But i think that our work, the work ahead continues to be the building of trust, the building of understanding, the building of what we call faith literacy and development, this literacy across the two communities. And i would like to just point out that the materials, all the materials for the conference, are available on the website of the joint learning initiative at www. Jliflc. Com. I commebled those to you commend those to you. Anita great. Thank you. Now well open the floor to questions. There will be people coming by with microphones and so please wait to get the microphone before you ask your question. Id like to you identify yourself and your organization before you ask a question. Well take three at a time and then well pose them to the panel. Weve got several hands up here. Questioner good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for your presentation. My organization is hope for tomorrow. A u. S. Based organization although were also based in ken yafment thank you very much for your presentation. I just wanted to mention about what you said, there has not been cooperation partnership, outreach and awareness, True Partnership with Civil Society, government and [inaudible] so how do we make this happen . Lack of collaboration. [inaudible] we dont know what we are talking about. This message is very very important to faithbased all over the world. Because without this message reaching them, they [inaudible] how do we work with you guys . We just came up with applications of communication where people in africa can hear what we are talking about using health care, education and everything. So how do we collaborate instead of just hearing of the report, instead of [inaudible] thank you. Anita thank you. Questioner im the Health Program coordinator at the Corporate Council on africa. Which is an association of billses interested in africa businesses interested in africa. This question is mostly i think for andrew. Did you find big differences between religions, particularly religions that do not have sacred texts or that are not dont have one overarching philosophy for the entire religion . Like folkbased religions. Anita thank you. Questioner my name is michael. Im a retired [inaudible] i have worked in many countries in Subsaharan Africa and a lot of what is discussed is timid in the sense that i expected your team to look at the relationship between faithbased Health Services and government policy development. The relationship between funding agencies and faithbased institutions in countries. I give examples, to give a little clarity to my question. When i worked for the world bank and went on missions to countries my colleagues were very reluctant for us to spend time discussing, either the baptists or the catholics or the presbyterian institutions. They were very unprepared to integrate statistical data from these facilities. I remember the case where at one time the Catholic Church was doing a lot more than the government was doing but this was never really integrated into the analysis for policy reforms or for Program Development or for program evaluation. When i myself worked for the cameroon government before i joined the world bank i helped and developed a relationship between the missionaries and the government, especially in the area of medical statistics. Most of the statistics we were collecting was from the brothers and sisters, the nuns and so on and so forth. Not from the government. I worked on other countries where when you visit a Health Center in an urban environment that is missionaryrun or faithbasedrun. Attendance is probably four times the size of a more equipped more staffed Public Health institution in the same town. There are several african countries where [inaudible] the hospital in the country is not in the capital city, it is in some remote little town. Moneys either by the catholics or baptists. So there has been a conflicting relationship. I hate to see us move ahead as if things have been very sweet and nice between government policymakers and institutions because thats not been the case. In fact, in some countries the missionaries are trading, but the government got discouraged from helping the programs because of world bank i. M. F. Institutions discouraging the use of public funds in what was classified as private enterprises. Anita thank you. Questioner that has cost us a lot. Anita ok. Thank you for your observation. Lets take one more question and then well go to the panel. Questioner good morning. My name is john. Im director of the interfaith Health Program at Emery University and the Collins School of Public Health. My question is mainly to dr. Tomp kins but i wonder if others have thoughts on it as well. In regard to reaching hard to reach and vulnerable populations, particularly in activities and programs that might be of a contentious nature in cultural context a lot of faithbased organizations that were aware of that do that work, that work arises intrinsically around a complicated but potentially contentious negotiation between the faithbased providers that do that work and their larger religious traditions. One of our concerns is that when actors from Civil Society or the multilateral or bilateral donors are made aware of those programs, how does it change the impact and the affect of those programs in ways that may be negative . That it makes them and the staff in those organizations morement is, or the work of those organizations suspect or maybe even puts those Staff Members the people who receive services in danger . I wonder if you saw any evidence of that and if you have any thoughts about ways that Civil Society organizations and the large donors can be aware of how to build respectful partnerships with those organizations reaching hard to reach and vulnerable communities. Anita thank you. Andrew, do