IANPHI's Strategic Priorities for 2020


IANPHI President Andre van der Zande

Dear IANPHI colleagues:

To begin the new year, and as a follow-up to some of the important discussions we had at the IANPHI Executive Board and General Assembly meetings in Addis Ababa in December, I want to share with you my priorities for IANPHI for this year.

  1. Updating our Strategic Vision 2018-2022 

    We will prepare an update of IANPHI’s Strategic Vision, to be put to a vote by our General Assembly in December 2020 in Rio de Janeiro. Our current Strategic Vision document for the period 2018-2022 was adopted during our 2017 General Assembly meeting in Rome.

    IANPHI has accomplished a lot in the in the past two years, but with our fast growth, the Executive Board and I believe that we need to review our priorities and strategic goals, and set new ones, for example, strengthening our regional approach.

    At the December 2019 meeting in Ethiopia, the Executive Board decided to create a working group to draft an updated and improved Strategic Vision, which can be used on our website and for external communications purposes. At the next Executive Board meeting, Secretary General Jean-Claude Desenclos will introduce a process to enable this working group to gather input from our members and partners.

  2. Reaching an agreement on a joint action plan with WHO

    We aim to finalize and formalize IANPHI’s draft joint working plan with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) head office. A joint working group has been drafting the plan since a meeting in Geneva of IANPHI and WHO delegations.

    The initial theme for this plan is Strengthening preparedness and response. It was inspired by the Strengthening National Accountability and Preparedness for Global Health Security program, or SNAP-GHS. The program aligns with WHO’s ‘triple billion goals’. Two other themes under development, universal healthcare and health promotion, have been addressed by the joint working group, but are not yet as well developed.

    The draft joint action plan was discussed in Addis Ababa at the Executive Board and the General Assembly meetings, and with WHO representatives in the Partnership dialogue. Our ongoing cooperation with WHO Euro has already proved very fruitful, focusing on capacity building and leadership.

    I know that many of you have stressed the need to formalize this partnership at the global level and I will do my best to make it happen this year.

  3. Implementing a resource development action plan for IANPHI globally 

    IANPHI’s current Strategic Vision includes a target for resources development, which entails fundraising for additional missions to be undertaken by the IANPHI Secretariat at the global level. A lot of IANPHI’s work can be done using in-kind contributions of our members’ staff or through “sponsoring” by one of our prominent members. However, there is an unfulfilled ambition to increase staff capacity at the main Secretariat in Paris.

    We need to find dedicated funding and donors for this, as additional burdens cannot be placed on the main Secretariat without new resources. We aim to follow the IANPHI US Office’s best practices, for example its successful partnership with U.S. CDC.

    To meet this objective, we will organize extra temporary staff responsible for resource development at the Paris Secretariat. They will be in charge of drafting and implementing a resources development action plan, under the supervision of our Secretary General and Secretariat. I will personally support the Secretary General to make this happen.

I will keep you informed of our progress this year, and I look forward to seeing all of you at our next annual meeting in Rio de Janeiro in December 2020.

With best wishes,

André van der Zande, President of IANPHI


This article was first published in IANPHI Insider #5 (February 2020).

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