History
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1992The American International Health Alliance is established by a consortium of major healthcare provider associations and professional medical education organizations to help the nations of the former Soviet Union build much-needed health system capacity. Funded through a series of cooperative agreements with USAID, the first partnerships linking US hospitals with their counterparts in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan are formed.
1993The hospital partnership program is expanded to Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Partnerships focus on broad issues such as infection control, nursing, women’s health, neonatal resuscitation, and emergency medicine, as well as hospital finance and administration and specific topics targeted by each institution.
1994Building on its early programmatic successes, the partnership model is introduced in Moldova and Tajikistan. The first Central European partnerships are formed in Croatia and Estonia, while more are added in countries in the former Soviet Union.
1995While hospital partnerships continue to be formed in countries such as Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine, AIHA’s first Healthy Communities partnerships are established to focus on specific health and wellness issues ranging from substance abuse and intimate partner violence to smoking cessation and cardiovascular disease.
1996Bosnia-Herzegovina joins AIHA’s expanding network of partnership countries and more Healthy Communities partnerships are established in Central Europe. AIHA’s first Health Management Education partnerships are established in the Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia.
1998AIHA enters into a second series of cooperative agreements with USAID and begins establishing the first of nearly 30 partnerships designed to create community-based primary healthcare centers. Some of these partnerships also decide to establish Women’s Wellness Centers to provide comprehensive clinical services and primary prevention programs to women of all ages.
2000In response to the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region, AIHA launches a pilot program to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Odessa, Ukraine, one of the hardest-hit cities in all of Europe. AIHA launches the EurasiaHealth Knowledge Network to improve access to timely, evidence-based clinical research and resources in Russian and other regional languages.
2001AIHA establishes its first intra-regional partnership, linking former partners in Bucharest, Romania, with the Institute of Public Health in Tirana, Albania.
2002AIHA celebrates 10 years of partnership programs. Through a grant from the Library of Congress, AIHA establishes its Open World/Community Leadership Development Program. AIHA joins forces with March of Dimes to help prevent birth defects in Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe.
2003AIHA continues expanding its partnership programs, particularly in the fields of primary healthcare and health professions education while at the same time creating new initiatives to improve breast health in the region with funding from the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The Southern Ukraine AIDS Education Center opens in Odessa, Ukraine, to provide training based on AIHA’s highly effective PMTCT model. AIHA launches the USAID-funded “Strengthening Tuberculosis Control in Moldova” project and the year is rounded out by the announcement that AIHA will be the primary implementing partner of a WHO/GTZ project to establish the Regional Knowledge Hub for the Care and Treatment of HIV/AIDS in Eurasia.
2004The Kyiv-based Regional Knowledge Hub for the Care and Treatment of HIV/AIDS in Eurasia officially opens its doors to provide skills-based training to clinicians and other caregivers in Ukraine and other nations in the region. AIHA co-sponsors an HIV/AIDS stigma conference in Zagreb, Croatia, and launches four new HIV/AIDS care and treatment partnerships in Russia. In Central Asia, regionwide projects in medical education, nursing education, and community-oriented primary care commence, as does a primary care and health management project in Turkmenistan. In Romania, the Radiology Quality Improvement Program is launched to improve breast cancer screening and diagnostics. AIHA is awarded a grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration to establish an HIV/AIDS Twinning Center in support of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
2005AIHA continues to expand its work in HIV/AIDS, TB, health professions education, and community-oriented primary care in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Africa, opening its first Twinning Center field office in Pretoria, South Africa. With USAID support, AIHA launches a project to scale up PMTCT services in Ukraine, while its women's health project with Doctors of the World in Kosovo comes to a close.
