Four Principles For Expanding PEPFAR’s Role As A Vital Force In US Health Diplomacy Abroad

Diplomacy and Health: The End of the Utilitarian Era

Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA), as a system of allocative efficiency for global health programs, is an influential criterion for resource allocation in the context of diplomacy and inherent foreign policy decisions therein. This is because such programs have diplomatic benefits and costs that can be uploaded from the recipient and affect the broader foreign policy interests of the donor and the diplomacy landscape between both parties. These diplomatic implications are vital to the long-term success of both the immediate program and any subsequent programs; hence it is important to articulate them alongside program performance, in terms of how well their interrelated interventions were perceived by the communities served. Consequently, the exclusive focus of cost-effectiveness on medical outcomes ignores (1) the potential non-health benefits of less cost-effective interventions and (2) the potential of these collateral gains to form compelling cases across the interdisciplinary spectrum to increase the overall resource envelope for global health. The assessment utilizes the Kevany Riposte’s "K-Scores" methodology, which has been previously applied as a replicable evaluation tool¹ and assesses the trade-offs of highly cost-effective but potentially "undiplomatic" global health interventions. Ultimately, we apply this approach to selected HIV/AIDS interventions to determine their wider benefits and demonstrate the value alternative evaluation and decision-making methodologies. Interventions with high "K-Scores" should be seriously considered for resource allocation independent of their cost-effectiveness. "Oregon Plan" thresholds² are neither appropriate nor enforceable in this regard while "K-Score" results provide contextual information to policy-makers who may have, to date, considered only cost-effectiveness data. While CEA is a valuable tool for resource allocation, its use as a utilitarian focus should be approached with caution. Policy-makers and global health program managers should take into account a wide range of outcomes before agreeing upon selection and implementation.

Diplomacia da saúde global: proposta de modelo conceitual

Resumo Este estudo busca construir, a partir das publicações sobre diplomacia da saúde global (DSG), representação deste campo de conhecimento, seus principais conceitos e características. A partir de uma pesquisa bibliográfica na base de dados PubMed, fez-se uma busca integrada das produções científicas publicadas até agosto de 2016. Os descritores identificados e critérios de inclusão adotados selecionaram 54 publicações que compuseram a amostra final. Os dados quantitativos foram analisados por estatística descritiva, e as informações qualitativas, pela análise de conteúdo temática. As publicações sobre o tema tiveram início em 1970, mas 85,2% abrangem o período de 2007 a 2014. A partir da análise de conteúdo dos resultados das produções científicas, foi elaborado um modelo teórico conceitual que abrange os seguintes macrotemas da DSG: conceito de diplomacia da saúde; uso da diplomacia na cooperação internacional em pesquisa; diplomacia da saúde como ferramenta para fortalecer a política externa; estratégias dos países para fortalecer a DSG e cooperação internacional entre os países; diplomacia da saúde fortalecendo a saúde global; saúde como um bem comum entre as nações em um período de globalização e desafios da diplomacia da saúde para fortalecer a saúde global. A DSG compreende estratégias dos países e cooperação internacional para fortalecer a saúde global e é uma ferramenta para fortalecer a política externa das nações. Promover a cooperação internacional em pesquisa, capacitar recursos humanos nessa área e emancipar países emergentes com base nas intervenções realizadas constituem grandes desafios da DSG.

How the Avahan HIV prevention program transitioned from the Gates Foundation to the government of India

Developing countries face diminishing development aid and time-limited donor commitments that challenge the long-term sustainability of donor-funded programs to improve the health of local populations. Increasing country ownership of the programs is one solution. Transitioning managerial and financial responsibility for donor-funded programs to governments and local stakeholders represents a highly advanced form of country ownership, but there are few successful examples among large-scale programs. We present a transition framework and describe how it was used to transfer the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's HIV/AIDS prevention program, the Avahan program, to the Government of India. Essential features recommended for the transition of donor-funded programs to governments include early planning with the government, aligning donor program components with government structures and funding models prior to transition, building government capacity through active technical and management support, budgeting for adequate support during and after the transition, and dividing the transition into phases to allow time for adjustments and corrections. The transition of programs to governments is an important sustainability strategy for efforts to scale up HIV prevention programs to reach the populations most at risk.

Elusive accountabilities in the HIV scale-up: 'ownership' as a functional tautology

Mounting concerns over aid effectiveness have rendered 'ownership' a central concept in the vocabulary of development assistance for health (DAH). The article investigates the application of both 'national ownership' and 'country ownership' in the broader development discourse as well as more specifically in the context of internationally funded HIV/AIDS interventions. Based on comprehensive literature reviews, the research uncovers a multiplicity of definitions, most of which either divert from or plainly contradict the concept's original meaning and intent. During the last 10 years in particular, it appears that both public and private donors have advocated for greater 'ownership' by recipient governments and countries to hedge their own political risk rather than to work towards greater inclusion of the latter in agenda-setting and programming. Such politically driven semantic dynamics suggest that the concept's salience is not merely a discursive reflection of globally skewed power relations in DAH but a deliberate exercise in limiting donors' accountabilities. At the same time, the research also finds evidence that this conceptual contortion frames current global public health scholarship, thus adding further urgency to the need to critically re-evaluate the international political economy of global public health from a discursive perspective.