Leaderships that Transform Health in Latin America

Background: As a multidisciplinary platform for research, education, and social action, the Health Equity Network of the Americas (HENA) integrates as key pillars of its knowledge management model, capacity development and the promotion of young researchers and professionals. The HENA Technical Secretariat is mostly composed of young professionals in health promotion, which led to its inclusion on the Young Professionals Board of the World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) in 2023. This milestone initiated a regional call across Latin America for individuals, groups, and organizations of young professionals.

 

A first meeting brought together participants from Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Colombia, and El Salvador, who identified priorities for inclusion in a Regional Equity Agenda and reaffirmed the need to collaborate for networking toward equity and decolonization of health. In 2024, the core group was consolidated, a young professional was defined as someone with ages between 25 to 39 working in public health, and six sessions were held to establish agreements and prepare the official launch during the Global Public Health Week in April 2025.

 

Approach: A qualitative three-phase process was developed to articulate young expert professionals.

Phase 1: Formation of the leadership core and creation of a name and identity for the group.

Phase 2: An internal consultation process to define the group’s conceptual positioning on equity and decolonization, as well as strategies for collaborative work and capacity development.

Phase 3: An open consultation to identify research and action experiences developed by young professionals across the region.

 

Results: The group, named Young HENA, currently includes 11 members from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, and Peru. It is grounded in a conceptual understanding of equity—as a transversal principle guiding the design, implementation, and evaluation of public health policies—and decolonization, as a priority for challenging and transforming the historical structures of oppression and hegemony in health.

Three thematic areas for action have been defined: social justice, local knowledge, and policy advocacy, alongside specific interest groups such as Afro-descendant populations and sexually diverse communities. Additionally, 25 experiences led by young professionals have been documented in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru. They address subjects such as healthy aging, mental health and telehealth in rural communities, access to primary care services, collective health, One Health, immunization among Indigenous populations, and food security.

 

Implications: Collaborative work among young professionals requires commitment, continuous engagement, and sustained outreach to individuals, families and communities to develop initiatives and identify new ways to influence and impact health systems through transformative leadership. Such leadership incorporates health equity, promotion, education, and communication, while sharing progress and proposals globally to generate evidence on public health needs and priorities across Latin America.

 

This process involves integrating diverse lived, professional, and academic experiences, adopting a horizontal roundtable structure and an open-table philosophy that fosters dialogue among local voices, institutions, decision makers and knowledge systems that inspire, transform, and continuously share their enthusiasm for global impact.