Safeguarding Public Health in Francophone West Africa through Public Health Bulletins

In April 2023, the Côte d'Ivoire Institut National de Santé Publique (INSP) launched the country's public health bulletin (PHB), the Bulletin de Santé Publique de Côte d'Ivoire (BSP-CI), with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI). The BSP-CI aims to provide the public and health professionals with timely and critical public health information and recommendations for action to help reduce public health threats in the country.

The BSP-CI's robust systems and process for ensuring the quality and timeliness of each issue earned it recognition from U.S. CDC and other PHBs as a high-quality publication. U.S. CDC frequently highlights the BSP-CI as a model for other countries looking to develop their own PHBs. In fact, U.S. CDC connected several countries with INSP to learn from their expertise and experience establishing and maintaining a high-quality PHB in Côte d'Ivoire. For example, the West African Health Organization (WAHO) requested INSP's technical assistance to develop the policies, standard operating procedures, and production and dissemination strategies needed to establish a regional PHB for West Africa.

To facilitate peer-to-peer exchange among National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs) – a core tenet of IANPHI's mission – INSP, with support from U.S. CDC, CDC Foundation, TEPHINET, and Vital Strategies, hosted the Francophone PHB technical exchange workshop in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire in August 2024. The three-day workshop convened leaders and officials from NPHIs and ministries of health from Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mali to share knowledge, exchange best practices, and discuss key lessons learned in establishing and managing PHBs. Participants also identified areas where they needed technical assistance from U.S. CDC and/or other peers and developed a plan for continuous knowledge exchange and learning among U.S. CDC-supported Francophone PHBs.

Support from U.S. CDC and IANPHI helped establish BSP-CI as the authoritative source of trusted, timely, and impactful public health information in Côte d'Ivoire. This collaboration also enabled U.S. CDC-supported Francophone PHBs to establish a community of practice to exchange knowledge, resources, and strategies for establishing and maintaining high-quality PHBs that provide timely and critical public health information to reduce public health threats in the region.