ACTION ALERT: New Legislation for Global Health Funding
The following is a guest post by Farheen Qurashi, AMSA’s Jack Rutledge Legislative Director 2009-2010.

U.S. student activists
Just a few days ago, we celebrated World Health Day – the progress we’ve made in providing aid to patients around the world, the diseases prevented and the treatments admitted. But, we still have a long way to go, and as we celebrated, we also remembered that there is much to accomplish and continue in global health aid.
Two weeks ago, Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-9th) introduced HR 4933, the Global HEALTH Act of 2010. This is a key piece of legislation that makes bounds towards creating a comprehensive and integrated global health aid strategy, focusing on strengthening health systems of developing countries to provide comprehensive primary to tertiary care as well as expanding the vital health care workforce – including doctors, nurses, midwives and community health workers—in needy areas. There is a dire international shortage of all kinds of health workers, and this is a bottleneck to providing sustainable and adequate care to patient populations – strengthening the health workforce is a key part of strengthening an overall health system.
Importantly, the Global HEALTH Act:
- Creates the Global Health Workforce Initiative, which emphasizes training, retention, and support for needed health workers
- Mandates the creation of a multi-year, in-depth strategy for health systems strengthening, and authorizes necessary support for this strategy
- Ensures country-ownership and accountability to health strategies
- Authorizes support for health strategies to ensure the swift achievement of US global health goals
- Prioritizes the needs of marginalized and vulnerable populations like women and girls, sex workers, etc.
On the cusp of the US’s own health system reform movement, we must also remember our patients in need around the world. The Global HEALTH Act makes a much-needed and bold step forward for global health aid, and AMSA is proudly one of its original supporters, along with Physicians for Human Rights, Health Alliance International, Health GAP (Global AIDS Project), and other organizations.
The Global HEALTH Act, HR 4933, is currently awaiting discussion in the Foreign Affairs and Financial Services Committees of the House of Representatives. For the ideas within the bill to receive recognition, support, and success, we must ask our Congressmen to show their support by co-sponsoring the legislation.
To send your Congressman a message, click here.
To find out more about the Global HEALTH Act, click here.
To read the full text of the bill, click here.

