Towards A Collaborative Conception of Health Governance

On Saturday the 22nd of November, I presented a paper at the "African Studies Symposium" organized by Professor Gloria Onyeoziri, one of the University of British Columbia's finest professors. Professor Chidi Oguamanam, an Assistant Professor of Law researching on an impressive range of issues including "traditional medicine", environmental law and biodiversity conversation, biotechnology (in health and agriculture), intellectual property, et al. was the keynote speaker. Professor Chidi Oguamanam is the director of the law and technology institute at Dalhousie University. He spoke on the place of traditional medicine in international law and emphasized the need for "bio-partnership" between the West and the global South in the development and sharing of resources from the developing world's biodiversity and "traditional medicine" resources.

It was by every means an inspiring gathering of scholars. There were deep insights into a broad range of issues, touching on healthcare, migration and brain drain, the concept of indigeneity and Nigerian writing.

My talk was on the need for a new direction in healthcare governance in an age of increasing deficit in healthcare delivery. I advocated for a collaborative conception of health governance, a governance model that involves cooperation between diverse actors in the society – allopathic physicians, private/public actors both within and outside the healthcare system, indigenous healthcare providers, etc. Collaborative governance will involve welcoming experts beyond biomedical actors to provide input into health systems management/governance.

Collaborative governance is essentially a governance model that pulls resources together from every sector to advance a collective goal. There are enough problems with the medical industry today, in terms of access to healthcare, including geographical discrepancies in access, affordability and availability of allopathic medicines to warrant a broader conception of not just medicine, health and treatment, but also of who manages our health system.

I concluded my presentation with the contention that the challenges posed by the healthcare problems of the developing world demand multicultural, multilateral and multifaceted approaches. Interestingly, David Eboh's article, entitled "Shifting The Paradigm Of Leadership In Nigeria's Healthcare Management" captures some of the merits in a broader conception of health governance...

This is the link to Eboh's article:
http://www.independentngonline.com/oped/article02?publication=081121

For more on Collaborative Governance, see this paper by Donahue John of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University:

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/CSRI/publications/workingpaper_2_donahue.pdf


“The essence of collaborative governance is a new level of social/political engagement between and among the several sectors of society that constitutes a more effective way to address many of modern societies’ needs beyond anything that the several sectors have heretofore been able to achieve on their own. Our sense of the increase of this phenomenon led us to believe this subject needed to be systematically explored.”
- Frank A. and Denie S. Weil


*Professor Chidi Oguamanam is the author of Indigenous Knowledge in International Law: Intellectual Property, Plant Biodiversity and Traditional Medicine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).