Kaiser Family Foundation and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is holding a briefing on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 9:30am at the Barbara Jordan Conference Center in Washington, D.C. to explore HHS’ role in global health and the emerging global health strategy. The event will explore the goals of the new strategy and the ways in which it fits with other U.S. global health objectives. If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, register online to attend.
Rick King, PhD, Vice President, Vaccine Design, IAVI
Emily Moore, Vice President for Business Development, Temptime Corp.
Wendy Taylor, Senior Advisor for Innovative Finance and Public Private Partnerships, Bureau of Global Health, USAI
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is marking its 50th anniversary as the main U.S. humanitarian relief and international development agency. This conversation regarding USAID and its global partenrs will shed insight into instrumental partnerships in global health work.
This important event will be webcast live at http://bit.ly/vWwx9o where you can also submit questions. You can also join the conversation on Twitter under the hashtag #GHPDP.
The Kaiser Family Foundation’sGlobal Health Policy Tracker provides brief overviews of key congressional, administrative, and budgetary actions, including the status of legislation, policies and programs, and government reports and hearings. This online tool is newly updated and allows users to quickly find and track the latest developments on U.S. global health policy issues such as:
The House State and Foreign Operations Appropriationsbill for Fiscal Year 2012;
Movement on the Foreign Relations Authorizations Acts in the House and Senate; and
A Government Accountability Office report on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
The Policy Tracker is a great feature of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Global Health Gateway, an online source for information on the U.S. role in global health, with policy analysis, polling and other research; daily global news synthesis via the Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report; and country-level data through Kaiser’s Global Health Facts.
Two studies from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health were recently published in Health Affairs‘ June issue on Strategies for the Decade of Vaccines. The studies examined the impact of expanding immunization against pneumococcal pneumonia; Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib); bacterial meningitis; diphtheria; pertussis; tetanus; measles; rotavirus and malaria to cover 90% of children in 72 countries. They found that increasing vaccine development and delivery over the next 10 years in these 72 countries could prevent 6.4 million children from dying with an economic savings of $231 billion in the value of statistical lives saved and over $151 billion saved through reduced treatment costs and increased productivity. The issue brief audiocasts offer more insight into these and other contents of the June issue.
While this looks promising, another study from the GAVI Alliance suggests that developing nations will be challenged to pay for expanded vaccine delivery without substantial outside support. In order to procure the projected benefits of increased immunization efforts, creative vaccine financing strategies will be needed. One such effort comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s commitment over the current decade–the Decade of Vaccines–to promote childhood immunization in the developing world.
Beth Tritter, Managing Director, The Glover Park Group; Former Legislative Director for Congresswoman Nita Lowey, Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations.
Todd Summers, Senior Advisor for Global Health, ONE Campaign.
Allen Moore, Senior Advisor for Global Health Security Program, Stimson Center, and Adjunct Professor in Global Health, George Washington University; Former Deputy Chief of Staff and Policy Director for Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
Jennifer Kates, Moderator, Vice President and Director, Global Health & HIV Policy, Kaiser Family Foundation.
They will examine the new legislative landscape of the 112th Congress and the ways in which recent changes will impact global health programs and foreign assistance.
Today, December 1st, is World AIDS Day, a reminder of the tragedy of the epidemic as well as the progress which is occurring. According to UNAIDS, over 33 million people in the world are living with HIV, including 1.5 million in North America. While great injustices exist in access to care for many of the millions living with HIV/AIDS around the globe, human rights efforts seem to be increasingly integrated into national AIDS strategies with 89% of countries explicitly addressing human rights in their AIDS strategies and 91% implementing programs to reduce discrimination and stigma related to HIV/AIDS. With regards to funding targeting the epidemic, while an estimated US $15.9 billion was spent towards HIV/AIDS efforts in 2009, declining international investments are expected to significantly impact many around the globe, especially those in low-income countries which rely heavily on international funding of their HIV/AIDS programs.
The 2010 UNAIDS report highlights updated information regarding the epidemic, including the growing number of people practicing safe sex, and gaining access to antiretrovirals in many parts of the world. Offering hope that progress is being made to quell the epidemic, UNAIDS reports that at least 56 countries have either stablized or achieved significant declines in rates of new HIV infections, with new HIV infections declining almost 20% in the last five years. At the same time that rates of new infections are declining overall worldwide, the number of new infections are increasing in areas like Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in large part due to injection drug use.
Highlights of the UNAIDS 2010 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic
This discussion explores the approach taken by the United States to address Global Health funding historically and looking into the future. Discussions on global health funding often involve a division between bilateral approaches to funding versus multilateral funding engagement. Bilateral funding involves the provision of direct assistance from one government to, or for the benefit of, one or more other countries, with the donor having significant control over the target, approach and content of assistance. On the other hand, multilateral organizations such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the Global Fund, bring together global stakeholders to develop and collaborate on global health targets.
Historically, the US has commonly supported global health priorities via bilateral funding and programs but the focus on promoting multilateral organizations is growing. For example, the US was the first and is currently the largest donor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and a key component of the Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative includes a renewed and increased commitment to multilateral engagement. The shifting approach has led to questions regarding the appropriate focus for US global health engagement, the proper balance between multilateral and bilateral funding efforts and the appropriate role of the US government and other organizations in international treaties and other collaborative agreements.
Recently members of several major corporations including Nike, EBay and the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) presented an open letter calling on the US government and President Obama to take an innovative approach to carrying out the goals and visions committed to at the recent G8 summit and to develop a US global development strategy. They call on US leaders and Congress to develop a rewritten US development Act to replace the outdated 1961 Foreign Assistance Act. They discuss an approach to modernize foreign assistance in the global arena.
A new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that heterosexuals living in impoverished communities are as much as five times more likely to be HIV-positive than the general U.S. population, regardless of race or ethnicity. In the US, the overall HIV prevalence rate for African Americans is eight times the rate for whites, and the rate for Latinos is three times the rate for whites. Yet in very-low income areas this CDC study found that these disparities do not exist. The study examined 9,000 people in 23 cities, finding that 2.1% of heterosexuals living in high-poverty urban areas were infected with the HIV virus, including 2.4% of those living below the poverty line and 1.2% of those living above it. This is in comparison to the 0.45% rate of HIV infection in the general US population. The authors hypothesize that the findings could account for many of the ethnic and racial disparities in HIV infections in this country, since African Americans are 4.5 times as likely and Latinos four times as likely as whites to live in poverty.
For a look at the US government’s role in improving global maternal, newborn, and child health check out the Kaiser Family Foundation’s recently released report entitled “The U.S. Government’s Efforts to Address Global Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health: The Global Health Initiative and Beyond.” The report discusses US efforts towards improving child and maternal health including the recently heightened focus placed on these issues by the Administration’s Global Health Initiative. It provides a detailed overview of the U.S. government’s response thus far, looks at U.S. funding trends for maternal and child health, examines international and domestic agencies’ activities related to maternal and child health, explores U.S. participation in international multilateral efforts and identifies key policy issues surrounding the future of the U.S. involvement in such health issues.
