A PLoS Medicine Perspective piece reflects on the growing awareness of the "inter-linkages between health and foreign policy" among foreign policy leaders and the growth of global health diplomacy at U.N. and WHO levels. "In support of effective health governance, better evidence and best practices are needed on how foreign policy can improve policy coordination at all levels and create an improved global policy environment for health," the piece concludes. "Foreign policy practitioners need to become more aware of positive and negative impact of policy options and decisions on health outcomes. This is how foreign policy can make a difference to health" (Mogedal/Alveberg, 5/11).
Blog: New U.S. Strategy To Address Malnutrition
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently announced a new strategy aimed at addressing malnutrition and undernutrition in developing countries, "The Development Newswire" blog reports. "We're identifying millions of young children who need nutritional support and we're sticking with them for a three-year period to give them a foundation to lead healthy lives," Clinton said at the CARE's annual conference. "She explained that nutrition has the biggest impact on a person's life during the first 1,000 days of his or her life, which cover the start of pregnancy through the second year of life," the blog writes. The Obama administration wants to "make nutrition the intersection" of the Global Health Initiative and Feed the Future (Mungcal, 5/12). The State Department's website has a full transcript and video of the speech (5/11).
Blog: Clear Development Strategy Needed
The "Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Blog" examines several U.S. government initiatives, such as Feed the Future, the Global Health Initiative and Congressional legislation, and their possible effects on foreign aid reform. "Without broader foreign aid reform, the administration and Congress must settle for more work-arounds and end up creating more fragmented and separate coordination systems in an effort to compensate for an imperfect system," according to the blog. "What's needed - and has been asked for repeatedly by the development community - is a clear development strategy that specifies the U.S.'s development goals and who's in charge of achieving them" (Dunning, 5/11).
Blogs: WHO's Regional Director for Africa Luis Sambo Speaks At CSIS
The WHO's Regional Director for Africa Luis Sambo spoke last Friday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) "offer[ing] a progress report Friday on the Abuja Declarations on health, signed ten years ago by African heads of state," the Commission on Smart Global Health Policy's blog says. The post highlights elements of his discussion including the goals of "[s]trengthening partnerships and harmonization; [s]upporting health systems strengthening, [p]utting the health of mothers and children first; [s]upporting accelerated actions on HIV/AIDS, Malaria & TB, [i]ntensifying the prevention and control of neglected tropical diseases, non-communicable diseases and epidemics; [a]ccelerating the response to broader health determinants" (Poster, 5/11).
According to the "Science Speaks" blog, Sambo said that not all of the Abuja goals had been achieved, but that Sambo said many of the "successes were achieved thanks to external funding mechanisms, such as PEPFAR and the Global Fund. ... Sambo also expressed high hopes for President Obama's new Global Health Initiative, and expects it to be a powerful initiative that will bring many positive results." The blog notes that Sambo expressed concerns about funding gaps and "said African nations need to take on more responsibilities and ownership of programs, and broaden their health policies to go beyond disease control" (Aziz, 5/8).
This article is republished with kind permission from our friends at The Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery of in-depth coverage of health policy developments, debates and discussions. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for Kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. 2009 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.