Season’s Greetings! As we come to the close of 2012 and embrace 2013, I wanted to reach out and let you know that CDC has reached an important milestone in training global health leaders. We’re celebrating the 20^th Anniversary of the Sustainable Management Development Program (SMDP) — a program that CDC developed in 1992 to assist ministries of health in low- and middle-resource countries strengthen their health management systems.

To kick-off the 20^th Anniversary celebration, we hosted a webinar on December 11^th and invited all of our graduates from the Global Health Leadership Forum (Forum) and the Management for Improved Public Health (MIPH) to join the webinar and share their experiences. I was so pleased to see that graduates from all over the world participated in the webinar and shared powerful stories about how the Forum and the MIPH program have been of value in helping them make sound decisions as they progressed in their careers.