2006With more than 125 partnerships established and dozens of successful capacity-building programs in nearly 30 countries, AIHA's programs and initiatives remain at the vanguard of healthcare reform efforts in developing and transitioning nations around the world. In cooperation with USAID, the Russian Ministry of Health and Social Development, and the St. Petersburg Medical Academy for Post Graduate Studies, AIHA opens the St. Petersburg AIDS Training and Education Center. Operations in the Central Asia region conclude while new programs in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Moldova, and Zambia are launched. AIHA opens country offices in Ethiopia and Tanzania to manage its growing HIV/AIDS Twinning Center partnerships in both countries. The Volunteer Healthcare Corps, a component of the Twinning Center, begins placing clinicians and other skilled professionals in long-term volunteer assignments in Ethiopia.
2007
AIHA joins forces with the Russian Red Cross to implement a pilot training program designed to improve reproductive health services for women inmates of three prison settlements in Irkutsk Oblast. Also in Russia, two public-private partnerships are established: the Volga River AIDS Alliance in cooperation with AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the Russia Professional Development in HIV Medicine Program in cooperation with GlaxoSmithKline. With funding from USAID, AIHA kicks off the Strategic Health Partnership Initiative in cooperation with Russia’s Ministry of Health and Social Development. This innovative three-year program expands on the 2005 Bratislava Initiatives, a joint Russian-American presidential agreement designed to strengthen cooperation on a number of cross-cutting issues, including the global fight against HIV/AIDS. A new health management education program is launched in Georgia, while our highly successful TB control project in Moldova and PMTCT scale up project in Ukraine come to a close. New Twinning Center partnerships are established in Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia, and the program is also expanded to include Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, and Namibia. The Volunteer Healthcare Corps places its first volunteers in Tanzania and begins recruiting for opportunities in South Africa.
2008AIHA’s HIV/AIDS Twinning Center launches its first “triangle” partnership, linking schools of social work in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and the United States to improve care and support to orphans and vulnerable children by building institutional and human resource capacity and developing a para-social worker training program for community-based caregivers. AIHA establishes a country office in Mozambique to support partnership activities there. Nigeria joins the Twinning Center’s network of partnership countries, while 10-year USAID cooperative agreements for health partnership programs in the Caucasus and Russia, as well as NIS regionwide support programs, come to a close. USAID's Preventing HIV and Hepatitis B and C in Moldova Project, for which AIHA managed the blood safety component, also concludes. In Russia, AIHA joins forces with St. Petersburg City AIDS Center, Pavlov State Medical University, the Republican Infectious Disease Hospital at Ust-Izhora, and other strategic partners to establish the Baltic AIDS Training and Education Center. This new center is an affiliate of the Regional Knowledge Hub for the Care and Treatment of HIV/AIDS in Eurasia, which relocates this year from Kyiv to Moscow.
2009
AIHA's HIV/AIDS Twinning Center is awarded a second cooperative agreement from HRSA, ensuring funding for the program through 2014. AIHA establishes a small country office in Enugu, Nigeria, to support partnership activities in the West African nation. With USAID support, AIHA launches a new 3-year project to improve maternal and child health in Kosovo. Working closely with Russia's Ministry of Health and Social Development and USAID/Russia, as well as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the ministries of health in Botswana, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, AIHA places nine Russian lab experts through the Strategic Health Partnership Initiative. These long-term mentorships are designed to build targeted laboratory and human resource capacity in the three African nations. The Twinning Center hosts a strategic planning meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, for partners focusing on improving care to orphans and families made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS by providing social work training to community-based caregivers. In addition, the Twinning Center launches a new partnership, linking Addis Ababa University School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to strengthen emergency medical services in Ethiopia. The Volunteer Healthcare Corps expands, now offering skilled professionals long-term volunteer opportunities in Botswana and Mozambique, as well as the original focus countries of Ethiopia, South Africa, and Tanzania. The Regional Knowledge Hub and its affiliates celebrate training more than 5,000 clinicians and other caregivers in the provision of high quality HIV treatment and support.
2010
The HIV/AIDS Twinning Center establishes a new partnership linking Walter Sisulu University in South Africa's Eastern Cape with the University of Colorado-Denver to expand their Clinical Associates Program. AIHA hosts country meetings for its partners in Ethiopia and Zambia to share experiences and plan for future collaboration.
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