Visioning and realising Centres for Exchange in health research
In the sixth blog in our series on the Centres for Exchange project, we introduce the emergent framework for realising a vision of equitable and inclusive knowledge communities and the open exchange of diverse forms of knowledge in health research — and beyond.
The first phase of the Centres for Exchange (CfE) project, conceived by Wellcome and undertaken by a collaborative team* led by Pivot Collective, is coming to an end. Over the last 18 months, the project has been exploring how we might move towards more effective and meaningful routes for diverse communities to participate equitably in health research. To move towards a co-created vision of pathways for change, the team undertook a global landscaping and consultation process, followed by an ideation and co-design phase to create a framework and pathways for implementation to guide the development of actual CfEs in the next phase of the project.
Our last blog concluded a series of posts which took us from South Africa, to India and Latin America to explore the perspectives of engaged researchers and engagement practitioners working in each of these geographies on equity and inclusion in health research. Following our place-based landscaping and learning, our collaborative, multi-country team worked to draw together diverse ideas and insights to start drawing the contours of a cohesive yet flexible concept for the Centres for Exchange. We coordinated a series of internal co-design workshops to develop a set of core principles, a vision, goals, and a conceptual framework for the Centres for Exchange project. These were sense-checked and refined through engagement with key stakeholders and through participatory workshops at Wellcome. Throughout this first phase of the project, our collaborative team has also hosted public sharing events to sense check the evolving concept with a broader range of stakeholders and partners working involved in engaged research.
At this stage, we are excited to share this vision and framework with broader stakeholders and publics to engage in an open dialogue and foster a broader movement for change. To this end, we have drawn together our learning and vision into a public learning repository, which you can explore more deeply on our new website. The website is intended as a living repository of insights and learning from the Centres for Exchange initiative.
In the site’s visual language, we have chosen the metaphor of an ecosystem to describe the development of the Centres for Exchange concept, drawing its roots from rich underground springs of embedded knowledge to reveal diverse, interconnected forests of learning and pathways for growth and change. The website will also be available in Spanish and Portuguese very soon.
Below we highlight key elements of the vision and strategic priorities, as well as offering some updates on the way forward for this collaborative initiative. For the fuller picture, be sure to check out the online repository.
Our vision for the Centres for Exchange
At the core of our collective vision is a commitment to reducing health inequities and promoting collective health through the advancement of equitable and inclusive knowledge communities and the open exchange of diverse forms of knowledge.
This is articulated in three intersecting goals:
An imagined architecture
We envision the Centres for Exchange as a network of place and practice-based initiatives (which we call “knowledge collectives”), led from and geographically located in the Global South, that aim to foster innovation in equitable and inclusive health research and knowledge exchange and to realise principles of equity, inclusion and care in health research through their approach, methodologies and daily activities. The collectives will serve to foster health research projects and products that emerge from, resonate with, and create meaningful impact for the communities they serve. Working alongside these place-based knowledge collectives, we recognise the value of fostering a learning network, also led from the Global South, that promotes collaborative learning in wider communities of practice and acts as a support structure for the activities of the place-based collectives. The influencing power of the learning network could also enable work towards broader systems change in the research ecosystem.
Pathways for change
From our landscaping and consultation work, some recurrent pathways to operationalise the Centres for Exchange have emerged. These strategies encompass possible areas of practice to bring the principles and vision of the Centres for Exchange concept to life, both through the actions of place-based knowledge collectives and the collaborative work of the broader learning network. In our framework, we clustered these strategies and their potential related activities under three main domains — research and learning, organisational transformation and knowledge exchange and influencing. In the learning repository, we draw out a series of strategies under each domain, and ground each in models of practices and potential activities. We see these strategies as a fluid array of potential pathways for change that move toward the broader vision and goals of the Centres for Exchange, rather than a prescriptive list. We imagine that each learning collective or network would assess which strategies are the most relevant and urgent for them, based on their own understanding and experiences of the research ecosystem and broader sociopolitical context where they operate — and craft their own pathways for change.
The way forward
Drawing from the learning from the initial scoping and design phase, the project is now transitioning to a “proof of concept” phase. Over the next 24 months, Wellcome will offer seed funding to a select group of organisations whose work already exemplifies the principles and strategies of the CfE framework. The first set of knowledge collectives will be located in India, Kenya, and South Africa, with a vision to expand beyond these geographies as the project grows.
This phase will also see the development of a broader cross-project learning network aimed at synthesising evidence and learning and informing Wellcome’s longer term strategy for the Centres for Exchange.
Learning with you
In addition to the plans for phase 2 (funded by Wellcome), our collective envisions many possible pathways for the growth of this initiative and how it might be brought to life in practice.
We’re excited to hear from you about your vision for where this initiative might travel and grow. Please add your thoughts to the perspectives shared on our learning repository, and contact us to share your ideas and sign up to our mailing list for project updates.
*The Centres for Exchange project was conceived by the Wellcome Community Engagement Team, who commissioned Pivot Collective Consulting (South Africa) to lead a multi-country research and co-design process in partnership with colleagues from Praxis (India), Restless Development (Zimbabwe), Eh!woza (South Africa), Vocal (UK), and Fiocruz (Brazil). Our collaborative team included Lindsey Reynolds, Clémence Petit-Perrot, Tasha Koch, Gustavo Matta, Pradeep Narayanan, Sarah Iqbal, Bella Starling, Adalton Fonseca, Denise Pimenta, Mariana Sebastião, Raíza Tourinho, and Renata Cortez-Gomez. We’ve worked in close partnership with Wellcome colleagues Haidee Bell, Duncan Collins-Adams, Gemma O’Brian, Ruwa Mahdi, Teresa Cisneros, and Dana Sharkas as well as with Jo Zaremba.