TY - JOUR T1 - The Equity Tool for Valuing Global Health Partnerships JF - Global Health: Science and Practice JO - GLOB HEALTH SCI PRACT DO - 10.9745/GHSP-D-21-00316 VL - 10 IS - 2 SP - e2100316 AU - Charles P. Larson AU - Katrina M. Plamondon AU - Leslie Dubent AU - Frank Bicaba AU - Abel Bicaba AU - Tran Hung Minh AU - An Nguyen AU - Jacques E. Girard AU - Jean Ramdé AU - Theresa W. Gyorkos Y1 - 2022/04/28 UR - http://www.ghspjournal.org/content/10/2/e2100316.abstract N2 - Key FindingsThere is a need to more comprehensively advance equity in global health partnerships.The Equity Tool (EQT) offers a practical guide for considering equity in 4 domains of practice: governance and process, procedures and operations, progress and impacts, and power and inclusion.The EQT is equity focused, user friendly, and can support reflective dialogue at any stage of the partnership, by individuals at any level in the partnership.Key ImplicationsThe EQT will spark questions that invite people to pause and think about their experiences within a partnership.By periodically engaging in relational, reflective dialogue about how equity is experienced in a global health partnership using the EQT, partners can embrace ways of recognizing, understanding, and advancing equity in all their processes.The EQT offers prompts for reflective dialogue about how equity or inequity is experienced in many different ways and moments throughout the process of partnering, which require attention to creating safe, learning-focused conversations with clear intentions and respect for the contributions and vulnerability of all involved.Global health partnerships (GHPs) involve complex relationships between individuals and organizations, often joining partners from high-income and low- or middle-income countries around work that is carried out in the latter. Therefore, GHPs are situated in the context of global inequities and their underlying sociopolitical and historical causes, such as colonization. Equity is a core principle that should guide GHPs from start to end. How equity is embedded and nurtured throughout a partnership has remained a constant challenge. We have developed a user-friendly tool for valuing a GHP throughout its lifespan using an equity lens. The development of the EQT was informed by 5 distinct elements: a scoping review of scientific published peer-reviewed literature; an online survey and follow-up telephone interviews; workshops in Canada, Burkina Faso, and Vietnam; a critical interpretive synthesis; and a content validation exercise. Findings suggest GHPs generate experiences of equity or inequity yet provide little guidance on how to identify and respond to these experiences. The EQT can guide people involved in partnering to consider the equity implications of all their actions, from inception, through implementation and completion of a partnership. When used to guide reflective dialogue with a clear intention to advance equity in and through partnering, this tool offers a new approach to valuing global health partnerships. Global health practitioners, among others, can apply the EQT in their partnerships to learning together about how to cultivate equity in their unique contexts within what is becoming an increasingly diverse, vibrant, and responsive global health community. ER -