IANPHI President's Letter January 2025
Dear IANPHI colleagues,
Happy New Year. I am very pleased to share a brief update on 2024 and on the year ahead.
We are now 128 National Public Health Institutes in 107 countries, growing each year, and a unique member led, peer to peer network of the leaders and their teams of governmental public health agencies and authorities. Separately and together we protect, promote and improve the public's health in our countries, regions and world-wide.
2024 was another busy year, with IANPHI establishing partnerships and work programs to address the current and future challenges we will encounter in the years ahead. We continue to work seamlessly with the World Health Organization to strengthen National Public Health Institutes in delivering the Essential Public Health Functions and in the development of the public health workforce, on promoting integrated and collaborative surveillance systems and in the design of the new Global Health Emergency Corps. Your generous participation in surveys and interviews has also been invaluable in informing and shaping our global engagement, representing NPHI country context needs and strengthening leadership, governance, and preparedness for health emergencies.
The IANPHI Thematic Committees thrive, thanks to your contributions, and their products include a report on Extreme Weather Events and projects being developed on natural disasters and on wellbeing and health inequities. In addition, our General Assembly approved our first Code of Practice for NPHIs (PDF) in December.
IANPHI was invited to or represented at numerous international events, including the 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva, the World Health Summit in Berlin, and the 17th European Public Health Conference in Lisbon. Hand in hand with FIOCRUZ in Brazil and Africa CDC, IANPHI hosted the first G20 official side meeting of NPHIs which took place in Rio de Janeiro in September.
The COVID-19 pandemic put health equity and social determinants of health at the center of global health priorities, alongside emergency preparedness, response and recovery. These will again be our focus at the upcoming IANPHI Annual Meeting in Maputo, Mozambique, from April 9-11, 2025.
I express my deep thanks to Anne-Catherine Viso, IANPHI Secretary General and Santé Publique France, for hosting and leading the IANPHI Secretariat in Paris for the past ten years. In December the IANPHI General Assembly approved the move of the secretariat to Berlin to be hosted by the Robert Koch Institute and I am supremely confident that the next phase of our network is safe in their hands. We will also recruit a first full-time secretary general under open competition over the coming weeks.
Lastly, my special thanks go out to the IANPHI Executive Board Members, both present and past, for their wise advice and counsel on our strategy and its implementation and our governance, and to the thematic committee and regional network chairs and vice-chairs for their leadership throughout the year. I also extend my sincere appreciation to the secretariat and U.S. Office teams for their remarkable work.
I wish to close by emphasizing that there is no higher purpose than the work that you lead and undertake on behalf of the public's health, and I wish each of you my very best wishes for the year ahead.
Duncan Selbie