Blog

It has been five months since the first meeting of the Commission. Where are we at today and where are we going? Let us try to give you some pinpoints.

I was attending a conference in Oslo a week ago on Partnership for Change. A few hundred persons were gathered for two days at the beautiful new opera house in the city.

JALI- the Joint Action and Learning Initiative on national and global responsibilities for health, is a loose network of likeminded persons and organizations that explore ways to advance health for all. JALI organized a short week for reflection at the Rockefeller Foundation Centre at Bellagio in Italy in February 2012. Twenty four persons met at the shore of Lake Como. 

These were the words the Minister of foreign affairs, Jonas Gahr Støre, said at a briefing about the Commission to interested Norwegian researchers and practitioners in early February.

Unni Gopinathan, adviser to the Secretariat and medical student at UiO, is calling for an opportunity for students to get involved in the work of the Commission. The Commission welcomes his initiative to create a student commission that will serve as an advisory group to the main commission and even challenge it to “move beyond conventional wisdom". Read his proposal below.

Just Haffeld is adviser to the Secretariat of The Lancet-UiO Commission and has been invited to share his reflections at this blog about how “ubuntu”, or the idea of interrelatedness, can be a lens through which the potential of new global health governance mechanisms can be explored.

The first meeting of the Commission on December 12-13 was so successful. Successful in the sense that so many thoughts and ideas were brought forward. So successful that we now wonder where to go. And we need to take a quick look at what we cannot do.

The first commission meeting is well behind us and the holiday season is settling in. Its time for some words from the project coordinator.

These words came from Sir Michael Marmot at the first meeting of the Commission. Establish your initiative and members of the taskforce, debate the direction and the methods of work, agree on your mission and get on with it!

I was talking to an audience about the Commission, and was interrupted by laughter, of not the very supportive kind, and an outburst by a lady in the front row: “Eventyr!”

The date for the first meeting of the Commission is set for 12-13 December, just after the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. It will be held in Oslo. We are busy with all the practical work, tickets, hotels, meals. Yes:  Attention must be paid to all possible diets, allergies and preferences. Global it is.

Here we go: We are launching a blog from the Secretariat of The Lancet-University of Oslo Commission for the purpose of keeping  interested readers updated on topics and events related to the work of the Secretariat and of the Commission.