilizing our strategic planning, segmentation and coalition building expertise to help bring about change, and we hope you will collaborate with us in the collective effort against climate change.

[1] In 2019, a record 72,843 fires had burned in the Amazon rainforest by August of that year, a roughly 80% year-on-year increase, largely as a result of commercial deforestation encouraged by the Bolsonaro Administration https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/wildfires-in-amazon-caused-by-deforestation

[2] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/subtopics/coronavirus-and-climate-change/

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/sep/08/disaster-humanitarian-response-data-gender

[4] Higher mortality rates among women are largely a result of sociocultural factors: women are less likely to be taught how to swim, and more likely to tend to children or the elderly in emergency situations, impeding their ability to evacuate quickly

[5] In some cases, antidemocratic systems of governance may facilitate rather than impede climate action (e.g. in China) by bypassing the constraints posed by antagonistic public sentiment

[6] https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/sites/default/files/publications/understanding-rural-attitudes-toward-environment-conservation-america.pdf

[7] For instance, studies show that rural voters in the United States have distrust of federal environmental regulations that are formulated without their input, instead expressing greater affinity towards locally- or state-led efforts that factor their needs and considerations

[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7594144/

[9] https://cicero.oslo.no/en/posts/projects/enbel-connecting-health-and-climate-change-research

[10] https://www.climatelinks.org/blog/efforts-integrate-climate-risk-across-sectors-must-continue

[11] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7594144/

The post Climate, Economic Mobility, Public Health, Democracy: All Connected appeared first on Camber Collective.

by Joanne Lee, Zack Henderson, and Bethanie Thomas  

Collaborative working sessions. Open debate. Face-to-face sharing of expertise, experiences, and opinions. Hard-won alignment on a path forward.  

With COVID-19 disrupting workplaces around the globe, many impact-oriented organizations which rely on stakeholder input, consensus-building, and partnerships have found their decision-making processes paralyzed, hamstrung by distance and the complexity posed by teleworking.  

The pandemic has forced us to identify new ways to align stakeholders and build coalitions that don’t rely on the time-honored practice of bringing stakeholders together in the same room. In this environment, we have found the Delphi approach to be an especially powerful tool for consensus-building.  

The Delphi approach uses multiple rounds of anonymized feedback and reflection to bring panels of stakeholders to consensus on complex issues in a remote working environment. In fact, its very nature as a remote consensus-building tool brings added benefits in terms of improved participation by dispersed stakeholders, reduced influences of biases, and increased efficiency over in-person convenings.      

The Delphi approach has been used on a range of topics, from aligning experts around needs for global health technology development to creating shared public health roadmaps. At Camber Collective, we have used a modified Delphi approach to successfully facilitate groups toward consensus on topics ranging from scientific parameters for new health interventions to strategy development for emergent coalitions. 

How it works

Usually requiring three stages of participant engagement, the Delphi approach uses a transparent, iterative process of feedback and response:  

By making anonymized comments visible to all parties and focusing the group on points of misalignment, participants naturally gravitate towards agreement while ensuring all voices are heard. 

Benefits  

In implementing this approach, Camber Collective has found several critical benefits that may make this approach appealing not just in the near-term of the COVID outbreak response, but in the longer-term as a decision-making asset for remote teams: 

1. Remote consensus-building on complex issues 

The Delphi process provides a systematic methodology for iterative input provided anonymously by remote, expert participants.  The model ensures that even the most complex or technical topics are reviewed comprehensively and that a wide range of voices and areas of expertise inform a collaborative final product by:  

• Establishing clear and transparent decision-making threshold criteria at the outset 

• Providing an online platform for structured content review in multiple rounds 
• Sharing back anonymized comment integration in each round for participant consideration. 

The iterative, multi-round review structure of the Delphi also provides advantages over in-person discussion, particularly in early development stages of a new concept: 

• Process is scalable to larger group of stakeholders where many points of view can be collected and documented. Very early stage, rough draft prototypes can be reviewed without a high number of unknowns distracting or limiting conversation. 
• Collected feedback can be systematically evaluated to highlight where agreement exists – driving the process forward – and naturally focuses participants’ reviews on areas of misalignment. 

Successfully achieving these benefits during an in-person meeting challenges even the most skilled facilitator. In contrast, Camber Collective has successfully carried out a Delphi process including +20 expert participants across global geographies to publish a new global standard best practice for technical health assessment. 

2. Improved equity in decision-making 

The Delphi process allows distributed groups of stakeholders to build toward consensus despite geographic boundaries – in fact, it often outperforms virtual meetings or even in-person meetings in this regard. From our experience in the global health context, this means that it is possible to effectively engage international stakeholders or voices on-the-ground. It can also accommodate different engagement styles, mitigating any outsized influence that might otherwise be given to the loudest voices in the room. 

This method is uniquely equitable as well, capitalizing on the benefits of being a partially blinded process – by offering anonymity in responses as well as equal opportunities for response, it creates a democratized process that can elevate diverse or underrepresented voices. Properly deployed, the process ensures equity by removing biases such as race, accent, gender, or even seniority. 

In Camber’s experiences both before and after the COVID-19 outbreak, the Delphi approach has yielded large enough sample sizes to be considered representative. Global health and development organizations in particular have seen the benefit of gathering in-depth feedback from stakeholders located in key geographies in the global south who might otherwise have connectivity, travel, or time zone challenges for joining even a virtual meeting. 

3. Light-lift, high-reward 

For an organization supported by an experienced Delphi facilitator, the investment in resources and time is low in comparison with in-person working groups or convenings. The Delphi’s replicable, adaptable, and scalable model for gathering input means that an experienced facilitator can easily and effectively apply this methodology towards a wide range of content and stakeholder groups.  

Remote input from participants vastly reduces time, financial, and operational cost of implementation compared to in-person working group convenings. With an experienced facilitator, a 2-3 round Delphi process can typically be carried out over 2-3 months – an impressively rapid development process to go from early ideation stages to broad-based consensus on anything from detailed guidelines to a high-level theory of change.  

Beyond facilitator time to establish the methodology, engage stakeholders, and carry out analysis, the Delphi process itself has few incremental costs. Aside from the small cost of a subscription to a simple survey platform, we often recommended conducting a final virtual convening to offer closure to the process and provide an opportunity for dynamic, live conversation to close out any final points of complex disagreement.  

Despite the challenge of the current moment, our team believes that novel approaches like the Delphi process pose an opportunity to solve complex problems with greater efficiency – not just now, but also as organizations continue to find effective working models in the “New Normal”.  Let us know if you have found other innovative solutions to stakeholder engagement, or if you would like to discuss how a Delphi process could help drive consensus for your organization. 

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