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      What We're Learning about Global Study Tours to Advance a Culture of Health in the United States

      Brief May-07-2020 | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation | 3-min read
      1. Insights
      2. Our Research
      3. What We're Learning about Global Study Tours to Advance a Culture of Health in the United States
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      Taken in Copenhagen

      When we look around the world—from Canada to Colombia, Botswana to Belgium, India to Italy—we see countries that have made progress in addressing the same kinds of challenges we face in the United States.

      By looking beyond our borders to learn how our peers abroad are improving health and well-being, we can uncover valuable lessons, build relationships, inspire action, and find new ways to improve policies, programs, and systems. 

      That’s why the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is exploring different ways to learn with communities around the world.

      For several years, the Foundation has led, supported, and participated in a variety of global learning activities, including global study tours.

      This issue brief: 

      • explores how global study tours can add value to your learning strategy; 
      • offers ideas and insights to consider when organizing study tours; and
      • addresses how foundations and other philanthropic organizations might deepen their support for these global learning methods—as well as the impacts they produce.

      The power of global learning is ‘blue marble thinking’—the idea that, like an astronaut looking down at the Earth, by leaving our own home, we can see it differently. It’s understanding that the vast majority of our society is a social construct, which means we have the power to change it, sometimes in radical ways. The way we do things isn’t the way we have to do things. That is, at its heart, the power of global learning.

      Karabi Acharya, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

      When learning from people in other countries, it’s important to learn with them. The most valuable exchanges happen in partnership, when ideas flow both ways and pool together to create new insights.

      • Context is key. Culturally competent exchanges help participants connect with people across cultural differences.
      • Study tours can help shift mindsets, change narratives, and reimagine the future, but power dynamics must be addressed up front and throughout the process.
      • Study tours can help build community agency, catalyze change, and foster sustainability, especially when those most impacted are part of a bidirectional learning partnership.
      • Tour organizers should define success and impact broadly—and from multiple perspectives.
      • Consider carefully whether media participation in a global study tour can help you share your story.

      Move away from the idea that the purpose of a study tour is to extract information or knowledge. Instead, think about this as a reciprocal, two-way kind of experience. You want to share, listen, and absorb.

      Jason Corburn, University of California, Berkeley

       

      There is growing interest in including global study tours in comprehensive efforts to foster two-way learning for building a healthier, more equitable society where everyone can achieve their full potential. Philanthropy has a powerful role to play.


      • Focus study tours on the “wicked problems” you and/or your grantees are addressing and where others around the world are having some success. What thorny issues are people in the United States struggling with, particularly with respect to health equity, that a global study tour could help to illuminate?
      • Use global study tours to support grantees and leaders your foundation has begun to cultivate—including those with lived experience of the challenges being addressed. Convene foundation program staff and grantees with expertise and varying perspectives to work together to address issues. 

      • Consider global study tours that address cross-cutting themes so that staff from the sponsoring organization and its grantees can maximize learning across sectors, disciplines, and areas of focus.  

      • Identify and be clear about desired outcomes and invest sufficiently and flexibly in evaluation of both short-term and longer-term outputs and impacts of study tours.

      • Fund study tours as one element of a more comprehensive global exchange package of services that includes support for implementation and continued engagement of the learning community after the study tour.
      • Preserve knowledge gained from study tour experiences by sharing learning through accessible, user-friendly approaches, such as playbooks, web-based interactive tools, webinars, and videos that show how global exchanges can transform people’s hearts and minds.
      • Be aware of the tendency for participants and host organizations to minimize challenges in order to “look good” in front of a funder. Help build a spirit of trust and transparency by mitigating power imbalances and participating as co-learners.
      • Leverage resources and expertise by fostering collaboration across philanthropic organizations. For example, convening funders with similar interests could harvest learning, align powerful players, and encourage participation from foundations that are curious but not yet working in this space.


       

       

      We believe that good ideas have no borders. Whether the challenge is building healthy communities, keeping children healthy, or transforming health care, bright spots abroad bring inspiration and practical solutions for how to accelerate our nation’s progress toward achieving a Culture of Health.

       

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