I do a note every week for colleagues (and for the charity’s record) telling them who I’ve met and what I’ve done and recently they suggested it would interest our network members and those wanting to learn more about C3. C3’s name is Collaborating as we know that only through collaboration can society hope to overcome this epidemic of serious preventable disease (which claims 41 million people annually).

How can February be over already! I feel the (New) year has only just begun! No sign of Spring yet in London but this week has been full of optimism with wonderful people offering us their time and support as well as amazing belief that we should think really BIG!

A management consultant sent us an interesting tender to look at community engagement in south east Asia. He was in India and with colleagues in Australia and Canada we planned our response on Saturday while I was in the hairdressers in London.

Our CHESS tool has been praised by people big in IT, one of whom has offered us pro-bono support as we look at a scoping exercise he helped conduct which proposes an exciting way forward. He and colleagues believe that by developing a strategic technology road map we will be able to create a platform to increase the scope of our existing community-engagement work, streamline, through automation, the existing CHESS process, predict and measure results across multiple communities and provide evidence to influence health policy. How exciting is that!

To continue my excitement, a colleague introduced me to another management consultant who told me that the corporates she worked with were frustrated that no one gave them opportunities to make really big impact on the world’s problems. Partly she said they found it easier to make an impact in the least-developed countries than to reach the most disadvantaged people in the so-called rich countries. C3 should be able to link these themes together!

Good news from our friends at PACK (Practical Approach to Care Kit). A cost-effectiveness modelling study published in the Lancet Global Health shows that their South Africa programme can improve access to care for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), save government money and is cheaper than using WHO NCD guidelines. They have certainly taken a local programme and scaled it up (in fact, C3 has had 3 breakfast seminars from 3 countries using PACK). The head of the unit, Lara Fairall, has been appointed as Professor of Global Health Delivery at Kings College London. She will retain her full role and responsibilities and still be based at the Knowledge Translation Unit in Cape Town, but able to work closely with the Kings College London team to undertake research work.

Next year is the centenary of Florence Nightingale’s birth (the founder of modern nursing) and Dr Tedros, Director-General of the WHO announced that 2020 will the Year of the Nurse. Let’s hope it makes a real difference to nurses and their patients. You can read more about C3’s work with nurses, including our NURSING YOU programme.