As a follow up to the IAPHL and PtD moderated discussion on Supply Chain Leadership, we hosted a joint workshop IAPHL and PtD join forces to better understand Supply Chain Leadership at the 2018 Health and Humanitarian Logistics Conference.

The Commission would like to thank the groups and individuals that contributed to this report, including: the Expert Group for their work in developing the Expert Group report that informed the work of the Commission; the authors of the 17 policy briefs; the authors of the 149 submissions to the Commission; participants in the public consultations facilitated by the Commission.

L’initiative People that Deliver (PtD) tient à exprimer sa gratitude à toutes les institutions mentionnées cidessous pour leurs contributions précieuses et constructives à la planification et l’élaboration du présent référentiel de compétences. Nous leur sommes particulièrement reconnaissants de nous avoir consacré leur temps et prodigué des conseils.

In an effort to understand the breadth and depth of current academic offerings in supply chain management in Africa, People that Deliver and MIT CTL collaborated to complete a rapid landscape of current educational offerings (degree and certificate programs) in supply chain management, including health supply chain management. This landscape is a more specific and also wider analysis of the current offerings on the LAPTOP platform site, a supply chain course search engine developed by John Snow, Inc., and hosted by the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition.

One of the major challenges identified during the effective vaccine management (EVM) and HR rapid assessments carried out by UNICEF and its partners in various countries in 2016 and 2017 was the non-systematic approach to HR capacity development and the ad-hoc manner in which training is conducted. This haphazard approach to training means that learning is not optimized and does not result in the full impact being achieved in terms of immunization supply chain performance.

The COVID-19 pandemic puts increasing pressure on health supply chains. Preventing, detecting and responding to shortages of health products poses a significant challenge. The movement of goods across the global supply chain (SC) has been disrupted due to restrictions on movement (air, sea and land) and the operating environment has become increasingly complex. Health supply chain staff are doing their best to maintain the availability of critical supplies despite these hardships and are an essential part of COVID-19 response efforts. For the health supply chain workforce to safely procure and deliver supplies they must be given the same protections as all essential workers.

To respond to widespread and systemic human resource weaknesses within health systems, a broad group of governments and organizations have created a joint initiative—People that Deliver (PtD)—which aims to strengthen supply chain personnel capacity while encouraging the professionalization of their role within the health system. This global initiative, in association with the project (a U.S. Agency for International Development–funded project), developed a human resource assessment guide and tool to gather data on human resource opportunities and challenges associated with supply chain management (SCM). The data collected are expected to strengthen the capacity of supply chain personnel by working with host countries to build human resource systems and advocate for the professionalization of supply chain management. Strengthening the capacity of public health supply chain personnel from the top down will ensure that the supply chains and health systems operate more effectively, which will improve access to health supplies and save lives.

PtD pursued the development of case studies that document how public and private sector organizations successfully manage the human capital in their supply chains. This report includes the first two of these case studies for Imperial Health Sciences and Central Medical Supplies Public Corporation (Sudan). PtD intends to continue developing case studies to offer the broader community examples of human capital management that they can adopt to improve supply chain execution.

The purpose of the Supply Chain Performance Improvement Program (SCPI) was to build capacity in Central Medical Store (CMS) staff in ISO-accredited warehousing best practices through a modular, adaptable three-phased approach. The need for local, country-specific training programs is in high demand. In response to increasing requests, including a request from the Namibia Ministry of Health and Social Services (MOHSS), for a more country-specific, less resource intensive warehouse operations management (WOM) course, Supply Chain Management System (SCMS) staff designed the SCPI program. For years, the traditional capacity building approach in WOM was offsite, in-service training for central and regional medical store staff around the world. Staff would leave their posts for weeks at a time, usually with travel fees and course tuition funded by donor agencies. When staff returned to their posts, it was difficult to apply what they had learned in the state-of-the-art warehouse training facilities to their own unique warehouse environments.

Immunization programs require, among other components, a dependable and efficient supply chain system to deliver vaccines and related supplies. An indispensable part of this system is sufficient numbers of personnel with the knowledge and skills to perform essential supply chain functions.