Author: ag843@duke.edu

This article was written by Kathya Acuña Luna, a student in Gavin Yamey’s Geneva-based summer course in global health policy. Kathya is a biomedical engineer with an additional MSc in AI, currently completing her second MSc in Global Health at the University of Geneva. Her main interests surround the development and application of technology for the improvement of healthcare access for the most vulnerable populations, addressing critical inequalities in health.  A central pillar of the America First Global Health Strategy, released on September 18 2025, is bilateral agreements between the United States (US) and countries that receive US health aid. As of July 1 2026, 34 countries had signed such agreements, of which 25 are in Africa.  Human Rights Watch has assessed seven of the bilateral agreements with African countries, specifically Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Liberia, and Uganda. The results of this analysis are deeply concerning—they show that the US government is making lifesaving health assistance conditional upon “surveillance…

This article was written by Mary Ann Fahmy, a student in Gavin Yamey’s master’s course, “Global Health Policy: Transforming Evidence Into Policy.” In the piece, she uses Shiffman and Smith’s well-known agenda-setting framework to understand how female genital mutilation/cutting rose up the global health agenda. The framework proposes that health concerns gain global priority based on four factors: “the strength of the actors involved in the initiative, the power of the ideas they use to portray the issue, the nature of the political contexts in which they operate, and characteristics of the issue itself.” Introduction Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is defined as any procedure that partially or totally removes external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. 1 Although globally recognized as a violation of human rights, it is a cultural practice…

This article was written by Hira Farooq, a student in Gavin Yamey’s master’s course, “Global Health Policy: Transforming Evidence Into Policy.” In the piece, she uses John Kingdon’s well-known multiple streams policy framework to understand how and why Pakistan prioritized polio elimination. The framework proposes that a policy concern rises to the top of a national agenda when three “streams” collide: the problem stream (identification and definition of the problem), the policy stream (development of policy solutions), and the politics stream (the political climate). Kingdon also noted the importance of policy windows (moments in time when the streams converge) and policy entrepreneurs (individuals skilled at bringing the streams together).   Since the establishment of its national Polio Eradication Programme in 1994, Pakistan has conducted hundreds of polio campaigns, declared polio…

It’s hard to believe that we at the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health have let a whole year go by without posting a policy blog (our last one was in October 2024!). It’s been a busy year, but we’re now coming up for air and we’ve made a commitment to start publishing a Policy Blog at least monthly. Today, I’m really delighted to announce that we published a new report, commissioned by the Kiel Institute, a think tank based in Kiel, Germany, called “Can Development Assistance for Health Mutually Benefit Donors and Recipient Countries?" This year, several donors made large cuts in their official development assistance (ODA) for health, accompanied by other shocks to the global health system, such as geopolitical fragmentation, a retreat from multilateralism, climate-driven health…

This article was first published in Time, Ideas & Health October 2, 2024. The authors are Jirair Ratevosian and Gavin Yamey. Ratevosian is Hock Fellow at the Duke Global Health Institute and former senior advisor to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Yamey is a physician and professor of global health and public policy at Duke University, where he directs the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health As diplomats and officials from around the world gathered in New York last week for the annual United Nations General Assembly, one question dominated the attention of global leaders: who will lead the U.S. in 2025? The stakes of this election go far beyond America’s borders. The next president will play a critical role in addressing the world’s most pressing challenges:…