WHO Headquarters and Regional Offices will attend as members of the Secretariat. In addition, three rotating National Malaria Control Programme managers from around the world will be invited as resource persons to observe and participate in the meeting.

The MPAC meetings are open to other observers, including representatives from WHO regional technical advisory groups, non-governmental organizations, technical agencies, academic institutions, and donor organizations. Additional experts and technical resource persons may also be invited to meetings to contribute to specific agenda items. Observers will not take the floor unless requested to do so by the Chair and will not participate in the formulation of MPAC recommendations.

The MPAC will work with WHO-GMP to develop its priorities of work and meeting agendas, with input from malaria endemic countries. In time, a widerinterests. BD provides part-time secretariat support for the Malaria Policy Advisory Committee to the WHO and is also a part-time DrPH candidate and staff member at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. RN is the director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme.

Authors\' contributions
=======================

BD and RN conceived the idea for the article. BD wrote a first draft of the article which was edited by RN. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgements
================

Strengthening the policy setting process has been supported in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the WHO Global Malaria Programme. The authors acknowledge the contributions of the independent advisory group on policy setting who developed the framework for MPAC; the 50 external stakeholders who provided input on the MPAC