The International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) is an international umbrella organization of national public health institutes (NPHIs), public health government agencies working to improve national disease prevention and response. IANPHI is made up of 100+ members, located in more than 90 countries. An important goal of IANPHI is to improve health outcomes by strengthening NPHIs or supporting countries in creating new NPHIs.
As of 2023 IANPHIâÂÂs president is professor Duncan Selbie, former chief executive of Public Health England. The IANPHI Secretariat is based at Santé Publique France, and the US Office is located at the Emory University Global Health Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. The IANPHI Foundation is located in Finland at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. Coordinated by Secretary General Jean Claude Desenclos, the IANPHI team is responsible for member relations and programs, policy, communications and NPHI development projects, and the IANPHI annual meeting.
At its inception (2002-2006), IANPHI received seed funds from the Rockefeller Foundation and a one-year planning grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). BMGF subsequently awarded multi-year funds for IANPHI's development and to support projects to build NPHIs in low- and middle-income countries. Resources have since been contributed e.g. by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) A recent role for IANPHI has been to work with the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) project.
The national public health institutes (NPHI) model, exemplified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública of Mexico (INSP Mexico), Oswaldo Cruz Foundation of Brazil (FIOCRUZ Brazil) and others, is an effective and cost-efficient way to systematically develop and sustain national public health systems. NPHIs have been major contributors to reductions in morbidity and mortality from infectious and noncommunicable conditions. Many, including the U.S. CDC and the National Institute for Health and Welfare (Finland), have developed over several decades, while others, including NPHIs in Liberia and Canada, were created following threats such as Ebola and SARS, in recognition that a coordinated system with a specialized institution is needed to effectively respond to disease threats.
NPHIs usually lead national efforts for disease surveillance and outbreak investigation (to monitor population health trends and detect and resolve outbreaks), laboratory services (to identify and confirm disease threats), health programs (including recommendations for immunizations and maternal and child health initiatives), and public health workforce development and research (including new treatments and technologies). NPHIs are designed to give governments the ability to assess and address major acute and long-term disease threats in a country using scientific, evidence-based policies and strategies, as well as create a career home for public health researchers and scientists, thereby fostering the evidence-based approaches necessary to ensure that government policies are based on scientific evidence rather than politics.
In 2002, the directors of nearly 30 NPHIs met in Bellagio, Italy to share best practices and discuss opportunities for collaboration. In 2004, the group reconvened in Helsinki and declared its intention to forge an alliance.
IANPHI was formally launched at the first General Assembly in Brazil in January 2006, with 39 founding members and a one-year grant from the Gates Foundation. Under a subsequent five-year grant from the Gates Foundation awarded in late 2006, the membership has expanded to 100 institutes in 88 countries around the world.
IANPHI's activities fall into three areas:
One of IANPHI's distinctive features and strengths is a peer-assistance approach that facilitates sharing of expertise and experience among member NPHIs. The model clearly benefits the recipient NPHI by identifying strategies to address priority needs and raising standards of performance for organizing and conducting public health functions. But it rewards the contributing institute as well â by sharing skills and assets to benefit others while also linking resources and solutions to address regional and global health threats and opportunities.
For the network of IANPHI members, the model provides unique opportunities for NPHIs to link with others that are geographically or linguistically similar or are struggling with similar technical or programmatic issues, such as information system development or pandemic preparedness. This collaborative approach also provides a platform for developing research or programs to address shared issues, whether laboratory safety or avian influenza, tobacco use or injury.
Recent peer-to-peer partnerships include:
IANPHI is managed by an executive board and secretariat. Executive board members consider and vote on issues of strategic direction and policy and on project and funding recommendations. There are currently 14 active members on the executive board:
The IANPHI Secretariat is based at the Santé Publique France, and the US Office is located at the Emory University Global Health Institute in Atlanta, GA.
IANPHI's long-term projects help public health systems in low-resource countries respond to modern public health challenges, improve outcomes, and support healthy populations and strong economies. These intensive multi-year engagements develop and strengthen national public health institutes (NPHIs), moving them forward on a continuum from those least developed to those with a comprehensive and coordinated scope of public health responsibilities. Currently, IANPHI has ongoing long-term projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Togo.