The future of advocacy and positive change in the IFMSA?

The future of advocacy and positive change in the IFMSA

Friday 13th August, 2010

One week after the conference comes to a halt, Jonny writes of just some of the progressive choices made by IFMSA members at the August Meeting 2010 conference, and of the choices available to students around the world to mobilise behind a platform for global health advocacy.

Few words can do justice to the experience of an IFMSA GA experience – exhilarating, exciting, challenging, an assault on all the senses, dynamic and empowering – this conference proved to be all this and more!

As my fourth and possibly last GA though, I can see what I believe to be a new trend spreading across the global network of students: people are talking about it, they are anxiously debating it, many are excited about its prospects.

What is this new thing?

It’s called advocacy, and actually, well, it’s not new to the IFMSA at all.

I want to share a story of how the IFMSA can and even arguably is spreading progressive practices around the world, and of how we now stand at a defining crossroads towards a new future in medical student activism.  It is a story of pressure, of collective engagement, and of how students in all countries can be armed with the tools and the motivation to fight for justice in global health.

Before this year I was Campaigns Director for Medsin-UK, a role I relished in being able to support a range of campaign groups and actions around the UK.  I looked on with awe, as friends and others around me rose to a range of challenges and lobbied, marched and mobilised in a will to change health policies in the UK and abroad.

When it came to the IFMSA however, I no longer felt as comfortable as I was campaigning back home.  Attitudes to advocacy ranged from a hesitation to become ‘political’ to an impression that it had no place in a health professional’s toolkit for improving patient or community health.  Then there was the layout of the General Assembly itself. With so many parallel sessions, committees, positions, events, promotion opportunities and more to tactically move between and delve into, how were we to have an influence amidst a whole variety of other people trying hard to promote their own cause?

At various points, I struggled to see any way in to influence this great behemoth organisation of 1.2 million medical students.  Challenging such an inert body to change its policies seemed tough, and somewhat detached from my remit of delivering campaign actions to Medsin branches around the UK.

In short, I wondered whether my input was making any difference.

Now of course we have overcome this feeling of apathy before, right? How many of us have encountered a disempowered student in need of all the enthusiasm and solidarity our Medsin network can provide them?  So of course, I and others on our Campaigns Team did what we could, and put together some ideas for how we could champion Medsin-UK campaigns, and promote advocacy at all levels in the IFMSA.

So on I went to my first IFMSA conference in Tunisia, the March Meeting 2009.  We travelled with the hope of promoting campaigns on climate change and health, strengthening health systems, and promoting water and sanitation for all.  Our energies were dispirited when we became embroiled in debates on pharmaceutical funding in the IFMSA, an issue Medsin has strong policy on yet not our core issue of the conference.  Our plans may have not been perfect, but we tried hard to promote other countries joining in calling for policy change in these and other areas.

I was reminded this month at the GA in Canada of an intriguing story of my 1st GA, by a friend I met at the March Meeting in Tunisia that year.  His name is Unni Gopinathan, a medical student from Norway, who has in fact recently been elected as an IFMSA official for the next year.  Unni told a story of how he became involved in climate change campaigning, of how he and others walked up to a Medsin-UK stall and were confronted by this picture:

Healthy Planet poster on show at March Meeting 2009 Project Fair. Credit: Mustafa Abbas, Healthy Planet Coordinator

Unni and others were immediately taken aback, climate change, a health issue?  Sure enough, several prominent voices in the health and medical profession had given their backing to such a statement.  Having looked for a campaign issue for some time, several of the Norwegians returned home to plan out how they could mobilise behind this campaign in advance of the Copenhagen climate change meeting in December.

Unni’s story, of how one encounter can yield a multiplication of actions, and of how a new campaign was created (“Klima=health” – only later did it dawn on me that “klima” means climate!) seemed to me to testify to the opportunities in global movements such as the IFMSA.  In only a space of weeks, the Norwegian medical student group was able to rally supporters through petitions, talks, and online campaigning, before they captured the attention of the Minister of Environmental and International Development himself and were given the opportunity to meet with him.

Norwegian medical students meet Erik Solheim, Minister for Environmental and International Development, to discuss Climate Change and Health in advance of the COP15 UN Climate Change negotiations.

The Norwegian Medical Student Association, in tandem with a whole range of other medical student groups, were pivotal in the IFMSA’s attendance and arguably step forward to engage with the UN Climate Change conference.  We were there as well, if any of you happen to remember reading our Medsin@COP highlights and experiences.  This story I feel is significant if we understand change can take a long time in coming, but when sold in a way that people can relate to can suddenly, dramatically and sometimes even immediately snowball to the extent that enthusiasm & passion for a new order are demanded.

Medsin members mobilise in support of the IFMSA delegation at the UNFCCC COP15 conference, Copenhagen, December 2009.  Credit: James Chan.

Reaching a consensus on an issue, or achieving unanimous support for a new direction in any organisation requires hard work, a vision for what that new direction can bring to the organisation, and a chartered course of how these dreams can be embedded in the organisation’s culture and system.  Medsin-UK has tirelessly campaigned for years for global health & campaigning to be available to students around the world, and has made great headway in supporting the vision of the IFMSA as a world-class platform in medical student representation, community development, and global health education & advocacy, and the fruits today are now self-evident.

But something tells me a new fire and passion has been lit, and that IFMSA members have a new found appetite for advocacy in their own countries, all the way up to the global level by the IFMSA leadership.

There were so many highlights for me personally at this GA in particular: watching as new countries stood to rapturous applause as they jubilantly thanked everyone for their acceptance into the IFMSA (Argentina particularly!), delivering a 3-day training workshop on climate change, health and advocacy and seeing over 20 students leave the workshop determined to use their voice for positive change, supporting a UK delegation of some of the country’s most inspired and inspiring student leaders in promoting Medsin-UK’s work, and supporting the work of others around the world throughout the GA, listening to Professor Ronald Labonte affirming the socioeconomic, political and underlying conditions that shape health, and of the need for physician advocates to engage with the political process to improve patient & community health in his key note speech one evening, listening to the new Executive Board of the IFMSA placing Policy and Advocacy at the centre of its strategic plan for the year after a series of discussions throughout this year, ABOVE ALL meeting so many people passionate about health improvement, determined to work hard and build connections with others around the world, and returning to their country with a new found enthusiasm for their activities.

There are a whole host of things the IFMSA already does, and can with the right mix of passion and collective will improve in future.  In advocacy though, our medical student federation has proved it can rise to a challenge.  Out of an exhilarating week of discussion and debate, we have proved there to be both demand and support behind advocacy as a tool to improve health, and to shaping the education structures that train and graduate medical students.  The choice now facing our friends, compatriots and colleagues in now over 100 countries is how it can build on this enthusiasm, and transform the IFMSA into the world’s largest, most progressive network of students, representing all cultures and countries, ultimately making itself known to all as a champion for a fair, just and more healthy world.

The world and students worldwide shall watch on with hope this year, as this once far-fetched dream will over the coming months I believe be made a reality.

Jonny Currie

Medsin-UK National Coordinator 2009/2010