The Alliance Lift is a series that spotlights the journeys of Alliance alumni shaping health systems around the globe. In this episode, Ms Idil Shekh Mohamed, host of the Alliance Lift, speaks with Professor Asha George, the South African Research Chair in Health Systems, Complexity and Social Change at the University of the Western Cape. A globally recognized qualitative researcher, Professor George examines the interface between communities, health workers and health systems through lenses of governance, gender and human rights. She also serves as the Alliance’s 2025 Thinker in Residence, supporting reflection on how the field of health policy and systems research can engage more intentionally with gender equality.

Idil spoke with Asha about how early work shaped by global commitments on women’s rights influenced her approach to health systems, what she learned from working within her own health system in India and why she believes health workers’ lived realities must be more central to health systems research and practice today.

Professor George also reflects on the importance of listening to voices that are often marginalized, addressing silences that have become normalized within health systems and building alliances that connect evidence to action.

The Alliance Lift is a series that spotlights the journeys of Alliance alumni shaping health systems around the globe. In this Q&A, Mr Jeffrey Knezovich, a Technical Officer at the Alliance, talks with Ms Racha Fadlallah, a Senior Scientific Officer at the Knowledge to Policy (K2P) Center at the American University of Beirut and co-founder of the SPARK Center for systematic reviews in health policy and systems research. Beyond Lebanon, she also serves on the Board of Health Systems Global and contributes to the strategic direction of WHO’s Evidence-Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet).

Jeffrey spoke with Racha about her path into health policyand systems research, her work strengthening evidence-informed decision-making in Lebanon and globally, how crises and change shape the way evidence is used today, and her hopes and expectations for next year’s Ninth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research.

She shares how her early experiences shaped her commitment to making evidence accessible, what it means to work in a context of political and economic instability, and how to make the case for evidence-informed policy-making.

In this episode of The Alliance Lift, Dr Rachidatou Compaoré – a public health physician and researcher from Burkina Faso whose work bridges health systems, policy, and reproductive health – speaks with Ms Idil Shekh Mohamed, Technical Officer at the Alliance.

As a Research Fellow at the Institute of Research in Health Sciences in Ouagadougou, Dr Compaoré’s studies have helped inform Burkina Faso’s national malaria control strategy and contributed to reforms in maternal and adolescent health across West Africa.

She reflects on her journey from clinical medicine to public health – shaped by the inequities she witnessed in hospital wards that could not be solved by medicine alone – and discusses her pioneering work on safe abortion and adolescent sexual and reproductive health. The conversation explores the challenges of conducting policy-relevant research in West Africa, the importance of empowering local researchers, and her vision for more equitable, decolonized global health partnerships.