OVERVIEW

1st "Healthcare and multiple crises" Conference is organized by Hedra . This CME webinar will be held from Mar 13 - 14, 2021.

Description:
This conference unites the academics, researchers, clinicians, practitioners, educators, business people, and allied personnel from a wide variety of fields, for the collaborative, multidisciplinary examination of the ways in which crises like the pandemic, in combination with other crises, influence the provision and experience of healthcare. Abstracts are examined. Themes and issues for the conference include, but are not limited to:

Stream A: Multiple crises and healthcare in developed economies

The current era of geopolitical change has brought uncertainty to markets, jobs, governments, social groups, and civil society, in the midst of which people need healthcare. The pandemic has devastated industries and economies, and restricted clinical care for patients with other conditions. AI is reducing employment while raising fundamental privacy questions of the kind we face with tracing apps. The financial second wave brought about by the failure to fix the causes of the 2008 economic crisis will impact the provision of basic healthcare. Climate change and the resulting refugee flows are beginning to burden EU healthcare systems. In the context of our weakening or failing institutions and negligence to criminal political leadership, are there best practice lessons to be learned? How shall we model system resiliency? With these resource limitations, how should contingency planning be approached? What do scenarios and simulations show? What factors promote or inhibit regional or global cooperation or contingency planning for crises and multiple crises? What do equity, transparency, and accountability look like, in such situations? How should we prioritize healthcare, and what is the role of communication, as a frontline tool in handling healthcare problems?

We welcome scholarly papers on these and related questions. We also welcome experience narratives, case studies, and situation reports from members of the public, people working in any involved field, and specialists including but not limited to medical practitioners, engineers, architects, managers and administrators, business people, psychologists, teachers, solicitors, economists, accountants, scientists, technicians, people working in community service, food services or construction and maintenance, and other areas. We believe these lived experiences will illuminate the complexities and practical challenges of multiple crises.

Stream B: Lebanon: multiple crises and healthcare

On August 4, 2020, an explosion in Beirut’s port injured thousands. At the time, the Lebanese economy was sliding into disastrous debt and default, its hospitals were critically underfunded, and inflation had created food insecurity. Long-standing public dissatisfaction with corruption and the political class had provoked widespread protests. These events occurred in a context of dramatic refugee flows due to the ongoing Syrian civil war, as well as decades-old tensions between the Iranian-backed local Hezbollah, and Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf. What are the impacts of multiple crises on Lebanese healthcare? How has the Lebanese healthcare system handled the challenges of its geopolitical location? How do Lebanon’s recent history and geography impact the health of its people, the provision of healthcare, and the experiences of practitioners and clinicians, patients, and their families? How were limited resources prioritized and apportioned? What is the role, and what are the limitations, of communication as a tool of healthcare, in this situation?

Stream C: Multiple crises and healthcare in developing economies

Many countries experience multiple, severe challenges to their economic, geopolitical, and other systems, and these crises impact their medical institutions, the personal and work lives of their practitioners, and many who need healthcare. How do multiple crises such as conflict, poverty, food security, flood, drought, natural or environmental disasters, water, and power supply, water purity, destruction of housing, and population displacements impact the provision of healthcare? What do specific combinations and interactions of crises do to healthcare, at the systemic and individual levels? How do multiple crises impact practitioners, of all kinds? How do they impact the functioning of hospitals and clinics? What is the role of communication, in supporting healthcare practitioners and their objectives? How does the presence of large displaced populations or populations in transition impact the provision of healthcare? Our financial management tools useful, applicable, in such contexts? How do we incorporate international donor fatigue into these models? Can risk management techniques suggest the way forward, as we move into a more unstable world reality? What are the best practices, for handling these complex situations? For providing healthcare to those caught up in them? What factors promote or inhibit regional or global cooperation or contingency planning for crises and multiple crises?

Stream D: Data analytics and the pandemic

In order to find out how the pandemic is interacting with multiple crises, we are soliciting papers from teachers, lecturers and professors. These papers use structured interviews, and evaluate the data with content analysis software. Conference participants interested in cooperating with this effort will publish papers in a journal special issue with HEDRA advisory board members.