Salud Mesoamerica Initiative Executive Secretary
Emma Iriarte is Principal Sector Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the Executive Secretary of the Salud Mesoamerica Initiative (SMI) and the Regional Malaria Elimination Initiative in Mesoamerica and the Dominican Republic (RMEI).
Both initiatives are a public private partnership between the Inter-American Development Bank, nine LAC countries and donors (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carlos Slim Foundation, the governments of Spain and Canada, and the Global Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria). The two initiatives implement a results-based financing model which USD 202 m from donor funding has leveraged USD 85m from domestic funding.
Dr. Iriarte has experience in developing and implementing complex programs aiming at reducing inequities and improving health, especially for women, newborn and adolescents of the hardest-to-reach and poorest populations. She is acknowledged as a trusted negotiator, a transparent partner, and a risk taker by encouraging innovations, systemic and multi-sectoral approaches, and collective impact frameworks to improve health system performance.
Salud Mesoamerica Initiative was awarded in 2015 with the Innovative Team Award at the IDB. It also won the prestigious international 2021 P3 Impact Award CONCORDIA, sponsored by the USA State Department and the University of Virginia.
Emma Iriarte is a medical doctor graduated from the National University of Honduras. She has a master’s degree in public health from Tulane University in New Orleans (USA), and is a Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education Alumni.
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I am convinced that to achieve long-lasting results in health, we must not only make a critical shift toward focusing on high-level outcomes but also going back to the people dealing with the problems; we need to be listening, observing, and re-questioning again the problems to find solutions together. It is essential to apply equity and systemic lenses to every approach; and to consider learning and adaptation as core elements of health systems performance.
