GPH Charts Its Course: Department Comes Together for Two-Day Strategic Retreat in Kuala Lumpur

Published: 24 August 2026

On 25–26 June 2026, the Department of Global Population Health (GPH) held its annual strategic retreat at Kimpton Naluri, Kuala Lumpur, bringing together academic and professional staff for two days of reflection, planning, and team building.

Day One opened with staff naming their hopes for the retreat: a more cohesive and connected team, clarity on the way forward, and higher morale heading into the second half of the year. That set the tone for a session asking a deceptively simple question — what does GPH want to be known for? Discussion mapped out the department's core audiences, from policymakers and thought leaders to civil society organisations and the media, and converged on a shared identity: a department that champions evidence-based, inclusive approaches to health equity, and translates research into implementation that reaches beyond academia to the communities it serves.

The team also looked ahead to 2030 through a "GPH Dream Team" activity, in which staff considered the roles and capabilities the department should be known for by the end of the decade — from Policy Influencer and Health Equity Champion to Data Wizard, Grant Magnet, and Community Connector — and voted on the ones that mattered most to GPH's future direction. A companion mascot exercise had small groups sketching and pitching visual identities for what GPH could become, producing a memorable menagerie: a banyan tree, its deep roots symbolising the department's cross-disciplinary reach across people, society, and stakeholders; a butterfly, representing patient transformation; a bee, carrying the idea of cross-pollinating ideas across teams; and an elephant, standing in for institutional memory and community.

Across seven collaborative working sessions, staff captured ideas on shared Miro boards spanning research, engagement, education, and operations, later consolidated into a single set of departmental notes. Day Two shifted the focus toward execution, with staff naming clarity on roles and a shared understanding of GPH's strategy as their key expectations for the day, and closing on priorities of collaboration, coherent direction, and self-advocacy for the department going forward.

The two days culminated in a detailed action tracker translating discussion into 43 SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) action items, each assigned an owner and a timeframe. Head of Department Prof. Sarah Hawkes provided direct input shaping the tracker's final structure, ensuring it would serve as a practical working document rather than a one-off retreat memento.

The retreat reinforced a shared sense of purpose and identity across the department heading into the second half of 2026, with the resulting action tracker now guiding follow-up work across GPH's research, engagement, and operational priorities.