Punjab Public Health Agency

PPHA envisions to be an institution of excellence for advancement of public health recognized for disease prevention and control through generation of knowledge. The Government of Punjab has a larger role in protecting health, quantifying risk (and the effectiveness of interventions), and improving place based approaches to improving health and reducing unacceptable variation in outcomes at a population. The burden is even greater since Punjab sets the benchmark for the country and is spearheading most of the reforms in Health and other cross-cutting sectors. With this understanding, the Government of Punjab has established PPHA to fill the gaps in the public health stewardship function of the province’s health care delivery system. PPHA will take a functional approach with complete recognition of the role of other sectors and stakeholders. It will involve the private sector in program planning, implementation and policy development. It will make available to the health secretariat the necessary dedicated technical expertise to effectively undertake its stewardship functions with respect to public health. It will institutionalize mechanisms for identifying gaps in laws and regulation; developing policies and strategies; robust monitoring and evaluation; research and development; and workforce planning and development. More specifically the PPHA will facilitate in evidence generation and utilization for informed decision-making and strengthened policy, strategy and program design which will also address the manifold and multi-layered social determinants of health.