Teach to Reach 10. Experiences shared

Before, during, and after Teach to Reach on 20-21 June 2024, 21,398 health workers across the Global South—from veteran immunization managers to newly-trained community health workers—shared their unfiltered, frontline experiences of delivering care in an increasingly complex world.

This remarkable collection captures over 600 experiences that were shared, in their own words, offering rare, ground-level perspectives on how global health challenges manifest in communities.

Through questions that probe specific moments rather than seeking generalizations, these accounts detail personal encounters with everything from climate change's effects on malaria transmission to the challenges of integrating immunization with other health services.

Health workers share candid stories of their successes, failures, and innovations: using WhatsApp for vaccine advocacy, adapting disease control strategies as weather patterns shift, building community trust during mass drug administration campaigns, and more.

While these experiences are inherently context-specific and should not be mistaken for systematic evidence, their value lies in illuminating the lived reality of health service delivery—the kind of rich, qualitative insight that often eludes formal research.

The collection represents a mosaic of perspectives from different levels of the health system, each contributor speaking in a personal capacity about their direct observations and experiences.

This comprehensive volume is part of Teach to Reach, an ongoing cycle of learning and exchange facilitated by The Geneva Learning Foundation.

Contributors receive back the complete collection of shared experiences, enabling them to learn from peers facing similar challenges across contexts.

The experiences are also available as focused thematic publications on specific topics such as malaria control, climate change adaptation, and immunization integration.

Finally, an accompanying insights report provides concise thematic summaries and analysis of key learnings about each of the topics that were explored.

Whether your focus is immunization, digital health, climate change adaptation, or disease control, these raw accounts provide crucial context for anyone seeking to bridge the gap between global health policy and local implementation.

Rather than providing definitive answers, this volume offers a unique window into how health workers learn, adapt, and drive change in their communities—making it an invaluable complement to traditional evidence for understanding and improving global health delivery.

These Shared Experiences should be required reading for global health practitioners, policymakers, and researchers interested in understanding how macro-level health challenges and interventions play out on the ground.