Doha, September 21 (QNA) - The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), Qatar Foundation's global health initiative, has announced a strategic partnership with The BMJ, one of the world's oldest, most respected, and most cited general medical journals.
Under the new partnership, WISH have worked with The BMJ on three reports that will include peer-reviewed academic papers written by global experts. In addition to being presented at WISH 2020, these papers will be published in the high-impact journal, benefiting from the scale and reach of its international readership of doctors and other health professionals. More than 50 million users from over 150 countries access BMJ's websites every year.
The reports commissioned for the summit are each chaired by world-leading experts and supported by a team of senior leaders drawn from the academic, research, and policy arenas. The reports cover toxic stress in children, healthy dry cities, and the relationship between climate change and communicable diseases.
The group convened by The BMJ to consider the relationship between climate change and communicable diseases will highlight global health responses shown to be effective in curbing the impact of climate change on the spread of infectious disease and climate-linked increases in communicable diseases, as well as considering how to fill the gaps in the current body of evidence.
Chief Executive Officer of WISH Sultana Afdhal said: "One of the goals of our biennial summit is to find optimal ways for evidence-based research to be translated into practical policy-driven solutions that help deliver healthcare in an efficient and cost-effective manner worldwide. It is, therefore, fitting that we work with a trusted knowledge-leader such as The BMJ, as a research and publishing partner, given our mutual commitment to sharing evidence-based knowledge and supporting healthcare leaders in building healthier communities and improving health outcomes."
Executive Editor of The BMJ Professor Kamran Abbasi said: "We are delighted to have the opportunity to work on these important areas with the support of WISH. Our expert teams have produced exceptional reports with clear recommendations for health professionals and policy makers. The challenge now is to act on these recommendations to counter the impacts on health of toxic stress, climate change and drought. This year's summit will play an important part in moving those issues from research into policy."
More than 2,000 healthcare experts from 116 countries participated in the 2018 edition of WISH. This year's virtual event is expected to benefit from a significant increase in international participation.
WISH 2020 will extend over five days, and, for the first time, registration is open to all participants free of cost. Among the discussions on global health challenges will be a number of sessions on Covid-19, which has inevitably dominated discourse around global health this year.
The BMJ is an international peer-reviewed medical journal, responsible for publishing some of the world's most influential research affecting public discourse and policy making. The strategic partnership with The BMJ will contribute to one of the major goals of the biennial WISH summit, which is to disseminate evidence-based content to a wide audience of global leaders, policy makers and healthcare practitioners. (QNA)