Vital Strategies

Tobacco control programs:vital Strategies achieved the following accomplishments as part of the bloomberg family foundation initiative to reduce tobacco use in 2023:- in 2023, the union/vital Strategies tobacco control division contributed to policy development, capacity building and sustainability efforts across the 10 bloomberg initiative priority countries, and several non-priority countries. In addition, significant work continued and grew under the global implementation program and the tobacco industry interference grants program. The union/vital Strategies also launched the cessation program, with the first call for proposals released in august 2023.- in 2023, the union/vital tcd stop team successfully rebranded the stop grants program as the tobacco industry interference (tii) grants program. The first open call for proposals was launched alongside rounds 33/34 of the bi grants program. The team received 116 applications and finalized 19 new grants in 2023. The union/vital tcd team also collaborated with bi partners throughout the year to produce and adapt a variety of stop outputs, including adapting reports, contributing to tobacco tactics pages, and translating and distributing information to country teams. The team expanded monitoring efforts, establishing a bi partner-wide monitoring system, and utilized monitoring to facilitate actions to counter industry activity at the country level.- the global implementation program expanded support to 12 new jurisdictions in 2023, bringing the total to 24 cities/districts across five countries. Collectively the cities and districts held 34 coordination meetings, issued 42 directives, trained 3,000 stakeholders, distributed 24,000 no smoking signs and inspected 20,000 venues and retailers. The tobacco control implementation hub received over 13,000 views, bringing the total to 46,000 views from 152 countries since its launch in 2021. Two webinars were held sharing best practices with 300 participants. - in 2023, the cessation program launched with priority country situational assessments, a literature review on best cessation practices, and an expert panel meeting early in the year to prepare the program with a formal launch. The cessation program coordinated closely with who partners to align cessation work and initiated plans to develop guidance materials, which will be completed in 2024. Additionally, the cessation program identified three consultants to support Vital Strategies country teams and partners by providing technical assistance and bolstering the sustainable development of each country's cessation services. To further support sustainable development of services, Vital Strategies started working with undp to develop investment cases for four countries, vietnam, mexico, indonesia, and philippines, to be used to advocate for cessation funding and support. Throughout the year Vital Strategies supported six countries to develop cessation grant proposals in india, china, indonesia, vietnam, mexico and ukraine. Finally, the cessation program formally launched in late august 2023 with round 34 of the bi grants program. This grant round was open to the 10 bi priority countries, focused on longer term grants (12-24 months) with budgets up to 400k usd, proposals were accepted from pakistan and india.

Opioid overdose prevention program:vital Strategies achieved the following accomplishments in our phase 1 states of Michigan and Pennsylvania as part of the bloomberg family foundation opioid overdose prevention program in 2023:michigan:- evaluation of a hospital moud grant technical assistance program for southeast Michigan was completed by jhu partners and jointly presented to the Michigan hospital association, demonstrating effectiveness of the project- supported by Vital embedded staff, Michigan association of counties launched a dashboard for tracking and reporting on opioid settlement spending by counties; and published a toolkit with resources for implementation and monitoring of opioid settlement spending at county level- supported by work conducted by Vital embedded staff, Michigan finalized new administrative rules removing barriers to buprenorphine access and implementing patient protectionspennsylvania:- Pennsylvania doc creates assistant mat coordinator position, securing sustainable state funding for a role that began as a Vital embedded staff project- Pennsylvania department of health secured additional funding to re-launch for an additional three months a naloxone access media campaign originally developed for them by Vital Strategies additional accomplishments were achieved in the new states engaged as part of phase 2 of the bloomberg family foundation opioid overdose prevention program in 2023kentucky:- in partnership with johns hopkins university, completed baseline survey of hospitals in Kentucky with 100% response rate from emergency departments statewide to develop knowledge that will inform future worknew jersey:- awarded five grants to community-led organizations in new jersey for community engagement, harm reduction and stigma reduction work.- supported montclair state university to design and launch a first of its kind graduate certificate in harm reduction curriculum for its social work program- new jersey department of health, with Vital Strategies technical assistance, completed new interim rules for approval of harm reduction centers and released state funding for new expansion of syringe access services. Several Vital Strategies community grantees have since been approved or have pending applications to receive this new state designation and funding supportnew mexico:- new mexico department of health launched an online portal to centralize naloxone ordering and improve naloxone distribution efforts across the state- north carolina:- awarded eight grants across north carolina to promote syringe and naloxone access through use of opioid settlement funds, with commitments from counties to match funding- supported student fellowship program in north carolina to promote engagement with drug policy education and advocacylastly, Vital worked across two or more states to complete the following activities in 2023:- supported national association of counties to establish the opioid solutions leadership network, including 30 county leaders from across the seven Vital focus states to participate in two virtual and two in-person convenings (in north carolina and in milwaukee) to support settlement funds planning- published fact sheets for all 50 states and d.c. on settlement funding processes, to encourage and empower community advocate involvement in these processes - through "diy event" boxes we expanded reach and visibility of support harm reduction campaign by providing assets for local tabling events around overdose prevention awareness day, filling 300 orders to more than 20 states- worked with radio personalities to reach black audiences with harm reduction and naloxone accessibility messages aired on milwaukee stations; planning is underway for similar work in philadelphia

