Modern Health Diplomacy and CISEPO: Addressing Peacebuilding through Public Health in Regions of Conflict

The Canada International Scientific Exchange Program (www.cisepo.ca) is an international cooperation network of academics, researchers, educators, students, medical and public health specialists, and allied health professionals, working together under a Canadian umbrella in an academic setting. CISEPO partners share a commitment to academic cooperation, professional engagement, and dialogue, while remaining focused on improving locally-identified health indicators; thus achieving globally-recognized health outcomes and influencing national health policy.

CISEPO implements cross-border science and health interventions in the context of rapidly shifting political realities across the Arab and Israeli frontier.  This approach enables knowledge transfer through professional networks on the ground and pioneering telehealth.  While remaining aware of regional politics, CISEPO’s networks transcend conflict and engender programming rooted in evidence based medicine.

The CISEPO approach is dependent on a unique bi-level Health Diplomacy model as reported in the Lancet in 2005. The model synthesizes project specific goals for improving health care delivery and defined health care outcomes with meta level goals for building cross border cooperation and knowledge exchange. Overarching the programming is the creation of knowledge and cooperation networks which may then function as social capital for peacebuilding, international development, and humanitarian aid.

The tripartite, equitable cooperation approach taken by CISEPO partners in the Middle East successfully addresses the high prevalence of genetic nerve deafness in both Arab and Israeli populations.  It does this by implementing cooperative universal newborn hearing screening, habilitation, and family support in Israeli and Jordanian societies, while Palestinian and Israeli scientists work to identify the genetics of hearing loss.

Addressing this public health issue of genetic hearing loss has led to a multiplicity of regional and global cooperative health initiatives. Thus CISEPO’s longstanding 20 year mission has opened doors for health systems strengthening in the context of medical education and health innovation globally.