Living Goods CEO, Emilie Chambert

As I start this new chapter as Chief Executive Officer at Living Goods, I am feeling both honored and energized. Leading this organization carries a profound responsibility to the communities we serve and to you, our stakeholders.

I step into this role at a critical moment for global health. Over the past few months, we have witnessed a concerning erosion of government support for international development, not only from the U.S. but also across Europe and the U.K.

The recent pause in USAID funding, along with budget pressures in key donor countries, iscreating new uncertainties for organizations like ours. This only underscores our resolve to ensure families can access essential healthcare even during times of uncertainty.

2024 marked the midpoint of our 2022-2026 strategy aimed at strengthening government led community health systems. We celebrated important achievements and learned valuable lessons from our challenges during the year.

Most importantly, we saw tangible improvements in the lives of the community health workers (CHWs) we support and the families they serve, thanks to enhanced access to life-saving care.

In summary, we: Demonstrated gold-standard community health in our learning sites. CHWs continued to deliver essential health services and tested promising innovations like telehealth.

In Burkina Faso, we built on our success by scaling into Manga District and fully in Ziniaré.

Strengthened our government-led implementation support approach. We expanded into Vihiga County and launched implementation support in Busia County, but paused further expansion until 2025 as we review our approach to make it more efficient and effective.

We also concluded our 6-year partnership in Isiolo County. Supported governments on their digital health journeys. We solidified our role as a leading partner to three national governments on their digitization of community health.

In Kenya, the adoption of the electronic community health information system (eCHIS) reached 100% nationally, although some challenges meant our impact went under-reported. This has only strengthened our resolve to support government partners in building robust digital health infrastructure.

Advocated for commitments to community health. We were selected as an implementer of the Global Fund’s Project BIRCH in Burkina Faso and Uganda, enhancing our position as an advisor to these governments. In Kenya, the government upheld its commitment to compensating and equipping all 107,000 CHWs; as a CHU4UHC member, we were a lead contributor to securing these commitments.

The Global Digital Health Forum and other strategic events highlighted our convening power at global and regional levels. Bolstered our organizational resilience: All key indicators in our all-staff Pulse Survey scored above 80%, positioning us favorably alongside other high-performing organizations worldwide.

Looking forward, we are more convinced than ever that a government-led approach is the right path to drive scalable and sustainable impact. In 2025, we will equip more CHWs as we continue to innovate for improved service delivery with a human-centered approach.

We will review our support to governments to ensure greater sustainability and resilience of community health systems and their eCHIS. Additionally, we will put more effort into building an organization where diversity, equity, and inclusion are everyday realities. I’m excited to continue working with partners like you to create lasting change. Thank you.

Emilie Chambert

Living Goods CEO