History
Who We Are › History
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 Kiev-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. 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.
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.
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. A new health management education program was launched in Georgia, while our highly successful TB control project in Moldova and PMTCT scale up project in Ukraine came to a close. New Twinning Center partnerships were established in Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia, and the program was also expanded to include Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, and Namibia.
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. Nigeria joins the Twinning Center’s network of partnership countries.