IANPHI—10 years of collaboration for institutional public health

In modern societies health issues have become increasingly complicated. Strong evidence and expert support are needed for health policy. Modern challenges include, in addition to infectious and non-communicable diseases, such areas as environmental health, mental health, occupational health, injuries, preparedness for emergencies and strengthening of public health services—not to mention social determinants of health. In this situation long ago some public health laboratories in industrialized countries started to transform from infectious disease control laboratories to more comprehensive national public health institutes. But only in the beginning of the 2000's discussions started between some institute directors about more formal collaboration.1 Following initial meetings, a meeting took place in 2006 in Rio de Janeiro with 39 institute directors, who there founded the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI). Ten years later IANPHI stands as one of the world’s most robust and engaged global networks, with over 100 member institutes. The members are closely linked through annual global meetings, regional meetings, an online platform and website, and with current main office at Public Health France. In its first decade IANPHI and its members have assisted some 20 countries to build new national public health institutes and some 55 others to strengthen their capacity to respond to disease threats, as during the ebola outbreak. Over the past ten years the organization has leveraged over 64 million euros in support from sources including the Bill and Melinda Foundation, member countries, Rockefeller Foundation, bilateral donors, governments and some private sector sources. The national public health institutes are in their countries in key position for sustainable implementation of many essential public health functions, especially monitoring and surveillance, health protection, disease prevention and health promotion and responses to emergencies.2,3 The institutes often coordinate national programmes and work closely with the Ministry of Health, but with varying degree of autonomy to ensure the science basis.4 Much of the work of IANPHI has focused on developing long term substantive institute-to-institute partnerships to help low and middle income countries to build new national public health institutes or to strengthen existing ones. The institutes in those countries are particularly important, in addition to serving as focal points for implementation of many essential public health functions, as fostering increased technical capacity to better respond to major causes of disease and to integrate, and to benefit from vertical programmes, as for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis malaria, vaccine preventable diseases and others. Peer partnerships include important contributions from member institutes, many also from Europe. In Europe IANPHI have some 30 member institutes, including e.g. RIVM in the Netherlands, Robert Koch Institute in Germany, Public Health France, the Norwegian Institute of Public health, Public Health England and THL in Finland. In 2011 the European IANPHI issued a publication which describes the core functions and attributes of the institutes and provides a basis for assessing the institutes and supporting their development.5 In 2014 IANPHI published a Peer-to-Peer evaluation tool for high level institute evaluation. It has been used thus far for the evaluation in Belgium, the Netherlands and Peru. The European IANPHI has also played a key role in developing and supporting the Heymann Mentorship Programme and the IANPHI Leadership Academy, funded through the Swedish National Public Health Institute.6 The aim is to provide enduring skills and capacities to mid-career public health leaders in low resource countries. In Europe IANPHI is in collaboration with WHO/EURO, the EU Commission, ECDC and IARC. During the last few years the European institute directors have been much concerned about the lack of permanent European health monitoring system. In their letters the directors have called for developing a permanent sustainable system, much based on the work that the institutes do already in their countries. The 10 years of international collaboration has shown its value. In global public health areas like health security, implementation of International Health Regulations, achieving WHO and UN non-communicable disease targets or work for the Sustainable Development Goals, the need for professional institutional support in countries has become increasingly indispensable. The collaboration within IANPHI network has greatly supported such development and the contributions of the European institutes have been significant. As IANPHI enters its second decade, the organization looks forward to fostering further innovative and meaningful improvements in European and global public health through its network. Conflicts of interest: None declared.