New publication: HIFA in 2017: The Year in Review and Objectives for 2018

13 May, 2018

We are delighted to announce the publication of HIFA in 2017: The Year in Review and Objectives for 2018.

Read how we:

  • increased our total membership by 11% to 17,792 in 177 countries interacting on 5 dynamic forums in 3 languages
  • expanded our HIFA Country Representative Programme (CRP) to 183 CRs in 82 countries, and our CHIFA CRP to 48 CRs in 41 countries
  • ratified 21 new HIFA Supporting Organisations, bringing the total to 310 in 63 countries
  • continued to build our Social Media presence through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube
  • launched 3 new Projects - Library and Information Services (supported by Public Health England), Multilingualism, and Newborn Care (supported by ENAP Metrics - Every Newborn Action Plan) 
  • continued to support 9 other Projects: Access to Health Research; Citizens, Parents and Children; Community Health Workers; Evaluating Impact of Healthcare Information; Evidence-Informed Policy and Practice; Family Planning; Health Partnerships; Mobile Healthcare Information For All; and Prescribers and Users of Medicines. 

Most importantly, we continued to strengthen our strategic partnership with the World Health Organization:

  • HIFA Steering Group member Isabelle Wachsmuth met with the WHO Director-General (Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) in October 2017 to discuss Linguistic Partnerships and HIFA;
  • WHO has explicitly recognised the value of HIFA as a unique tool to: (a) promote global health communication in multiple languages and, (b) to explore ways to ensure that every person, every health worker and every policymaker has access to the healthcare information they need in a language they can understand; 
  • HIFA continues to collaborate closely with WHO and PAHO on HIFA-French, HIFA-Portuguese and (to be launched soon!) HIFA-Spanish.

We are especially grateful for the huge support given by more than 250 HIFA volunteers worldwide for our Project working groups, HIFA and CHIFA Country Representative programmes, Steering Groups, Social Media Group, webmaster and local helpers. 

None of the above would have been possible without the financial support of 50 health and development organisations (notably our main funder the British Medical Association), whose logos are shown on the back page of the review (current 2018 funders are displayed on the HIFA website home page) . Also thank you to several individual HIFA members who have generously donated. 

Altogether our total income in 2017 was nearly £50,000 and we aim to increase this by 20% to at least £60,000 in 2018. 

We invite you to download the report and forward it widely to your contacts and networks. 

(Note: Our thanks to HIFA volunteers Martin Carroll and Ian Winter for help in putting together this report.)