There’s been some change in the air at the Health Action International offices recently.

In the most literal sense, a change of air has brought with it some (much needed) warmer weather as the seasons ticked over to summer here in Amsterdam, the home of HAI HQ.

HAI have also seen a change in staff. While some colleagues have moved on to pastures new, we have also welcomed Research Assistant, Janneke Van Oirschot, and myself as Digital Communications Officer.

Excitingly, a change of website design has been unveiled that was over a year in the making. Our fresh update brings with it an easier to navigate interface, and a faster, more efficient experience.

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HAI’s new look website

You have found yourself reading this article on our blog page. This health blog will bring you updates about our projects, achievements and opinions related to the need for safe, effective, affordable and quality-assured medicines for everyone, everywhere. You may also see a staff spotlight from time to time that profiles some of the wonderful team members who contribute to making this happen.

If you look above this article, you’ll see an ‘Events’ headline. This is your go-to page for important dates, conferences and everything else related to medicine accessibility both within Europe and worldwide. We will continue to add to this as the year progresses so make sure to check back in regularly so you can remain up to date.

As with our old website, we are continuing to provide a number of helpful toolkits that assist in navigating the different projects we work on. These include:

  • Our Snakebite Treatment and Prevention tools: Here you’ll find Snakebite First Aid posters and a snake identification poster
  • Our Access to Insulin toolkit: Here you’ll find a comprehensive resource that provides an interactive map detailing the number of people living with type 2 diabetes needing insulin, information about the price of insulin, advice for health systems, in addition to other helpful tools and content related to access to insulin
  • Health Systems Advocacy Partnership tools: Here you’ll find WHO gold-standard methodology to assess the price, availability, affordability, and price components of medicines adjusted to specifically target commodities for sexual and reproductive health
  • Medicines in Europe tools: Here you’ll find information regarding protecting access to medicines, using flexibilities to advance access to medicines and making sense of the terminology, in addition to examples of our work
  • Prices, Availability and Affordability tools: Here you’ll find information about pricing methodology, pricing databases from countries around the world, local production methodology, guidelines for low- and middle-income countries and how we’re working to create equitable access in the European Union

We’ve created many more resources in addition to the toolkits over our 38 years of operation. An example of this is a statement by HAI to the 72nd World Health Assembly, contributing to the World Health Organization’s Roadmap for Access to Medicines and Vaccines. We’ve also recently created a four country comparison report on access to sexual and reproductive health commodities in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. By navigating to our resources section you can read these publications and hundreds more.

The launch of the new website has definitely created a buzz in the HAI office, and has coincided perfectly with my commencement here after relocating from Australia. A month into my role as Digital Communications Officer and we have a brand new, information-packed website to add to. As part of my role, I will be making sure it remains up-to-date with relevant, useful and interesting content that contributes to advancing policies that enable access to medicines and rational medicines use for all people around the world.

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HAI staff recently celebrated Dr Marg Ewen being the joint recipient for the Helen Clark-JoPPP Award for Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice Research

We are always looking for feedback and contributions to our vision. If you want to add something, you can email us at info@haiweb.org with your thoughts, suggestions, or just to say hello.

If you want to hear from us, make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For more tailored content, you can also sign up to our newsletter here.

Whether you’re reading this from sunny Netherlands, chilly Australia, or anywhere else in between, we hope you enjoy the changes and continue to use HAI as your first point of call for all things related to access to medicines for everyone, everywhere.