Abstract submission will open in January

The global health workforce is projected to face a shortage of ten million professionals by 2030,  highlighting the urgent need to attract newcomers to health supply chain management (SCM). Simultaneously, we are witnessing the largest global youth population in history, with approximately 1.2 billion individuals aged 15 to 24 (United Nations). Eighty-five percent of these young people live in LMICs, where employment challenges are most acute and the skills gap in the SCM sector is widening.

We have a unique opportunity to align the capabilities of youth – and others including women and marginalised groups – with the needs of the health SCM workforce.

At the same time we need to deepen our advocacy efforts so that investments in human resources (HR) for SCM are not only sustained, but increase. This will be necessary to continue to develop a global health SCM workforce that is capable of ensuring timely access to quality health commodities.

Sub themes

Abstracts presented at the PtD Global Indaba should fall into one or more of the sub themes in line with PtD’s strategic plan (2024-29):

• Convening diverse organisations
  

This provides PtD coalition members to with an opportunity to unveil their strategies and initiatives that are inspiring (and professionalising) the next generation of health supply chain management professionals.

• Developing leadership capacity
  

These abstracts should focus on interventions and initiatives that are enhancing the capacity of health supply chain leaders to navigate change and advance health supply chain performance.

• Creating tools and frameworks
  

Abstracts that fall into this category should centre on innovative resources that have boosted supply chain performance. We will also consider recently-released tools and frameworks that are promising but haven’t yet yielded results.

• Engaging in advocacy
  

We want to hear about how you advocate HR for health SCM, whether it’s to help others in your government department realise the value of health SCM professionlisation or appeal to donor organisations for increased investments.

Hot topics

We are particularly interested in a number of hot topics:

• Last mile delivery
• Delivering through the private sector
• Youth
• Country implementation
• Key trends
• Differentiation (country context)
• Technology and skills
• Innovation
• Private sector engagement
• Sustainability and scalability
• Staff retention