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Challenges to the Humanitarian Community: The Role of Academia in Advancing Best Practices and Policy Promotion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Frederick M. Burkle Jr. ,
Gib Clarke  and
Michael J. VanRooyen
Frederick M. Burkle Jr.*
Affiliation:
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts USA Global Health Initiative, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC USA
Gib Clarke
Affiliation:
Global Health Initiative, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC USA
Michael J. VanRooyen
Affiliation:
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts USA
*
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative 14 Story Street, 2nd Floor Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 USA E-mail: fburkle@hsph.harvard.edu
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Abstract

The Humanitarian Action Summit is unique in that it focuses solely on chronic, unsolved problems facing the humanitarian community. As an academically-based format, it provides an environment whereby health professionals, non-governmental organizations, donors, academic institutions, governmental agencies, advocates, and the media address and identify potential deliverables and products to improve best practices, field implementation, and policy promotion and acceleration. The Humanitarian Action Summit was preceded by year-long, online Working Groups that addressed human resource development, civilian protection in conflict, information communication and data management, collaboration and collective action in the health sector, mental health in crises and conflict, and the global burden of surgical disease. The Humanitarian Action Summit also addressed new and emerging humanitarian crises such as climate change, the influence of the military on humanitarian aid, and urbanization. This article focuses primarily on an inherent weakness of the humanitarian community—that of promoting humanitarian action into policy. The goal and process of developing a partnership relationship with a policy level institution to address this problem is described in detail.

Keywords

best practiceshealth policy promotionhumanitarian assistance
Type
Bookend II
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 24 , supplement S2: 2009 Humanitarian Action Summit , August 2009 , pp. s247 - s250
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2009

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References

1.Dabelko, G: Turning Up the Volume on the Science-Practice Interface in Global Change. Newsletter of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environment Change. March 4, 2006.Google Scholar
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