Innovation Webinar 13: Online Communities of Practice

Communities of Practice (COPs) are vital to knowledge building on a global scale by bringing together stakeholders and facilitating the sharing of resources and expertise. The concept of COPs was originally developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger to refer to “people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor.” Through activities such as problem solving, seeking previous experience and existing resources, discussing new developments and mapping knowledge and identifying gaps, COPs increase the flow of information among members and lead to more efficient program execution.

As technology continues to expand and evolve on a global scale, online COPs are increasingly prevalent in the global health and development sectors. They offer an effective mechanism for knowledge management and a shared space for innovation through a virtual platform designed to connect professional communities with similar interests globally. Online COPs reach far beyond local, traditional communities to enable global health practitioners to learn from each other and develop best practices that may not otherwise be possible.

Join the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3) on Wednesday, August 31 at 9am EDT for a webinar on utilizing online COPs to connect global health practitioners. Learn more about some of the premier online COPs and how the global health community benefits from these platforms.

Moderated by:

Todd Nilson is the Head of Consultancy at FeverBee, responsible for structuring consulting engagements around the discovery, analysis, planning and implementation of communities. A digital strategist who has led social technology projects, he specializes in the planning and implementation of online communities, gamification strategies, social recruitment and employee engagement.

Panelists include:

Heidi Good Boncana is a Senior Program Officer for ICT & Innovation at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communications Programs, where she leads the Knowledge for Health Project’s mHealth Portfolio and co-chairs the Global Digital Health Network, a networking forum facilitating knowledge management for digital health. Ms. Good Boncana has spent more than a decade in public health communication supporting initiatives to reach those with highest unmet need in low and middle income countries, focusing on using ICTs, e/mHealth tools, platforms and content to support frontline health workers and health systems strengthening.

Babafunke Fagbemi is the Executive Director of Center for Communication Programs Nigeria (CCPN), leading the provision of technical support for strategic health communication on all areas of integrated health and social development to organizations and government. She has over two decades of experience developing, implementing and managing strategic health communication initiatives in various thematic areas of integrated and social development.

Neil Pakenham-Walsh is the coordinator of the HIFA (Healthcare Information For All) campaign and co-director of the Global Healthcare Information Network. He is also chair of the Dgroups Foundation, a partnership of 18 international development organisations promoting dialogue for international health and development. With clinical experience as an isolated health worker in rural Ecuador and Peru, he has spent the last 20 years committed to the global challenge of improving the availability and use of relevant, reliable healthcare information for health workers and citizens in low- and middle-income countries.

This online event is the thirteenth in HC3’s innovation webinar series, which highlights and examines cutting-edge applications of digital technology to advance global health.