Wayne Gretzky was the greatest hockey player of all time. He wasn’t particularly big or strong or fast. But he was smart. He has often been quoted as saying “I don’t go where the puck is, I go where the puck is going to be.” It was his ability to anticipate plays (along with incredible stamina and great hands) that set him apart from the other great players.

So I was thinking about the analogy in international development, and particularly the role of HealthBridge. Do we go where the puck is, or where it is going to be? That is, do we figure out what needs to be done next and drive the international development agenda, or do we help with the necessary ongoing work? There is a need for both of course, and HealthBridge does contribute across that spectrum. The big players – the government agencies, the UN agencies, the big NGOs – do the heavy lifting of the service delivery. But as a smaller organization HealthBridge has the agility to go where the puck is not, to anticipate what is coming next, or what is needed next.

In the past 20 years HealthBridge has been Gretzky-esque in a number of fields. We were at the forefront of:

• promoting ITNs for malaria control;
• making tobacco control an international development issue;
• making livable cities an international development issue;
• pushing agriculture interventions to benefit the health of participating farming households.

OK, sometimes we were Gretzky, and sometime we were watching what the Gretzkys of global health were doing, and we got out there and joined them… As we come to the close of our 32nd year in international development and look forward to 2015, I am trying to channel my inner-Gretzky and see where the puck will be, and where it should be, in Global Health in the coming years. And, to stretch the Gretzky metaphor, I can see us being a bit like Jari Kurri, Gretzky’s teammate, who scored many goals by following Gretzky’s lead. I think there will be increasing recognition of the importance of gut health and the gut microbiome in the coming years. The role of the food system, in particular, the damage done by ultraprocessed foods is gathering attention. The importance of remote sensing for disease surveillance will surely grow as the technologies and analytical methods develop.

There are multiple other emerging areas that are already recognized as important (e.g., health impacts of climate change, multi-drug resistance bacteria, zoonotic diseases) but what are the not-yet-recognized emerging areas of importance in global health? Where would Gretzky be headed if he worked in global health?