Every organization is guided by a strategy, but the PATH Strategy 2025 is built differently. Back in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic upended lives and livelihoods and derailed progress toward global health goals, we wanted to do more than set objectives. We wanted to reimagine the role and function of the international nongovernmental organization, beginning with the needs and priorities of the people we serve.
So, we gathered input from 400 stakeholders across 50 countries, including local health leaders, ministries of health, public- and private-sector partners, funders of public health programs, and members of our own global team. Together, we identified the PATH capabilities most valued by our partners and used those capabilities to frame three strategic priorities that represent an intentional and responsive shift away from the siloed health areas that have limited our sector’s potential.
“Our strategy is designed to directly respond to the current crises we face as a global community, to the needs and priorities of our local partners, and to their resounding call for the continued transformation of our sector.”— Nikolaj Gilbert, President and CEO
Now, after completing three years of this five-year strategy, we’re proud to share an update on its implementation.
In the table below, you can see how many PATH projects contributed to each strategic priority, how many locations those projects served, and how many critical milestones they reached along the way (examples of critical milestones include, but are not limited to, the in-country registration of a health product, drafting a new health policy, launching an awareness campaign, and completing a health worker training).
Our strategic priorities are not mutually exclusive. They work together by design to ensure more holistic, people-centered work.
A more equitable approach to global health
As we gathered input for our strategy, we also heard a clear call for PATH to help move the sector toward more equitable and effective approaches. To answer that call, we identified change strategies—equity in health, community-focused priorities, inclusive innovation, and respectful partnerships—and then developed a groundbreaking tool that our programs and partners can use to self-assess their proposals and projects: our Equity in Programming Benchmarks.
What gets measured gets done. These benchmarks provide global health practitioners with a quantifiable way to hold themselves and their funders accountable to local communities, needs, and priorities. A recent survey of teams that have used the benchmarks revealed more than 50 percent of projects have implemented changes designed to center equity in their work.
To view the complete benchmarks, download the Equity in Programming Benchmarks document.
Photo at top: Lebid Yana (right), a nurse, and Tetian Odariuk, a staff member, prepare medicine for a patient at Poltava Regional Clinical Tuberculosis Dispensary. In Ukraine, PATH’s Unitaid-funded Adherence Support Coalition to End TB (ASCENT) project implemented digital technologies to support tuberculosis treatment adherence. These digital adherence technologies remind patients to take their daily medication at a time and place that suits them, and provide real-time information to health care providers, which helps in determining the most appropriate treatment approach for each individual. Photo: PATH/Yevhen Astaforov.