Category: Policy Blog

This blog was originally published as part of the Future Development blog series of the Brookings Institution on March 8, 2018 and the original version can be found here. During the next few years, over a dozen middle-income countries are likely to transition away from multilateral concessional assistance—that is, grants and loans that offer flexible or lenient terms for repayment—including support from International Development Association (IDA) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. There are good reasons to worry these countries, including Nigeria and Pakistan, will find the transition tough. Despite being middle-income economies, many of them still have high rates of child and maternal mortality, weak health systems, and large shares of the population living in poverty. This is not surprising. The real question is whether the countries are more vulnerable…

Seventy-nine countries are off track to meet ambitious global health targets for maternal and child health, according to an analysis by researchers from the Brookings Institution and the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI). If those countries were to recover and accelerate their progress according to the targets, the authors note, 11.8 million lives—1.6 million mothers and 10.2 million children—could be saved. To arrive at these numbers, John McArthur and Krista Rasmussen of the Brookings Institution and Gavin Yamey of DGHI examined trends in child and maternal mortality and extrapolated them forward to 2030. They examined how their findings stacked up against targets in the third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” Adopted by United Nations member states in 2015, the SDGs…

Despite recent progress in global health, poor populations in low- and middle-income countries continue to suffer and die disproportionately from poverty related and neglected diseases (PRNDs). For many of these diseases, new medicines, vaccines, and diagnostic tests are urgently needed. However, the lack of market incentives is a major barrier to research and development (R&D) for such health technologies. Governments and philanthropic foundations have helped to address this gap by funding product development for PRNDs. In a new study that we published yesterday, we focused on one important government funder of such product development: the United States government. Our study, called “Strengthening the United States Government’s Role in Product Development for Global Health,” conducted in collaboration with other colleagues in the Duke Global Health Institute and at the Duke Margolis…

Today we are excited to launch the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health, based in the Duke Global Health Institute, a new kind of policy lab that will apply design thinking principles to address critical challenges in financing and delivering global health.So what are these challenges, and what do we mean by design thinking principles? The financing and delivery challenges that the Center will address are related to three critical gaps: A gap in donor financing of crucial global public goods for health and other “global functions.” Donor financing for health has flat-lined in recent years and too little of it has been directed at global public goods for health—such as developing new medicines for neglected diseases of poverty—and at other “global functions,” such as preparing for pandemics. A…