THE ERA OF TRANSFORMATION – AND SUSTAINABILITY - BY JOSE LUIS CASTRO
Each new year, some of us in public health ponder this enigma:
Why do people worry so about what they eat between Christmas and New Year’s? They should really worry about what they eat between New Year’s and Christmas.
Similarly, many people pause during the holiday season to contemplate how they can improve their lives and performance.
We all know what soon happens to such thoughts. That’s why – like nutrition habits – what really counts is what we think and do after New Year’s Day.
With that in mind, let’s look back briefly at some global achievements up to (from) 2011, and consider the lessons they offer for 2012:
- In Brazil, Associação de Controle do Tabagismo (ACT), an organisation with minimal structure before receiving its first grant in 2007 has grown into a two-office, 13 employee force partnering with 600 other groups.
- In Poland, MANKO, which once consisted of one temporary employee and a corps of volunteers, is now firmly established as a key player in tobacco control with significant impact on national policy.
- The ‘Work For A Better Bangladesh Trust’ hosting the Bangladesh Anti-Tobacco Alliance (BATA), a three-person group until Round 1 funding, reached a staff level of 14, with well-established financial and management systems.
Around the world, tobacco control groups like these are advancing rapidly – and ensuring they will have great and lasting impact for years to come.
Just a few years ago, there effectively was no global tobacco control structure – just a small army of dedicated, energetic individuals swimming against the powerful tide of a hostile, aggressive industry and a generally indifferent world. Today, a global, 50-nation network not only exists, but is changing laws, influencing policy and impacting lives.
These groups are succeeding by building management, financial and human resources capabilities to ensure programme continuity. They have defined their missions clearly and pursued them relentlessly. They have strengthened leadership capacity, and created effective partnerships and coalitions.
We at The Union, having seen many of these groups’ capacities expand following participation in our IMDP course programme, take satisfaction in noting these gains. They are not mere accomplishments; they are transformations.
The tobacco community’s next challenge is to attain true sustainability -- which means establishing reliable, long-term channels of funding, strengthening systems and leadership skills, and establishing clear mission and vision. We still are in the infancy of this stage. It should be one of our highest priorities for 2012.
Increasingly, in the developing world as much as anywhere, we see tobacco taxes generating revenues to sustain tobacco control programmes. We see programmes developing meaningful partnerships that advance sustainability, and influencing their governments to fund them more fully.
We all must pursue such avenues, and other reasonable, feasible ways of developing dependable revenue streams. If Thailand can become self-sustaining in tobacco control and no longer require external funding, other nations can. If government departments in India, China, Bangladesh and Pakistan can attract government funding for tobacco control, so can others.
The Union can help organisations attain sustainability by:
- Training them to develop their human resources
- Improving their budget planning abilities
- Creating organisations with strong leadership
- Developing coalitions and partnerships to carry out tobacco control programmes
- Training participants to become facilitators who will spread the impact of their work
We look forward to supporting, encouraging and working with you toward the goal of sustainability in 2012. Our IMDP programme will launch a distance learning component this year, an exciting development that will make critical knowledge and skills more accessible to more health professionals in all corners of the globe.
The New Year is a time to look ahead, after pausing to reflect back, and re-examine our personal patterns of leadership. It is a reminder that, as someone once said, “The bad news is that time flies. The good news is that you’re the pilot.”