Dear Friends,
As the year comes to a close, we reflect on the challenges we’ve overcome and the successes we’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy.
Thanks to our diligent colleagues, supporters, and partners our organization has grown, helped improve global policies, convened hundreds of meetings, and helped advance efforts to eliminate diseases and keep more people healthy.
Here are a few of our biggest highlights from the last 12 months. Click on them to learn more.
The initial report developed from the Bellagio Meeting in July 2018 was in January 2019 to set the framework for a Global Field Epidemiology Enterprise.
Following up from the Bellagio meeting in July 2018 that discussed the initial details of a Global Field Epidemiology Enterprise to help strengthen the disease surveillance and outbreak response capacity of countries, The Task Force and other field epidemiology stakeholders met at the WHO with Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to discuss next steps of implementing the roadmap that was developed at the Bellagio meeting.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially designated The Task Force for Global Health as a non-State actor in official relations with the WHO. There are a total of 71 WHO non-State actors worldwide. The Task Force is the only nongovernmental organization in the state of Georgia with the designation.
As diseases near the "final mile" of elimination, effective and adaptable diagnostics become an essential component of elimination programs. To address the increasing need for better, more field-friendly diagnostics, The Task Force hosted the "Mobile to Multiplex" Symposium as apart of its "Global Health Series" events which focused on new innovations and gaps in the diagnostics field.
During our Staff Spring Appreciation event, Task Force staffed participated in four different community service activities to show what our Atlanta/Decatur-community means to us.
As polio nears eradication, the efforts to wipe the disease from humanity become the most difficult during this last mile. In order to strengthen efforts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention invested in the launch of the Polio Eradication Surge Capacity Support project through our Polio Eradication Center.
Joining The Task Force as the 15th program, the Brighton Collaboration relocated from Basel, Switzerland to our headquarters to help respond to an increasing demand for vaccine safety guidelines.
On World Hepatitis Day, our Coalition for Global Hepatitis Elimination officially launched its activities with their website and partnership of numerous national and sub-national hepatitis programs.
With support from our Mectizan® Donation Program, Yemen was officially declared to have eliminated lymphatic filariasis by the World Health Organization.
The Task Force got a digital face lift with our new website.
This year we have welcomed four new outstanding board members to our Board of Directors. Wonya Lucas, Director of Public Broadcasting of Atlanta, Kent Alexander, Attonery at King & Spalding, James Jackson, Chief Marketing Officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Walter Orenstein, Professor of Medicine at Emory University.
For the first time ever, our Training Programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network (TEPHINET) hosted their bi-annual Global Scientific Conference in the United States. The Global FETP Enterprise: Applied Epidemiology in the 21st Century brought together more than 600 epidemiologists and public health experts from around the world.
On November 18-19, our Neglected Tropical Diseases Support Center, as the secretariat, hosted the 7th annual Coalition for Operational Research on Neglected Tropical Diseases (COR-NTD) conference. The conference brings together key stakeholders in NTD research to help prioritize the coming year's research agenda in the effort to eliminate NTDs.
Throughout the year, The Task Force hosted more than 300 meetings and conferences covering various aspects of global, public health and humanitarian issues.
We finished the year on a high note with news of a 16th program being added in 2020. The Campaign Effectiveness Coalition seeks to define best practices and guidelines developed from across various public health campaigns. Stay tuned in 2020 for more!
