2025 Union World Conference on Lung Health: Reflecting on the Potential of Collaborations Between the TB Community and Academia

From November 18-21, Yuliya Chorna, PhD candidate in Social Anthropology and graduate global health scholar at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University, participated in the 2025 Union World Conference on Lung Health, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The annual conference drew a broad variety of stakeholders engaged in tuberculosis (TB), including scientists and researchers, representatives from technical and donor agencies, governmental officials, the private sector, and activists affiliated with civil society and TB survivors-led organizations. Yuliya, who is researching global TB funding flows for her doctoral dissertation in Anthropology, integrated participant observation activities at the conference. She followed conference discussions about funding and heard stories of the devastating impact on the lives of people affected by TB following the abrupt suspension of U.S. foreign aid and ongoing shrinking of international development aid to countries severely affected by TB. Yuliya notes that in the current funding crisis and evolving changes in the global health architecture, civil society and community-based organizations live through uncertainties reflected in short-term operational focus which impact provision of services and ability to address social and structural barriers experienced by people affected by TB. Despite this, communities demonstrate commitment to equitable and people-centered models of TB care, which challenge normative narratives emphasizing biomedical ‘life-saving’ interventions over psycho-social interventions that are needed to address TB’s broader social determinants. 

Yuliya reflects on the importance of community-led participatory action research collaborations between academia, TB civil society and affected community organizations presented at this year’s conference that speak about unique ways of advancing equity in TB. In a symposium entitled, “From Research Conceptualization to Scientific Publication: A Community Actor’s Journey with TB Research”, the civil society network TB Europe Coalition shared their experience with community-driven publishing.  Yuliya contributed to this panel by emphasizing the value of communities’ experiential, lived knowledge and sharing tips about centering community perspectives while preparing peer-review manuscripts. Dr Amrita Daftary, Associate Professor at the School of Global Health and faculty fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute, also spoke at this panel, showcasing how different contributions from researchers and community representatives can take form within a scientific publication in ways that reflect authentic and equitable community-research partnerships. Dr Daftary is on Yuliya’s dissertation committee, and founding lead of a TB social science network, Social Science and Health Innovations for Tuberculosis or SSHIFTB.  

In another session with the TB Europe Coalition, entitled, “Integrating Gender-Related Knowledge into the National Medical Training Curriculum and Healthcare Workplace Practices”, Yuliya and Dr Daftary delved into the integration of social science methods into mainstream TB responses, specifically on how gender and equity theories, may help to translate political commitments around equity into action. They discussed how social science methods can channel the voice and realities of communities, and enable critical engagement with structural drivers of inequity, like governance, politics and power more naturally and humanistically than conventional biomedical or biotechnological methods used in TB research.

Yuliya is supported in her doctoral research by Dr Maggie McDonald (supervisor), Dr Sandra Widmer, and Dr Amrita Daftary, all faculty fellows at the Dahdaleh Institute. Yuliya received funding support to participate in the 2025 Union conference from the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, SSHIFTB, as well as the McGill International TB Centre.

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