The ENVISION Impact
There are few opportunities in global health – and in international development – to reach hundreds of millions of people annually with interventions, in the most remote and resource-barren communities. There are few collaborative partnerships enabling national governments to access private sector donations of safe, effective medicines free of charge and at massive scale over decades. Even fewer allowing a bilateral donor such as the U.S. Government to leverage these donations for an overall return on investment of $1: $26. Additionally, opportunities to support a ministry of health to achieve disease elimination in just a handful of years do not come often.
In the following pages, you will learn about the impact of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ENVISION project. Over the course of eight years, RTI International and partners supported national health and education ministries to assess and address neglected tropical diseases. By aligning with the World Health Organization’s control and elimination targets and methodologies for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), ENVISION was able to reach disease-endemic communities at a scale never-before-achieved.
Along the way, many technical, operational, and strategic lessons were learned by national NTD programs and ENVISION partners. As routine practice, ENVISION gathered, studied, and disseminated the preferred practices, ensuring they reached not only ENVISION-supported programs but the global academic, technical, implementation, and guideline-setting communities. ENVISION’s global influence as USAID’s NTD flagship project was prolific and impactful, through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and leadership of technical, strategic, and advisory groups.
Though countries achieved much with the support of ENVISION, communities and individuals are still at-risk of or even currently suffering from NTDs worldwide. The global effort continues, and in this final report, you will find quantifiable evidence of impact, descriptive strategies for success, as well as inspiration and drive to continue our accelerated journey toward a world free of NTDs. Just ENVISION it.