I am delighted to share some of the exciting developments in PHASA since the election of the new Executive of 13 members in June 2008.
In September 2008, we held a one day lekgotla to discuss our key strategic goals for the coming year. We re-iterated PHASA’s stated mission of building an association of those involved in health and health-related activities to promote greater equity in health in South Africa, for the ultimate purpose of impacting positively on health outcomes. As a group, the Executive decided that PHASA should best position itself as an organisation committed to Public Health development and capacity building in South and Southern Africa. Below is a summary of the interlinked, consensus areas that the current PHASA Executive decided we should focus on during our term of office:

• Collaboration and strengthening of relationships with organizations and individuals in the local, regional and international Public Health arenas

• Creating local/regional Public Health networking forums, increasing membership and building regional Public Health capacity
• Effective communication strategies, both internal and external
• Policy engagement and influence in Southern African Public Health matters

To this end we made the following decisions:

1. Hold an annual conference

Previously, conferences have been held biennially. We decided to commit to an annual conference, which would alternate between one of the three large centres (Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban) and several smaller centres. Attendance will be open to the regional and international Public Health community. Our 2009 conference will be in Durban, and the 2010 conference in East London.

2. Develop Public Health capacity in South Africa and beyond

Although we have a membership of some few hundred, the Executive Committee is currently the driving force of the organisation. As a consequence we discussed the possibility of dividing the country into three ‘hubs’, more or less in keeping with the distribution of the executive members. These would be the:

• Western hub, including members from the Northern and Western Cape
• Eastern hub, with members from the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal
• Central hub, which would account for the remaining inland provinces.