FACE Compassion & SDGs - The Task Force for Global Health

Compassion & the SDGs

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a blueprint for all major sectors related to health, environment, and economic development. Yet the role of compassion as a fundamental driver in establishing the SDGs and the necessity of compassion for achieving them remain an untold story.

Through a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the University of Edinburgh Global Health Academy and FACE are collaborating to make the case for compassion as a guiding principle for and as a unifying thread to accelerate achievement of the SDGs.

After publishing a position paper in The Lancet, we launched a year-long social media campaign (#compassion4theSDGs) starting in January 2023. This campaign emphasizes the integral nature of compassion in the SDGs through an examination of individual SDGs (released on relevant "world days") and case studies.

The Challenge

Compassion motivates many of us who work in global health, but we rarely speak frankly about the important role of compassion in improving the quality of health services and the experience of patients, strengthening health systems, and sustaining the very people who deliver care.

Our Approach

Each quarter, we bring together voices from around the globe to discuss compassion in different settings, share stories, and learn from one another, focusing on how compassion impacts our work and how we can cultivate compassion at many levels.