Reciprocal innovation: A new approach to equitable and mutually beneficial global health partnerships

ABSTRACT

Global health researchers often discount mutual learning and benefit to address shared health challenges across high and low- and middle-income settings. Drawing from a 30-year partnership called AMPATH that started between Indiana University in the US and Moi University in Kenya, we describe an innovative approach and program for mutual learning and benefit coined ‘reciprocal innovation.’ Reciprocal innovation harnesses a bidirectional, co-constituted, and iterative exchange of ideas, resources, and innovations to address shared health challenges across diverse global settings. The success of AMPATH in Kenya, particularly in HIV/AIDS and community health, resulted in several innovations being ‘brought back’ to the US. To promote the bidirectional flow of learning and innovations, the Indiana CTSI reciprocal innovation program hosts annual meetings of multinational researchers and practitioners to identify shared health challenges, supports pilot grants for projects with reciprocal exchange and benefit, and produces educational and training materials for investigators. The transformative power of global health to address systemic health inequities embraces equitable and reciprocal partnerships with mutual benefit across countries and communities of academics, practitioners, and policymakers. Leveraging a long-standing partnership, the Indiana CTSI has built a reciprocal innovation program with promise to redefine global health for shared wellbeing at a global scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Reciprocal innovation
• global learning
• global health
• mutual benefit
• global local‌

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the founding director of the Indiana CTSI, Dr. Anantha Shekhar, whose support and encouragement helped catalyse the reciprocal innovation program described in this publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of interest statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

The Indiana CTSI Global Health Program is supported by the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute which is funded in part by Award Number UL1TR002529 from the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Clinical and Translational Sciences Award. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The funding agency had no role in the writing of the manuscript.