you want to go ahead and respond . Andrew those were some great questions. Thank you very much. If i could start with the call which is coming out of nearly all of the questions about collaboration. If we look at the political framework in which my comments are based, it is that Sustainable Development goals are going to talk about universal health coverage. Thats a big challenge. Its important its vital, if we are to reduce poverty. The bank has changed its mind. It used to be, you could only become healthy once you become rich. Now theyre saying, and i know this is true, that the bank is saying that you have to be healthy to increase your standard of living. So the question several things. Part of them are comments that have come out of our review in the paper and my authorship team, and partly some comments, because ive lived in africa for many years. And have been privileged to do so. The thing is, when the faith groups are involved in Health Care Delivery, it seems to me that often theres a tokenism rather than a true involvement. One of the challenges seems to be the coming out of this, that the governments and the agencies actually need to lose the nervousness that you, is ir that you, sir, described the anxiety, and just get real and say, if we want to achieve health coverage, then we have to look at ways of working together with partners who are working in the working. That means that literacy needs to be developed. And there are some good examples in the paper of ways in which faith leaders have actually been the leadership of the programs particularly in some of the health damaging practices and more recently experience in northeastern nigeria, is that the faith leaders are absolutely vital in assisting the increase in development of Immunization Services which are tragicically declined over the last few years. You mentioned madam chairman, about kenya maam, about kenya. You give a good example of countries where there are great opportunities for people in government and the donors and the people who work at delivery , to actually understand each others language. I think there needs to be a greater appreciation knowledge and respect. And at the moment i have found that lacking in International Development agencies. They do not want to accept that there are people who they disagree with in their own personal lives. So i think the challenge is how do we get people to move out of their personal prejudices and work into global care, which is what were talking about. Just a short answer. Jill i think theres been a bit of a change since the era that youre talking about. Ive been involved in this work for a long time, like a number of friends and colleagues have been as well. In the beginning, even 15, 20 years ago, every time we started a meeting or every time we started writing something, the first sentence would have to make an argument for the relevance of even looking at them. It would have to make a statement about the relevance of even thinking about the collaboration between what the Faith Community thats where market share figures started coming out of. But things have changed quite a bit. There is work on, and published work, on statistics, on contracting. The w. H. O. Sponsored work right now on the contracting relationship and the financial conversation relationship in three african countries. Universal Health Care Coverage studies. Im not saying relationships are not flawed and there isnt constant work to try to build the trust between the faithbased providers and the government. Its an ongoing all partnerships have dynamics. But i dont think its quite the same as this, no, were not even going to think about it. I think there has been a change. There are lingering biases, which many of you in d. C. Will be very familiar with. I think that was part of the what they were saying about. I think theres at an international level, i think theres a slight more openness to think being this and engaging this. I think uptodate lying your question was, you know i think underlying your question was, you know, why talk about these things here rather than in the countries. All i can say is, these conversations and these Collaborative Partnerships are absolutely happening on the ground in countries. Several partners here, usaid, i know theyre doing lots of work on collaboration and networking in kenya, with local partners. I think its not just here in d. C. That these conversations are happening. If that was the subtext to your comment. Jean to support what theyre saying, what im so excited about is that there seems to be a Real Movement both on the party side and the faith side to look at evidencebased developments and new approaches to forging those partnerships. I see deb in the audience there from friends of the global fight on hivaids, t. B. Organizations like the global fund for example are working now very, very intentionally on the challenge of how to engage more effectively and more incluesively. Local faith communities and faithbased partners in country. I was so heartened during our conference to hear the global fund saying that during the ebola situation in west africa, that they directed their grantees to basically repurpose funds that had been assigned for h. I. V. Or t. B. To ebola. I thought that was a wonderful example of sort of the institutional flexibility, obviously in a crisis, but a really, really good example of that. Going to jills point in terms of contracting and new innovative financing mechanisms and contracting, going from kenya, spoke to us at the conference yesterday and challenged faithbased Health Care Delivery systems to formalize and to strengthen their contracting mechanisms. In fact, he kind of challenged them to say that those m. O. U. s that you have are not worth the paper that theyre written on. And really pushing people toward