The annual multi-country meeting of the COHESION-I Project was held in Lima, Peru, from March 24th to 28th, 2025. During the five-day workshop, our team members discussed key milestones, challenges, and ongoing and future activities while strengthening their partnership.
From March 24th to 28th, 2025, the COHESION-I Project team convened in Lima to discuss the project’s progress, review activities, share country-specific contexts and needs, and plan for the upcoming months. The meeting brought together team members from India, Mozambique, Nepal, and Peru, fostering alignment and communication to determine the next steps of the project.
In the opening session, participants engaged in a motivational dynamic to express their expectations of the weekly discussions and then presented the brand identity patterns used to distinguish the teams from each country. Afterward, team members from India shared their progress in the process of optimizing the methodologies employed in COHESION (2016-2020), providing an overview of the formative research findings. The following session explored the results of the co-design process from Mozambique, Nepal, and Peru. Research team members reflected on specific details of the interventions, timelines, and activities. The first day concluded with a presentation of how the Peruvian healthcare system works and the role of primary healthcare. Key aspects of the health system in Peru, including fragmentation across three levels of care, and the organizational model of Integrated Health Networks (RIS), were addressed.
On the second day of the event, breakout sessions in mini teams helped to discuss the economic, process, qualitative, and quantitative evaluations. Key topics covered included team members organization and training, data collection and analysis, and the timeline per country for each assessment.
The following day, on Wednesday 26 th, team members visited the Condevilla Primary Health Care Center and the Cayetano Heredia Hospital, which provided valuable insights into the healthcare system in Peru, along with its facilities, health workers’ experiences, medical equipment, internal organization, and patient care practices. Additionally, they visited the Alexander von Humboldt Institute of Tropical Medicine (IMTAvH) and several of its laboratories, promoting collaboration and networking among researchers from CRONICAS and IMTAvH (read here a blog in Spanish about this visit). The closing session of the day featured a panel discussion for students in health sciences focused on capacity strengthening (read more about the event here).
The fourth day’s sessions began with a presentation led by team members from India, who described their progress on the co-creation process, highlighting the preliminary interventions brainstormed with stakeholders from different levels through participatory workshops. The team also discussed ideas for the pilot study, such as potential evaluation outcomes and study designs, timeline, and next steps. Subsequently, breakout sessions by country took place to identify opportunities for improvement, risks, and potential solutions. During the afternoon, team members reviewed and discussed the progress on the communication and capacity-strengthening strategies and implementation plans, and agreed on priority activities for 2025 and 2026. These included dissemination events and training for team members.
The final session of the day was dedicated to discussing the communication component of the interventions, such as audience selection, validation of the communication products, strategy, implementation, and evaluation. This workshop was led by external consultants from the Scientific Research Institute (IDIC) of the Universidad de Lima (click here to read the news piece in Spanish with more details).
On the final day of the multi-country meeting, team members shared their ideas and plans for developing research manuscripts to be submitted for publication consideration. The multi-country meeting this year concluded with specific agreements and tasks for the upcoming months. These included evaluating intervention progress and outcomes, consolidating team organization by country, updating communication on mini-team activities, and strengthening internal capacity-building efforts.
Throughout the sessions, team members deepened their understanding of the project’s progress, engaged in a valuable exchange of ideas, and collectively reviewed key aspects of the project. The multi-country meeting served as a platform for interdisciplinary and international collaboration, reaffirming the commitment to improve the quality of care, health system responsiveness, and patient satisfaction for people with chronic conditions. Special thanks to all research team members and external parties who participated in the activities of the week for their dedication and contributions.