Ten years after the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNU–IIGH) began its operations, the United Nations University (UNU) commissioned an external review to assess the Institute’s past performance in order to inform its future direction. In addition to other recommendations, the review panel recommended UNU-IIGH to develop its long-term strategic role and positioning of the Institute as a resource for global health policy development and reference.
The 2019-2023 Strategy for UNU-IIGH shifts the Institute’s body of work from investigator-driven global health projects to priority-driven, policy-relevant pillars of work. The Institute’s mission to build knowledge and capacity for decision making by UN agencies, UN programs and member states about global health issues, and the goal to advance evidence-based policymaking on key issues related to sustainable development and health, the strategy is implemented through three pillars of work.
As a designated ”think tank” for the UN system, UNU-IIGH
is uniquely positioned to serve as a “policy hub” to support UN agencies and others to
translate and disseminate global guidance and recommendations to make them
relevant for country-level decision makers. To do this, UNU-IIGH will conduct the
following activities:
For each strategy period, UNU-IIGH has the opportunity to scan the environment to identify key areas where it is uniquely positioned to contribute to the policy debate through its own analysis. Following a
comprehensive assessment, in this strategy period, UNU-IIGH will focus its own research
on gender and health. Under this objective, UNU-IIGH will:
With its presence in Malaysia, UNU-IIGH is uniquely positioned to serve as a hub for South-South learning. By bringing together academics, professional associations, researchers and policymakers, the Institute facilitates the involvement of local professionals in global public health activities with a
particular focus on South-South collaborations and capacity building.