more formal contracting. On the faith side, i think its up to us to step up and to offer a more robust, collective organizations that bring us together in larger scale so that we can deal as collective bodies, not necessarily just small institutions with governments. So they can achieve their escapeble objectives in terms of development scaleable objectives in terms of development. Anita andrew, there was one more question for you on the differences between religions. Andrew yes, that was an interesting question. You asked about were there any differences between those two had a written i think theology as opposed to a more verbal. The main thing we looked at did have a written one. What we didnt look at, and weve actually referred to this in the paper, was the enormous richness of traditional faiths. Certainly i can speak mainly in africa. But im sure its true in asia. Where these states have been there for years and theyre sometimes sort of combined with more modern faiths such as christianity and islam. We didnt look at those because the diversity of those would have needed a lot more work. What we could see was a very interesting thing, is that there was a considerable enthusiasm among all the faith leaders for seeing how they could be more involved and actually there was a great opportunity expressed in the work that we did for making faith leaders more aware so that their sacred teachings, their preachings about traditional values could have a clear Health Content and they could be part of the action, rather than just leaving everything to the health professionals. I dont know if that answers the question at all. But thats how we saw it. Anita were closing in on the end of the hour, unfortunately. Maybe we have time for two more questions. And short answers in the panel from the panel. Any other questions . Ok. I will ask each of you on the panel, youve done such amazing work and given us so much to think about. I would like to hear from you, in summary, what you would like to see as next steps as a result of your work, that youve been youve put so much effort into the research and the writing and not necessarily related to the piece youve written, but how youd like to see this play out. Jill as someone immersed in information and evidence, thats where my head is at the moment, its very similar to the comment about, by having these papers in here, signaling in terms of something of the board of discipline. Ill give you an example. We hosted a conference last year in cape town for people there, i think there were two presentations. That had nothing to do with faithbased Health Providers. A big, massive, multi, you know, thousands of people at this conference. Thats a signal to the fact that these issues come up in conferences, we have separate conversations about issues of faith and faithbased Health Providers. But they very rarely are integrated into the broader general Public HealthDevelopment Agendas and conversations. Rather than this becoming a standalone conversation, it gets more strongly integrated into the broader Public Health conversation. Andrew i see this series and the amazing meeting on religion and Sustainable Development being a start of a place in which things can have markers. Im just a boring academic. I do get enthusiastic from time to time. [laughter] the markers should be gained at donors and Health Providers in terms of how aware are you, how much are you being inclusive . Because many have been exclusive. Theres a wonderful example that jills talking about, in the paper, how inclusive are you of faith groups within your policies and your programs . And it will be possible to look at policy and to look at the International Development agencies and to see how well theyre coping with the challenges that this paper puts forward. Similarly, i would see that the faith groups, theyve made some wonderful responses in the last 10, 20 years particularly, particularly in the area of h. I. V. Care. But there are many other examples. But how do the faith leaders actually become more aware of how their teachings can actually interface most profitability profittably to build these partnerships up . They too, being subject to peer review, but the peer review process is a very interesting one, the faith leaders the theological colleges, all the colleges that are churning out faith leaders, it would be very interesting to see if they could become more faith aware. Because that does give enormous potential for changing societies which are hurting at the present time. Jean one of our presenters at the conference yesterday, david southerland, who is working in the philippines challenged the conference with the notion of how do you measure hope and dignity. I think that our challenge now and our real opportunity now is to build on the growing interest by virtue of the scale of the ambition of the goals, the development goals, the growing interest on the part of policymakers for engaging all hands in the Development Task and therefore also being very open i think, to engauging faithbased assets, our opportunity now is to pull together the evidence frame that shows to them that our work and our contribution will help achieve and help drive Development Outcomes and health outcomes. I think that we need to do that in creative ways. A lot of the evidence already exists and i think that we need to underscore and get much more creative at communication. At the end of the day, i think that a lot of our work Going Forward is about building friendship and trust that will allow us to cross those cultural divides that we addressed earlier in the remarks in the paper. Anita thank you, thank you all. And again, thank you to the lancet bill for publishing this important series and opening the discussion, which will go on. Thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions