The cornerstone of the IANPHI approach is a peer-assistance model for NPHI strengthening and enhancement, with an emphasis on countries without NPHIs or with NPHIs in their early stages. Experts from IANPHI member institutes provide technical assistance and project support targeted at critical NPHI needs. Teams are guided by the Framework for the Creation and Development of NPHIs (www.ianphi.org/?action=arkisto&RYHMA=47&ID=&valittu=8), a product of IANPHI in partnership with WHO. The Framework provides a working defi nition of an NPHI and suggests a process for creating or enhancing an institute. By defi ning the critical characteristics of an NPHI, IANPHI hopes to bring specifi city to the organization's vision, align efforts to assist low-resource countries in building NPHIs, and provide benchmarks and resources to help any country assess and improve the functioning of its NPHI. To that end, IANPHI has also developed an NPHI toolkit (www. sph.emory.edu/IANPHI), which provides access to a variety of Web-based information resources for countries, NPHIs, and IANPHI peer-assistance teams to use as they work to assess, develop, and improve NPHIs and build public health capacity around the world.