Director's Statement

Dear Friends,

Ophelia Dahl

In 2007, Partners In Health celebrates 20 years as an organization—a significant anniversary by any account and one that prompts us to reflect upon the achievements of the last two decades. For each of those 20 years, to meet the ever-increasing need, PIH’s recurring theme has been growth. Over the past five years, PIH’s growth has been unprecedented. The budget quadrupled and now rests close to $50 million. We expanded to three new countries in Africa in three years, bringing the total number of countries in which PIH works to nine. And in 2006 we recorded more than two million patient visits at our hospitals and clinics around the world, which is close to ten times the number we saw in 2002. Those figures don’t include thousands of community meetings, workshops and training sessions, and hundreds of thousands of home visits, all of which have also increased geometrically in recent years. It feels remarkable to all of us at PIH that we have been able to grow at this rate and still stay true to the roots of our work—namely to bring the fruits of modern medicine to those who need it most and, I would add, to show that providing comprehensive medical care to entire communities is not just possible but essential. The excellent results in varied and difficult settings have built a strong case for the PIH model to be replicated in other countries.

I’m often asked if PIH has a secret recipe—how it is that we are able to achieve results in places that have never before seen significant improvements in health outcomes. While there is no silver bullet that will transform impoverished communities, I believe strongly that there are certain key components of our approach that contribute to our success. First, PIH’s resources get to the people who need them most—94 cents of every dollar we spend goes directly to our programs and patients around the world. Second, we build on the strengths of the communities by working within public health systems and serving where there are gaps. Third, and perhaps most important, we invest directly in the communities we serve by training and employing a cadre of local community health workers to accompany our patients and their families through their care.

The ability of Partners In Health to put these three elements into practice relies almost entirely on strong partnerships—with patients, community health workers, nurses, doctors, administrators, sister organizations, other NGOs, local and national governments, and funders. Twenty years after our founding, it is clearer than ever that Partners In Health was the right name for our organization. Though we’ve always known the importance of strong community partnerships, I’m not sure that in 1987 we realized how much of our continued success would depend on collaborations with other organizations, governments, and funding agencies. It has been a powerful lesson indeed to learn this over the years. Each of our partners brings a set of skills, expertise, and knowledge that complements ours. And like all good relationships, each contribution makes the whole much stronger.

We have much to thank our partners for this year and, as you will see in the pages that follow, we are honored to share our successes with the extraordinary people and organizations who make our work on the ground possible. In particular, I would like to highlight the vital role of our donors in this work. For the first time in twenty years, Partners In Health was not able to raise enough funds to cover the budget for the twelve months ending December 2006. Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we were able to close the gap in early 2007. Nonetheless, the deficit has raised concerns for us as to whether we will be able to continue the remarkable growth that I’ve highlighted above. We hope that we will be able to do so, but the needs are great.

To address this, our Board of Directors and closest supporters have inspired us to establish a growth fund to provide for the continued expansion of our work. In honor of our co-founder and most generous donor, we have named this fund The Thomas J. White Fund for Innovation and Impact. We hope that the development of this fund will mirror PIH’s growth, allowing us to keep pushing the boundaries in global health and to remain always an organization that, thanks to its partners, can respond rapidly to the needs of large communities. After twenty years, we are proud to be able to describe our accomplishments—not just within specific communities but also within the broader context of global health. With you as partners, we look forward to reporting on PIH’s impact for twenty more years and beyond.

Ophelia Dahl