Estimated readtime: 3.5 min
Dear Linked community,
As we mark the second year of the Linked Immunisation Action Network, we want to thank you for your engagement with Linked during our first year and to announce some upcoming changes and activities we’re excited about.
First, we want to thank the government representatives that have shared their knowledge and experiences with the network for the benefit of their peers in other countries. You have provided invaluable information that will help countries strengthen their immunisation programmes. We also want to thank our network of global, regional, and country partners for their commitment to supporting cross-country learning and working with immunisation programmes to facilitate uptake and implementation of Linked’s learnings.
Linked is expanding – in more ways than one. First, we are expanding our scope and inviting 26 middle-income countries to join the network who have never been eligible for Gavi funding. These countries will participate in learning engagements focused on new vaccine introduction (NVI) as we launch support to countries in their endeavors to introduce PCV, Rotavirus, and HPV vaccines to their national immunisation schedules. As part of this expansion, we are also pleased to announce that a new partner will be joining Results for Development, Curatio International Foundation, and the Institute for Health Policy in leading the network. Confíanza en las Vacunas Latinoamérica (ConfíaLA) was selected as our regional partner institution to provide support to countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region. For more information about the countries in the Linked network, check out our website, which contains country profiles and dashboards that track select country progress toward strong, sustainable immunisation programmes.
Our Network Facilitation team – Curatio International Foundation, the Institute for Health Policy, Results for Development, and now ConfíaLA – is planning an impressive and packed schedule for 2023, and collaborative learning activities will soon be off to a booming start. We are reaching out to country teams to identify their priority learning needs and understand which topics they would like to exchange on with other countries. These discussions will refine our learning agenda, which will be validated by our Steering Committee, made up of five country representatives and four partner representatives.
We are planning regional workshops and study tours focused on preventing backsliding in coverage through building and sustaining high-performing and equitable immunisation programmes. We are also planning cross-regional workshops among countries planning for the introduction of key missing vaccines. And we will continue to facilitate virtual institutional twinning exchanges and targeted webinars on a variety of topics. Priority topics for the network in the year ahead include a focus on the strengthening the capacity of the health workforce, increasing equity, ensuring financial sustainability, and building strong information systems.
Later this year, we will distribute a survey to country teams and partner representatives to better understand the extent to which good practices and lessons learned surfaced through Linked learning activities have been taken up and applied by countries, in addition to learning about the effectiveness of network learning activities and resources learnings. We encourage you to participate in this survey, as it will help us refine formats, content, and structure of learning engagements, learning products, and communication channels, enabling us to make the network more practical and useful.
Linked will continue to translate knowledge related to sustainable and equitable immunisation programmes and facilitate access to tailored support through synthesis, adaptation, and amplification of network-produced and partner resources. As always, these resources will remain available to everyone on our publicly accessible website.
For those who are new to the network, welcome! We hope you will stay connected by accessing the vast repository of tools, resources, events and more on our website, subscribing to our email list, and following us on social media. We have also developed a helpful brief outlining Linked resources with good practices and lessons learned, a refreshed brief illustrating the purpose and approach of the network, and a short one-minute video highlighting our key achievements from 2022 (below).
We hope you are as excited about our coming year as we are. We look forward to seeing you soon at one of our workshops or online!
Sincerely,
Annette Ozaltin, Network Director
Ivdity Chikovani, European-Central Asia Region Lead
Ravi Rannan-Eliya, Asia Pacific Region Lead