Why PHIG builds: our goal to 2030

A statement of purpose from the Public Health Institute of Georgia, October 2026. Figures about PHIG’s own platforms come from internal analytics and are available on request; external figures are sourced on the pages linked.

The goal

By 2030, people in Georgia — and, through our region, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Türkiye — should be measurably healthier, safer and better informed, because the health system around them has become evidence-based, competence-based and quality-assured, and because trustworthy health information reaches them every day in their own language. That is the whole purpose of the Public Health Institute of Georgia. Everything we build serves it.

Where we start from — the reach we already have

PHIG is not starting from zero. Its public communication arm, the Sheni network, was founded in 2003 and is today the largest Georgian-language health and lifestyle media system: more than twenty sites — SheniEkimi (sheniekimi.ge, 11,000+ health articles and the health directory), SheniMedicina, SheniPacienti, SheniSilamaze, SheniSupra, SheniTbilisi, SheniBatumi, SheniEmigranti, SheniStartup, SheniGanatleba, SheniSofeli and others — reaching on average about five million readers a month, and up to fifteen million in peak months (Sheni network analytics, internal). Six of these sites publish automatically to Facebook and Instagram; more than two thousand short videos have been produced; the Sheni jobs aggregator and directories are used daily. This is the delivery channel that most institutes never have: when PHIG publishes an alert, a guideline summary or a course, it can reach the Georgian public the same day, free, without advertising from industries that harm health.

Around that channel PHIG has built, step by step, the institutional layer: the institute itself (2011), the accreditation advocacy that brought Accreditation Canada to Georgia (2014), Accréditation Sans Frontières in Paris (2020), the SheniEkimi certification programme (certificate.ge), the Georgian Medical Journal with Crossref DOIs and GMJ Academy with 200+ free courses, the Georgian Institute of Labour Studies, Sheni Labs and SupplementIndex, the observatories (RHWCO, Health and Migration), and in 2026 the policy framework and open governance that let any donor, ministry or WHO audit us.

Why a public health institute builds so much

A public health institute promotes health. But health is not promoted by messages alone. It is promoted by a system in which professionals can be trusted, facilities meet standards, products are safe, work does not harm, evidence is open, and the public is told the truth. In Georgia and most of our region that system is incomplete: donors built pieces of it and are now leaving; the state funds services but not the independent institutions that keep them honest; the market sells supplements, courses and quick cures with no one checking.

So PHIG builds the missing pieces itself, as public goods. Not because we want many projects, but because each piece only works when the others exist:

• A competency standard is useless without training to reach it (GMJ Academy), verification that it was reached (certificate.ge — verified professionals with CPD/CME records) and research on whether practice changed (RHWCO, the Georgian Medical Journal).
• A quality certificate for a clinic means little without a ladder to full accreditation (ASF, Accreditation Canada) and public information patients can use (SheniEkimi’s directory, GMJ News).
• A warning about a dangerous supplement protects no one unless there is a database behind it (SupplementIndex), a published method (Sheni Labs), a daily desk watching every regulator — and five million readers to warn.
• Evidence on work and health (GILS) matters only if it reaches inspectors, employers and workers, in Georgian, every day.
• None of it is credible without governance that can be audited — 75 published policies, a legal status page, open accounts.

Seen that way, PHIG is not many projects. It is one machine: evidence → competence → quality → safety → reach, each part feeding the next, all open, in Georgian and English.

How the machine was built — the logic

1. Audience first (2003–2010). Build the Georgian-language media that people actually read, on every subject that touches health — medicine, food, beauty, cities, work, emigration — so that public health has a voice people already trust.
2. Institution second (2011–2019). Create the institute, bring international accreditation to Georgia, and establish the principle that quality must be independent of providers and payers.
3. Standards and verification (2020–2024). Found ASF to write standards for the region; launch certificate.ge so that any professional can be verified and any facility can take a first, affordable quality step.
4. Evidence and training (2025). Launch the journal (open access, DOIs) and the Academy (free courses) so that competence can be taught, measured and published.
5. Consumer and worker protection (2026). Sheni Labs, SupplementIndex and GILS turn the network’s reach into daily, sourced protection on products and on work.
6. Governance (2026). Publish everything — policies, legal status, related parties, finances — so that the whole machine can be trusted and funded.

What we will have achieved by 2030

1. Reach: a stable ten million readers a month across the network, with every health claim sourced and a published corrections record; PHIG public-health campaigns delivered through it on tobacco, alcohol, childhood obesity, vaccination and product safety.
2. Competence replaces attendance: Georgia pilots competency-based attestation for at least one profession, built on RHWCO’s evidence; 10,000 health professionals hold verified profiles with CPD/CME records on certificate.ge.
3. A quality ladder every provider can climb: 300 facilities certified at the first rung, 30 accredited through ASF or Accreditation Canada, and the first independent evaluation of accreditation outcomes in Georgia published.
4. Open evidence: the Georgian Medical Journal indexed internationally with 300 open-access articles; the RHWCO 12-country dataset and the Georgia evidence base used by WHO, ministries and universities; active external partners on every research agenda.
5. Consumers protected: every supplement, cosmetic and household product sold in Georgia checkable against international restrictions through SupplementIndex and Sheni Labs; a daily alert reaching retailers and the public; prohibited products measurably removed from shelves.
6. Safer work: GILS the reference source on occupational safety and health in Georgia, used by the Labour Inspection Office, employers and trade unions, with annual sourced statistics.
7. An institute that lasts: three months’ reserves, no donor above 40 per cent of income, audited accounts published annually, official relations with WHO, ECOSOC consultative status, and a second generation of leadership in place.

How we measure ourselves

Each target has an indicator, a baseline and an annual figure in PHIG’s annual report from 2027. Reach is reported from the network’s analytics, audited on request; everything else from public records. We do not publish numbers we cannot source — including about ourselves. The Sheni network is owned by Media Holding “Sheni”, founded by PHIG’s Chair; the relationship is disclosed and governed as a related party on the legal notice and legal status pages.

What we ask of partners

Use the machine: publish in the journal, send staff to the Academy, verify your professionals on certificate.ge, climb the quality ladder, cite the data, put your campaign in front of five million readers. Work with us on the research agenda. Fund the public goods no market will pay for. And hold us to this page.

Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze, MD, MPH, PhD — Chair, Public Health Institute of Georgia · October 2026 · The network · Policy Framework · Legal status · Research agenda