Dear friends,The annual report, even while highlighting the courage and expertise of our patients and Partners In Health colleagues, has always felt to me like a time to say thank you to our supporters.

This year, though, appreciation for PIH’s co-founder and inspiration, Dr. Paul Farmer, who passed away in February, permeates all reflection. Paul gave so much of himself. Highlighting what he meant in a sentence or two is as inadequate as his absence is painful. Still, I’ve been thinking about this incredible platform for engagement that Paul created. Even if that was never his first priority – the priority was always patients, people who deserved better than what they had access to – being part of Paul’s vision on the privileged side was a way to alleviate some of the angst that comes with living in such an unequal and unjust world.

That’s part of what Partners In Health has done for me over the past decade, if I’m being honest. Perhaps the sentiment also rings true for you.

If so, here’s the best analogy I’ve heard about how we can continue to advance Paul’s legacy.

When you are first introduced to an organization, you start out as a guest. You say hello, check out the vibe, see how you like the furnishings. Maybe you discover you share values in alignment with people in the room, and perhaps the association and your contribution to the whole becomes a compass pointing towards a better future. There are challenges, absolutely, and the work will never be done – but if you choose to listen deeply and go in with eyes wide open, you can’t help but see the investments pay off. So you decide to become more involved. You invite others in, help them feel at home, ask them to stay a while. You move from being a guest to a host.

We are all hosts now, after Paul. We have to be.

Through his writings and moral clarity and generosity of spirit, Paul brought so, so many people into this movement for health equity and social justice. Over the past year, amidst so much loss, Partners In Health continued to highlight not just how global inequities and weak health systems put those most vulnerable at even greater risks to pandemics and health shocks, but what we can do about it. None of us can make the case in exactly the way Paul did, but thinking about ourselves as hosts for the movement he created is within all of our abilities.

In 2021-22, like every year since 2015, PIH Canada was able to increase our total financial contribution to our care delivery sites. We began working on our first PIH Canada strategic plan, feeding into the global PIH strategy. We made our voice heard in the fight for vaccine equity. Going forward, building on Canadian expertise and policy priority on elevating the rights of women and children, we’re excited to be leading internal collaborations to strengthen gender-responsive frameworks in programming across PIH care delivery sites.

There’s so much to be proud of, so much reason to be thankful for this community we’ve created together, that I know we can take on one more challenge to advance Paul’s legacy: That we all find new ways, consciously and deliberately, to be hosts for PIH Canada.

Show your family and friends and colleagues around this place. Invite them to stay for a while.

And should they ask what it’s all about, you can respond with a question of Paul’s from his book Pathologies of Power: “If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?” Our answer, of course, is everyone.

Get in touch with us to let us know how we can help you be the best hosts you can be. And thank you, as always, for making life-affirming progress possible.

In solidarity,