Data for health programs:vital Strategies achieved the following accomplishments as part of the bloomberg family foundation data for health program in 2023:- crvs continued its work in ensuring that a greater number of birth and death records are counted as part of its public health systems improvement objective. In all, 608 critical path process milestones were reported on in the 25 two-year country workplans in the areas of business process mapping and improvement; medical certification of cause of death; icd coding; medico-legal death investigation; verbal autopsy; and Vital statistics production and use. Of these, 63% (382) were completed, and 16% (98) were deferred to the 2024-2025 project year. Progress in legal and regulatory review and reform was also undertaken in 22 of 25 countries. Twelve countries received budget advocacy support during the year including support for costing and resource allocation in bangladesh and for laying the groundwork for a sustainable icd coding unit in viet nam. Eight countries included civil society organization (cso) advocacy in their two-year workplans, with work underway in three countries (philippines, uganda, and zambia). Lastly, 24 countries planned 111 separate crvs business processes, and created new or improved business process maps for them. Of these, mapping of at least as-is process maps had been completed in 81% of countries. Twenty-four countries (including three states in india and four chinese provinces) have either adopted or adopted and institutionalized the use of the who standard medical certificate of cause of death (mccd) form, while 82% (129) of 158 planned critical milestones in icd coding were completed and institutionalized, or on track for completion by the end of the project year. - over the past year, data impact had a number of successes: two policy briefs on telemedicine and universal health coverage are leading to policy changes in cameroon; in mumbai, gbv services were expanded to 30 maternity homes as a result of analysis of data from one stop "dilaasa"centers in the city; several d2p-generated policy briefs have led to policy changes in sri lanka such as addressing childhood mental health and filariasis; the d2p curriculum was adapted for shanghai, china leading to eight policy briefs presented to policymakers in minghang and jing'an districts on the topics of child obesity, hiv self-test results, cancer screening programs, subsidized influenza vaccination in schools, stroke risk screening, and injury prevention for seniors; terms of reference and standard operating procedures were developed for the advanced data analytics unit that was established in bangladesh in phase 4; the 2019 cause of death report in bolivia was disseminated to the ministry of health and sports; a local adaptation of d2p has been implemented and institutionalized in the philippines; a gender statistics report was disseminated in senegal.- the global grants program (ggp) expanded the reach of d4h to 9 new countries and approved an additional 22 projects over the funding rounds (7 + 8) at a cumulative value of $2.9m. In both rounds, ggp increased d4h partner involvement in non-focus country work with the cdcf managing more projects in rounds 7 and 8 than in previous rounds. Ggp also began the transition process with colombia and philippines, supporting crvs and di projects in both countries and supported two regional partnerships with africa cdc and spc. Lastly, ggp promoted cross-country collaborations/sharing of experience between countries through communities of practice and technical exchange visits and piloted high risk/high value work in a variety of settings, for example capitalizing on a law change that liberalized abortion care in liberia to assess and improve data systems and generation about abortion services. - cancer registry has made many strides in its targeted focus countries in 2023. In the asia region, Vital helped established the first-ever national level technical working group population-based cancer registration in cambodia, disseminated in globocan 2022 cancer incidence data from colombo pbcr in sri lanka and disseminated the first-ever annual population-based cancer registry incidence report in vietnam. Achievements were also made in the africa region. During 2023, the team from the iarc-gicr abidjan collaborating center supported francophone countries with training in basic and intermediate cancer registration and use of canreg5. Over the last year, they trained 52 registrars (31 males; 21 females) in cancer registry methods, providing much needed capacity strengthening, particularly in staging. In zimbabwe we supported training on dhis 2 oncology module in mozambique, published the first-ever childhood and adult survival estimates in rwanda and finalized retrospective case collection up to 2020 in zimbabwe.

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