Center for Integration Science
Developing a new field of science at the intersection of social medicine, health-system design, and service delivery
The Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity, which serves as co-secretariat for the NCDI Poverty Network in collaboration with the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique, concentrates on five areas of work – Research, Policy, Training, Implementation, and Advocacy.
The Center for Integration Science policy team works closely with national NCDI Poverty Commissions – comprised of Ministry policymakers, clinicians, academic researchers, health planning and financing experts, implementing partners and donors, and people living with severe conditions – to develop policies that prioritize equitable, cost-effective interventions to address severe conditions that disproportionately affect children and young adults living in extreme poverty.
The Center for Integration Science programs team supports Ministries of Health and implementing partners in lower-income countries with developing the plans, budgets, facilities, training and mentorship programs, and systems for procurement, supply chain management, and monitoring and evaluation needed to decentralize and integrate delivery of care for severe conditions that cause avoidable death and suffering among the world’s poorest children and young adults.
The Center for Integration Science training team, working in collaboration with partners in lower-income countries and subject matter experts from clinical, academic, and policy institutions across the NCDI Poverty Network, provides support to implementing partners and countries on developing training programs for nurses, clinical officers, and other mid-level providers delivering decentralized, integrated care by developing curricula, open-source training materials, and an e-learning platform.
The Center for Integration Science research team works with partners and collaborators in lower-income countries and in regional and global institutions in applying integration science to inform the design, implementation, evaluation, and scale-up of models for decentralizing services progressively and integrating those services to optimize both health system resources and patient outcomes and well-being.
The Center for Integration Science Advocacy and Communications teams work to raise awareness of the need to prioritize access to care for severe conditions that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest children and young adults, to amplify the voices of people living with these severe conditions, and to mobilize a global campaign of solidarity to address these conditions as both a moral imperative and a key to achieving universal health coverage.