"Since the first year of the Pfizer GHF Program, Project HOPE has benefited from the extraordinary expertise of Pfizer employees, working in our field sites in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Central Europe,"

(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pfizer Inc. is proud to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Global Health Fellows Program (GHF) as part of its corporate social investment strategy that focuses on leveraging the full range of the company's resources -- people, medicines, expertise and funding -- to broaden access to medicines and strengthen health care delivery for underserved people around the world.

GHF is Pfizer's signature corporate volunteer program that pairs colleagues from technical and functional areas across Pfizer in three- to six- month fellowships with international development organizations to improve health services for people in greatest need.

"Since the first year of the Pfizer GHF Program, Project HOPE has benefited from the extraordinary expertise of Pfizer employees, working in our field sites in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Central Europe," said Cary Kimble, Associate Vice President, Development, Project HOPE. "These members of the Pfizer family have helped improve Project HOPE's monitoring and evaluation systems and our health education curricula and materials, have helped measure and validate the impact of our work, have helped develop business and marketing plans, and have allowed us to reach more people, more effectively."

The 10th anniversary Fellows class is from technical and business functions from across six Pfizer locations: United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Germany, Canada and the United States. Combined, the 2013 class will be sharing 156 years of Pfizer experience with eleven GHF partner organizations to optimize supply chains and scale-up promising health prevention approaches, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease awareness and screening initiatives and business strategy and development functions in China, India and East Africa.

"The tenth anniversary of this vibrant program vividly demonstrates our commitment to promoting access, quality and efficiency of health services for the world's neediest people,"said Caroline Roan, President of the Pfizer Foundation and Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility. "It also offers clear evidence that by coordinating our efforts and partnering with other stakeholders, the impact of our effort is magnified and we all benefit."

A 2012 study by Boston University's Center for International Health and Development revealed that 100 percent of partners reported Global Health Fellows helped them to accelerate sustainable change in their health service delivery efforts. In addition, partnership organizations reported "extremely significant" and "significant" capacity gains in Human Resources training and development; Leadership and Governance; and Health Management Information Systems.

"Fellows become an integral part of the regional GBCHealth team, working closely with us to deliver on their complex scopes of work,"said Elizabeth Sorensen, Vice President, Human Resources, GBCHealth. "Their impact has been described as lifesaving, significant, insightful, and amazing."

Since 2003, 317 colleagues have completed an estimated 325,000 hours of skills-based volunteering, which is valued at approximately $47.6M of pro-bono service to partner organizations throughout the developing world. Through GHF, Pfizer has partnered with more than 40 international development organizations in more than 40 countries over the life of the program.

For additional information on Pfizer's Global Health Fellows Program, please visit www.pfizer.com/GHF.