IAAH President's Address - November 2018
A warm welcome from the IAAH council. It seems hard to believe that it was just over 12 months ago that the IAAH 11th World Congress on Adolescent Health was held in India. With over 1100 delegates from 65 countries, the entire adolescent health community of clinicians, researchers, public health and policy practitioners, educators, governments and members of the UN community, NGOs, advocates and young people was represented.
Since then the new council and I have been primarily focused on aspects of internal governance which we hope will quietly become apparent. For example, as you will see in this newsletter, we have recently formed a Young Professionals Network and a new committee structure, and a call for organisations and countries to host the next IAAH World Congress in 2020 is imminent. Next year, we will launch a refreshed IAAH website and new logo – together with a new format for our newsletter.
Two regional conferences have just been held which attracted many new players to our adolescent health community (a European meeting in Chisinau, Moldova, and a Middle East/North Africa meeting in Muscat, Oman), and a number of countries have recently formed new associations for adolescent health (eg Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan). Interest is certainly growing in the field of adolescent health – and in the role of IAAH within it.
Please consider actively participating in IAAH by joining one of our committees. And don’t hesitate to let us know what you and your association are doing!
Susan Sawyer
President, IAAH