A new initiative called NOURISH has been established to find a new way of working to achieve equitable wellbeing for all. The initiative comprises of a collective of people from around the world, including Brazil, New Zealand, UK, Canada and Sweden, who are practitioners, researchers and advocates for authentic health equity.
The NOURISH initiative takes a decolonising public health approach to change, focusing first and foremost on interconnectedness and people’s relationship with ‘place’. The initiative is taking a “whole person, whole systems” approach to change, in response to the need for better decisions for the achievement of good for all at all levels – community, local, national and global.
The founding partners involved understand that politics can play a significant role in accessing good health and well-being, and that achieving equitable wellbeing for all can be daunting in a world of rapidly shifting geopolitics, democratic systems failures, and gaping wealth inequalities.
Building community power
In the short-term, NOURISH is aiming to establish a mechanism to support the coming together of all the current networks working on public health and wellbeing and to set up as an NGO that supports a network of networks.
It is seeking to build community power and systems change, grounded in a decolonial, Indigenous knowledge and values-based framework. Through offering support and actions that foster a return to a collective system of societal decision making through ideas that:
- Facilitate adaptive learning
- Foster open inquiry
- Develop transformational change strategies
- Empower collective action
- Are founded on empathy and compassion
NOURISH will be holding a launch event on the 24 May at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, which will run from the 19 -27 May 2025.
Anyone interested in finding out more about the initiative can also make contact via this online form.
Founding partners
The NOURISH initiative is supported by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and Salzburg Global Seminar. The core activators of the initiative are:
- Emma Rawson Te-Patu, President, World Federation of Public Health Associations, New Zealand
- Fredrik Lindencrona, Head of Research Co-Creation, Inner Development Goals, Sweden
- Déline Petrone, Scribe/Graphic Facilitator, Canada
- Rafaela Achatz, Psychologist and Research Advisory, Associação Saúde Sem Limites, Brazil
- Erica Nelson, Research Fellow, Health and Nutrition Cluster, the Institute of Development Studies, UK
- Sabine Kleinert, Senior Executive Editor, The Lancet, London, UK
- Thirusha Naidu, Canada Research Chair in Equity and Social Justice in Global Medical Education/Associate Professor, University of Ottawa Canada
- César Abadía-Barrero, Colombian activist/scholar and associate professor of anthropology and human rights at the University of Connecticut.
View our related short course
If you are part of the global health sector and want to centre equity, participation, and decolonised approaches in your work or research, our in-person training course, ‘Enabling empowered community engagement and involvement in global health research’ is for you.