JUNTO

Se você quiser ir rápido, vá sozinho. Se você quer ir longe, vá JUNTO.

That is Portuguese for:

In English a JUNTO is a group of people joined for a common purpose. JUNTO was also a club for mutual improvement started by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1727.

I was inspired to find the Portuguese word for TOGETHER following a great experience last week in Brazil. I participated in the Congresso Internacional de Saúde Baseada em Evidência (CISBE) 2017, or International Congress on Evidence-Based Medicine convened by the Brazilian Medical Association -- Associação Médica Brasileira (AMB).

At one point the audience was mostly from Brazil where the primary language is Portuguese. The speaker was from Colombia and speaking in Spanish. And the slides were in English.

But it worked well. The conference, the first of its kind in Brazil, brought together some of the most accomplished physician leaders from across Brazil and experienced guideline developers from other countries such as Colombia, Uruguay and Portugal. Themes of embracing and advancing evidence-based medicine (EBM) in many forms were shared and this could be the beginning of national developments for EBM for the fifth largest country in the world with > 200 million people and > 400,000 physicians.

I was delighted to be part of this experience, and after hearing several others speak of COLLABORATION I shared the African proverb as a closing thought for the conference. I do hope this takes greater shape in Brazil as there are so many great RESOURCES to work with.