Humanitarian learning delivery: has the pandemic led to lasting change?

COVID-19, non-communicable diseases and poverty represent a global health emergency on a scale which is difficult to comprehend. However, there is a need for innovative solutions, co-created with partners and stakeholders, to address primary healthcare workforce capacity, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where health systems lack resilience and are inadequately equipped to respond to new and existing demands.

With over 2500 doctors and nurses accessing our COVID-19 online course in 2020, we officially launched the PCI Academy in 2021, an idea in the pipeline that was greatly accelerated by the pandemic. The PCI Academy is an online, interactive learning hub created to enhance the ability of primary care practitioners to deliver adaptive, evidence-based, quality primary care in their communities. The Academy is unique in its approach to using technology to deliver learning to healthcare workers globally, specifically in LMICs.

At PCI, we are leveraging technology particularly digital learning to adapt and scale up our existing model as part of a package of blended learning. Face-to-face learning still has a place, but we can say for certain that digital delivery of learning is here to stay. In this publication on Humanitarian Learning Quick Guides – Choose your Learning Format by Humanitarian Leadership Academy, we share alongside other organisations how we have navigated the pandemic, and the decisions we have made about learning delivery since.