COVID-19 brought into sharp focus the importance of equitable and resilient health systems, and there is a common understanding of the need to ensure access to routine health care and minimize the impact of a disease outbreak on emergency room care. Yet, without substantial new investment in preventing, diagnosing and treating disease around the world, billions of people will continue to live with slow-burning health threats such as malaria in parallel with increasing global vulnerability to emerging infectious diseases.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with a Management Partner. I think this has really accelerated the progress of our team. Without this support, it would have required much more time for us to get to the point where we are today – and we don’t have that time during COVID-19!

When bringing the private and public sector together, the biggest challenge is often establishing trust. Those who work in the public sector may be suspicious that the private sector is motivated only by profit or does not understand the complexity of getting things done while managing political processes. Meanwhile, people in the private sector often see their public sector counterparts as overly bureaucratic and inefficient.

It is important to bear in mind that COVID-19, as devastating as it has been - and we are early in this pandemic - is only one disease. We cannot allow the dream of creating a more resilient, more equitable and more sustainable health system to also become a casualty of this pandemic.

Like so many organisations around the world, we have had to adapt to working within the constraints of a global pandemic. We believe that our work with ministries of health is more important now that ever. The teams we work with are facing unprecedented challenges and need our support.

LGT Venture Philanthropy (LGT VP), a charitable foundation based in Zurich, Switzerland, today announced a new engagement to support the Aspen Management Partnership for Health (AMP Health).

In January, AMP Health hosted its sixth Leadership Lab in Livingstone, Zambia. Leadership Lab is an annual convening that brings together all AMP Health partner programs for intensive and immersive leadership & management training and serves as a platform for sharing best practices across countries and teams.

Preceding the Aspen Ideas: Health festival, AMP Health and its Partner Team Leads travelled to Aspen, Colorado for a 2-day Leadership Refresher, which is an immersive leadership & management training focused on legacy, the power of leading through questioning, and the vital importance of trust.

AMP Health, along with Amref Health Africa, Financing Alliance for Health, the International Rescue Committee, Last Mile Health and Living Goods have launched a year-long campaign to elevate the visibility of community health within the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) space.

Dylan Edwards is AMP Health’s Management Partner for Community Health in Zambia. Here, Dylan reflects on three lessons from his first 100 days in country.

In October 2018, the Aspen Global Innovators Group welcomed Robert Newman as Director of AMP Health. Robert joins the AMP Health team with deep experience in global health as a pediatrician, researcher, and program implementer.

The Aspen Management Partnership for Health (AMP Health) will launch partnerships with two program areas within the Zambia Ministry of Health (MoH), including embedding a Management Partner (MP), in both the Community Health and Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) teams in 2018.

The Pfizer partnership will allow AMP Health to build on its work in Kenya, Malawi, and Sierra Leone strengthening the leadership and management capacity necessary to develop and implement systems of tens of thousands of CHWs and expand its work to new countries, including Zambia and Ghana.