There has been a consistent call for integration in public health programs to achieve greater impact and increased efficiency. Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), a set of 20 diseases that collectively affect over 1 billion people worldwide, represent an opportunity to explore integration. Despite their public health burden, NTDs are often underfunded and overlooked and, therefore, programs need to maximize efficiency and cost-effectiveness to reach their goals. One potential means to do this is to work with other public health programs or other sectors outside of health such as water, sanitation and hygiene, agriculture, or education. Although increased integration is recognized as a key component to reaching the new 2030 goals for NTDs, moving from idea to practice has been challenging with few examples of successful, sustained integration across programs. In this paper, we examine several cases studies of integration to extract lessons learned which can guide future integration efforts. We apply these lessons to propose a process that can support conversations at the program level to identify and develop potential new, mutually-beneficial integration opportunities.

Authors: Anastasia Pantelias, Alan Brooks, Julie Jacobson