Experiences of Health Psychology Consultancy in International Health Partnerships

This chapter outlines our overall experiences in providing health psychology consultancy within existing and new international health partnerships. Specifically, we will draw upon our work from The Change Exchange. We discuss how relationships were built and how health psychologists were embedded into multi-disciplinary teams in international health partnerships. We frame this work around published guidelines on how health partnership teams should aim to be embedded within their practice. We discuss managing expectations and the challenge of keeping within the boundaries of the project within the health partnership. As well as key principles for health psychologists, we outline practicalities such as managing travel, working towards timelines, and risk assessments, including key examples such as challenges in ensuring safety of the whole team. Finally, we provide an overview of the approach we take to evaluating the work of health psychology and/or behavioural science in international health partnerships, drawing upon issues of using commonly adopted psychological methodologies, theories and frameworks in low-to-middle-income countries. In addition to evaluating the health partnership project itself, we review the impact this work has on health psychologists who volunteer as part of The Change Exchange, including the benefits they reportedly experience such as skill acquisition.