Digital communities of practice: one step towards decolonising global health partnerships

Historically, global health partnerships have been led by scholars in high-income countries with colleagues from low-and middle-income countries acting as ‘local’ partners. The COVID-19 pandemic and the response to it, including travel bans, as well as ongoing discussion and movements to decolonise Global Health have finally accelerated changes in our collaboration patterns. We describe lessons from the shift to a digital community of practice, which combined with a strong intention to treat all partners as equal entities, resulted in the emergence of a more horizontal and inclusive partnership across and between research institutions in the Global North and South. The flexibility of the funder to adapt to the emerging needs and approaches, as well as an equal funding scheme across institutions, facilitated the initiation and success of the community of practice. The online community of practice enabled multidirectional peer-to-peer learning and coproduction of knowledge.

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Sant Fruchtman, C., M. Bilal Khalid, T. Keakabetse, A. Bonito, D. D. Saulnier, L. Mungapeyi Mupara, S. Iqbal, A. de Almeida, H. da Silva, D. de Jesus, H. Prytherch, E. Mokalake, D. Cobos Muñoz, S. Zafar (2022) Digital communities of practice: one step towards decolonising global health partnershipsBMJ Global Health 2022;7:e008174.