Vital Strategies’ mission is to work in partnership to reimagine evidence-based, locally driven policies and practices to advance public health. We believe passionately that progress can be made against even the most difficult health challenges by partnering local commitment and global expertise. We implement programs that strengthen these partners and the health systems they support, working to improve the lives of billions.

Vital Strategies' vision is a world where everyone is protected by equitable and effective public health systems.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Support governments and civil society organizations in low- and middle-income countries to strengthen public health institutions, workforce, leadership, and infrastructure.

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Goal Two: Elevate the role of public health in addressing the world’s most pressing environmental threats and build institutional capacity for urban public health.

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Three: Support countries in the adoption of best-practice policies to sustainably prevent noncommunicable disease and reduce injuries related to drug use, gender-based violence, and road crashes.

Goal Type: New program(s) based on observed changes in needs among our constituencies/communities served.

Describe an investment in leadership

Vital Strategies is committed to the development of our current and future leaders. With that goal in mind, Vital’s Leadership Team and Country Office Directors has this past August participated in a 2-day leadership retreat. We retained the services of an outside consultant to guide us and focused on collaborative leadership efforts to align leaders with our strategic plan and vision. We believe the inclusion of next level leaders is necessary to advance our agenda and created policy to insure that participation. We also restructured our leadership team and discussed efficiencies across our divisions and how we need to adapt to the new structure and continue to nurture and support our staff, partners and recipients of our services.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

• Policy Advocacy

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

Vital Strategies’ policy advocacy efforts are central to our work. Whether we are working for restrictions on tobacco marketing, gathering data on public perceptions of air pollution, or aiming to prioritize noncommunicable diseases on the global policy agenda, our goal is to support policy change that promotes lasting improvements to people’s health. Our policy advocacy work is comprehensive, encompassing expertise and global experience to leverage legal, data, strategy, and communication tools to achieve policy wins. We start a policy advocacy effort by answering key questions in partnership with governments, civil society, and other partners: What is the public health goal? What type of policy is most likely to achieve the goal? What data can we use or gather to support the policy? Once the policy is identified, we engage in a mapping exercise to determine the key stakeholders, identify policy levers, and plan a timeline to take advantage of key policy windows.

At the start of the pandemic, even before the virus had a name, Vital Strategies saw the massive global health challenge that lay ahead. We knew we could not sit on the sidelines and had to harness our expertise and our global relationships with governments and partners around the world to help. We immediately positioned ourselves as “honest brokers” of the evolving science and risks, and we played a significant role in communicating about the pandemic via the media and our website and informing our partners as well. We also provided rapid response funds to 21 countries in those early days, and over the course of the year provided resources and technical assistance to 53 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. At the same time, we knew that the pandemic made our other areas of work in noncommunicable diseases, overdose, and injuries even more important. With the crisis dominating the news and overwhelming health systems, preventive measures for NCDs—such as cancer, heart disease, lung disease and diabetes—were being ignored, exacerbating the effects of the pandemic itself. We forged ahead, making the case for why, even during the emergency response, we could not lose focus or lose ground on critical health issues such as tobacco control, air quality and food policies—all central drivers of noncommunicable diseases. We stressed the necessity of reducing the inequities created by poverty and racism, and their connection to these diseases and to overdose, all contributing to excess illness and death.