Our Priorities for 2023: IANPHI President's Letter | January 2023
Dear IANPHI colleagues,
Thank you for everything in 2022 and my warmest wishes for the year ahead. I recognise and appreciate how tough it is to lead in public health and can say how inspired I have been by each of you and collectively. We have also seen our IANPHI family grow with new members, and although there is so much to do, there has been so much to be proud of too.
IANPHI has had a busy, very productive year, which would not have been possible without your support.
We celebrated our 15th anniversary and reached major milestones for the Association. We signed a historic agreement with the World Health Organization to support the creation and development of National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs). Our next step will be a two-year joint action plan.
We conducted groundbreaking work on Integrated Disease Surveillance (IDS) with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to which many of you contributed. The reports have now been submitted and are being prepared for dissemination. The next stage will be to advance the recommendations with funders and partners. We were invited by WHO to present and debate the role of NPHIs during the pandemic and in integrated surveillance on the opening day of the World Health Summit in Berlin.
We also participated in three G7 technical meetings on surveillance, climate change and workforce development, in addition to meetings hosted by the Gates Foundation on IDS systems and financing. These were fabulous opportunities to position IANPHI as an inseparable partner in global public health and security and to provide high-level advocacy for the essential role and work of NPHIs.
We gathered in person in Stockholm for our Annual Meeting for the first time since 2019, thanks to our wonderful hosts at the Public Health Agency of Sweden, and issued a key statement on the role of NPHIs in supporting preparedness and responding to emergencies.
Internally, we continued to strengthen member services and launched the IANPHI Focal Point Network and the IANPHI LinkedIn Discussion Group to foster exchanges and collaborations between NPHIs. More than 50 NPHI directors and focal points have already joined our LinkedIn Discussion Group. Please do continue to sign up to this.
2023 will mark a new phase in the development of our Association.
We are exploring potential new sources of external funding, in addition to membership fees, which will be essential to lead and sustain our growth and the full implementation of our five-year strategy. As we make progress, we will ensure that members are regularly informed and have the opportunity to engage in these activities.
We are off to a good start thanks to a generous two-year grant from the International Health Grants Program of the Public Health Agency of Canada, which will help fund our regional networks and thematic committees.
As part of advancing our strategic objectives, we will continue to establish thematic committees. The IANPHI Committee on Social & Public Health Inequalities will be first to launch. Members interested in joining this committee are invited to attend its first meeting tomorrow, Thursday, January 26 at 9am ET | 3pm CET. Please email secretariat@ianphi.org to receive the meeting link. Three other thematic committees will follow later in the year.
We will also continue our successful webinar series, which offers rich programming based on input from members, regional networks and thematic committees as well as contributing partners. Our first webinar in 2023, hosted by IANPHI Europe, takes place today. It will tackle the prioritization of health promotion and prevention at country level.
Our year will reach a high point early December at the 2023 IANPHI Annual Meeting, which will be held in Kigali, Rwanda, hosted by the Rwanda Biomedical Centre.
Finally, I would like to warmly thank our Secretariat in Paris and Atlanta, our Executive Board members and our regional chairs and vice chairs for their tireless commitment to the work and impact of IANPHI. Their commitment is beyond crucial to our success and ambition to grow our network and further contribute to the development of NPHIs worldwide.
With best wishes, always,
Duncan