Vital Strategies started in a hazy café in 2003 in New Delhi, India, where our founders, including current President and CEO José Luis Castro, met and agreed to take on a complex challenge: Working towards a future where lifesaving drugs were no longer stuck on loading docks, or where critical data sat unexamined while policies stalled on the public agenda.
The organization they envisioned would be driven by the belief that every person deserves to be protected by a strong public health system. It would ground its work in scientific evidence and best-practice approaches, form strong working partnerships with governments and civil society groups, and act with a speed that matched the urgency of the challenge
Vital Strategies helps governments strengthen their public health systems to contend with the most important and difficult health challenges. We bring the best of public health thinking to design solutions that can scale rapidly and improve the lives of millions of people.
A public health system is the often-invisible web of protections that help us lead long, productive and healthy lives. It is regulations that keep toxins out of our food and pollutants out of the air we breathe. It is data that informs decisions about health policy, and skilled health workers who can spot an outbreak before it becomes an epidemic.
We’re helping governments acquire the knowledge and tools they need to make rapid progress against cancer, heart disease, obesity, epidemic diseases, drug overdose, road crashes and other leading causes of disease, injury and death.
We’re working for a world where a little girl growing up in New Delhi, Cape Town or São Paolo has the same opportunity for health as a girl growing up anywhere.
With your partnership, we know we can make that happen, and billions of people can live longer, healthier lives.
