Establishing a Transnational Public Health Agency in the Gulf Region

With an urgent need to integrate and improve public health efforts across the Gulf region—an imperative amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic—the Gulf Health Council (GHC) engaged Shift Health to develop a foundational strategic, operating and implementation plan for the Gulf Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

Shift Health worked closely with leaders from six Gulf countries to develop a consensus-driven strategy, governance and operating model, and implementation plan for a new regional public health agency. Through extensive regional and global stakeholder engagement, Shift Health developed a plan that will address variability in public health capacity across member states and will empower the Gulf to tackle common public health priorities where collaboration, alignment and knowledge-exchange will deliver the greatest population health impact.

By building disease-focused programs, expanding public health capacity, and supporting the exchange of information, the Centre will improve the population health and socioeconomic wellbeing of member states.