Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to 2024!
Before delving into the hopes and aspirations for the new year, I would like to pause and appreciate everyone of you for a fabulous 2023. I thank you all for your unrelenting contributions to our individual and collective growth throughout the year 2023.
As we advance into this new year, there are a few pointers that I would like to share with us that will guide our engagement and collective efforts in the new year. There are three main focus areas for us as IAPHL in 2024. These are Community, Chapters, and Collaborations.
- Community: Our community engagement remains the most sustainable means of connecting and sharing. This has majorly been through our listserv and we are aware that several vital engagements going on in different places. In the year, we shall harness all the different efforts together. Using our database, we will also bring some stratification to ensure value delivery is targeted and customized. I anticipate that we can build on the gains of the HCL sub-community and replicate such for other functional sub-communities. In many ways, it will be doing the old differently and in few ways, it will mean bringing in superior practices or technologies. We shall be engaging the community and asking for feedback through the process to ensure that the different initiatives reflect our best interests and values.
- Chapters: Our chapter maturity remains paramount to the future of the IAPHL. This is because it brings more granular context to the things that we do as a community and we are hopeful it would go on to increase participation and impact for countries and regions. In this year, however, we will critically re-evaluate the place and operations of our chapters. This we have begun to think through with some country leaders in the year that just ended. We will pursue growth with different strategies and approaches by considering specific factors.
- Collaborations: With our eyes trained on value, knowledge, and technology transfer and opportunities for our members, we will identify new alliances locally and globally. Some of these may be long or short-term or even on-demand based on specific topical issues or needs. This will also be leveraged as a business development approach to secure some level of sustainability for the IAPHL.
In the year 2024, we will also explore specific partnerships and collaborations that focus on some specific initiatives. Some for immediate focus are
- Talent Pipeline -Youth and Gender: We recognize the importance of a healthy and competent workforce in superior supply chain performance. We will seek specific outreaches to reach and engage the young people in our community (new and old members). Building on the strength of the community, we connect them with the opportunity to understand the ecosystem, chart a worth career path, and thrive. As we have already begun, this will also bring in decision-makers to advocate for gender inclusion within the health systems. We will begin to connect with higher institutions to continue to pool the next generation of public health supply chain experts.
- Technology and Digital Transformation in Health Supply Chain: In a 2019 moderated discussion, the IAPHL already anticipated the potential impact of digital technologies in the supply chain. With the sweeping wave of artificial intelligence and other technologies, we will seek ways to understand what these transformations mean to us as professionals and how to capture these values for our organizations.
- Clean and Sustainable Supply Chain: We know that in one way or more the works we do both contribute and are affected by our changing climate. As a community, we will amplify what options exist for us to do what we do better and also how that may be a part to a healthier bottom line and a better world.
Our First Quarter Focus
- Asynchronous engagements, spontaneous calls, and moderated discussions will continue through the different channels.
- The quarter will focus on the Future and Trends in Supply Chain and the implications in our context. We have secured the interest of ASCM to lead this conversation. This will build up to our engagement at the PtD Global Indaba in Bangkok, Thailand.
- At the IAPHL session, community sharing and the different presentations from the conference will form our building blocks that we can use to build the future together. I encourage different organizations to invest in this opportunity and sponsor their employees to this event. The Global Indaba is for March 6-8, 2024 and the IAPHL session is on March 8. Register here to join. Remember to use the code IAPHL24 to get the discount for IAPHL members.
The year presents us with yet another unique opportunity to bring our A-game in all that we do individually and as a community at IAPHL. I am confident with the high level of commitment from all members, chapters, and our partners, we are more than able to achieve our expectations for 2024 and even go beyond and above.
As I close this note, let me remind you that ‘Success is an accumulation of many efforts’ -Simon Sinek.
Once again, welcome to 2024, and have a very productive year ahead!
Sincerely,
Timi.
From the Desk of the ED IAPHL: JAN 2024