AIHA Partnerships

For over a decade the American International Health Alliance (AIHA) has worked to advance global health through volunteer-driven partnerships. The success of AIHA's partnership program is the result of the commitment and expertise of participating partner institutions and volunteers; a collaborative model for sustainable change; and a dynamic network of knowledge and information services that provide a foundation for programmatic endeavors. AIHA provides a framework for these three crucial elements through a host of activities, support services, and management systems that foster the exchange of knowledge and ensure the success of the development process.

An AIHA twinning partnership is a long-term commitment that brings people, institutions, and communities together to achieve common goals through the sharing of ideas, labor, and even risks. Underlying the concept of "partnering" is the notion that while we face common problems, by joining forces we can accomplish more together than we ever could alone. Since 1992, AIHA has established and managed partnerships and programs that improve the health status of individuals and communities throughout the world. AIHA has created a broad-based partnership model that enables individuals, institutions, and communities to unite their voluntary resources and energy in a global quest for improved health.

Through the AIHA program, partners from the US and host countries identify the health needs of local populations, develop strategies for meeting these needs, and implement programs and services that help them attain their goals. By placing an emphasis on building open, trusting, and dynamic affiliations through professional exchanges and public-private partnerships, AIHA programs seek to instill a strong sense of ownership and buy-in within the host communities and encourage strategic planning processes that focus on appropriate and sustainable solutions to healthcare problems.

Based on peer-to-peer relationships, these partnerships of healthcare professionals, institutions, and communities focus on developing solutions to health system problems that are both technologically and economically sustainable in the host community. But it is not only the partners from abroad who benefit from the hard work, time, and considerable effort necessary to make each AIHA partnership thrive; volunteers from the United States also reap rewards from the exchange of ideas and information, as well as the new personal relationships and exposure to different cultures and healthcare structures inherent in the alliances formed.

AIHA serves as a facilitating organization in the twinning process, from the initial pairing of partners, to supporting exchanges of people and information. Working from its headquarters in Washington, DC and field offices, AIHA also brings partnerships together to collectively address common goals, and links them to American and international organizations and resources.

The AIHA partnership program has helped to initiate change within individual communities and throughout the regions where it has worked including:

• Restructuring local and regional healthcare delivery systems to improve hospital services at both in- and outpatient levels and establish coordinated approaches for perinatal care, emergency medicine and disaster response, nursing, home health services, and hospice care;
• Developing free-standing Women's Wellness Centers to provide comprehensive and integrated primary care services to women throughout the course of their lives;
• Reorganizing and improving health professions education and establishing many regions' first baccalaureate- and graduate-level programs in both nursing and health management education;
• Establishing new skills-based training centers and curricula, including the region's first programs in basic emergency care, infection control, neonatal resuscitation, and health management;
• Developing "healthy community" programs to mobilize citizens, community stakeholders, and local government agencies to take active ownership of their health and well-being at both a community and a personal level;
• Creating hundreds of Learning Resource Centers to provide current, essential information for health professionals and to promote evidence-based practices; and
• Facilitating the development of dozens of professional associations and other non-governmental organizations to support a process of continuing reform.