Global Health Initiatives

The initial Global Health Initiative was launched by Kofi Annan at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forumin 2002. Annan stated that the GHI's mission was to engage businesses in public-private partnerships to tackle HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and health systems.

Examples of GHIs are the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund), and the World Bank's

PEPFAR – an initiative established in 2003 by the Bush Administration – and PEPFAR II (PEPFAR's successor in 2009 under the Obama Administration[2]) are bilateral agreements between the United States and a recipient of its development aid for HIV/AIDS – typically an international non-government organisation INGO or a recipient country's government. The Global Fund, established in 2002, and the GAVI Alliance, launched in 2000, are public-private partnerships that raise and disburse funds to treat AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and for immunization and vaccines. The World Bank is an International financial institution. It is the largest source of funding for HIV/AIDS within the United Nations system and has a portfolio of HIV/AIDS programmes dating back to 1989.[3] In 2000, the Bank launched the first phase of its response to HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa – the Multi-Country AIDS Program (MAP). This came to an end in 2006 when a second phase – Agenda for Action 2007-11 – came into effect.[4]

In terms of their institutional structure, GHIs have little in common with each other. In terms of their function – specifically their ability to raise and disburse funds, provide resources and coordinate and/or implement disease control in multiple countries – GHIs share some common ground, even if the mechanisms through which each of these functions is performed are different.[5]

Figure 1: Donor commitments to GHIs[6]

Tracking funding from GHIs poses challenges.[7] However, it is possible to determine the amounts of funding GHIs commit and disburse from sources such as the OECD CRS online database, as well as data provided by individual GHIs (Figure 1).

Since 1989, the World Bank has committed approximately US$4.2bn in loans and credits for programs, and has disbursed US$3.1bn. Of this total, the Bank's MAP has committed US$1.9bn since 2000. Through bilateral contributions to HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis programmes and donations to the Global Fund, PEPFAR has donated approximately US$25.6bn since 2003. In July 2008, the U.S Senate re-authorised a further US$48 bn over five years for PEPFAR II, of which US$6.7bn has been requested for FY 2010. During the period 2001–2010, donors have pledged US$21.1bn to the Global Fund, of which US$15.8bn has been paid by donors to the Fund. Gavi has approved US$3.7bn for the period 2000-2015[8]

The amount of political priority given to Global Health Initiatives varies between national and international governing powers. Though evidence shows that there exists an inequity between resource allocation for initiatives concerning issues such as child immunization, HIV/AIDS, and family planning in comparison to initiatives for high-burden disorders such as malnutrition and pneumonia, the source of this variance is unknown due to lack of systematic research pertaining to this subject. Global political priority is defined as the extent to which national and international political leaders address an issue of international concern through support in the forms of human capital, technology, and/or finances in order to aid efforts to resolve the problem. Global political priority is demonstrated through national and international leaders expressing sustained concern both privately and publicly, political systems and organizations enacting policies to help alleviate the issue, and national and international agencies providing resource levels that reflect the severity of the given crisis.[1]

The amount of attention a given global initiative receives is considerably dependent on the power and authority of actors connected to the issue, the power and impact of ideas defining and describing the issue, the power of political contexts framing the environments in which the actors operate to address the issue, as well as the weight and power of issue characteristics indicating the severity of the issue (i.e.: statistical indicators, severity metrics, efficacy of proposed interventions, etc.). Factors including objective measurability, scalability of the issue and proposed interventions, ability to track and monitor progress, risk of perceived harm, as well as simplicity and affordability of proposed solutions all contribute to the degree to which a given global initiative is likely to receive political attention.[1]

However, case studies have shown that the likelihood of global initiatives garnering public and political attention is not limited to the aforementioned factors. For example, initiatives concerning polio eradication continue to receive substantial resources in spite of the relatively small global burden of disease as compared to chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, and some communicable diseases such as pneumonia which comparatively attract fewer worldwide resources irrespective of the high morbidity and mortality rates associated with such diseases. These cases highlight the need for extensive research methods and evaluative measures to assess the relative causal weights of factors used to determine how global political priority is attributed to global health initiatives. Existing debates also attribute factors such as the increasing influences of economic globalization, international organizations, and economic actors with little to no previous health remit as each contributing to the evolution of global health governance.[1][9]

There is much discussion about the extent to which the volume of these additional funds creates multiple effects that positively and/or negatively impact both health systems and health outcomes for specific diseases. Assessing the direct impact of GHIs on specific diseases and health systems poses challenges pertaining to the issue of attributing particular effects to individual GHIs.[10] As such, a common response in evaluations of GHIs is to acknowledge the inherent limitations of establishing causal chains in what is a highly complex public health environment, and to base conclusions on adequacy statements resulting from trends that demonstrate substantial growth in process and impact indicators.[10]

However, existing literature argues that this approach towards evaluating GHIs can inadvertently result in overlooking the impact of social determinants on a disease, as implementers and evaluators are less likely to tackle the complexity of a disease within the larger social, political, cultural, and environmental system. Even if a GHI is effectively evaluated – perhaps showing a decrease in disease prevalence – the challenge remains of comprehensively analyzing the long-term impacts of the GHI by addressing the root social, political, or environmental causes of the disease. Accordingly, existing debates suggest that GHIs should be less concerned with the eradication of specific diseases, and should instead focus primarily on factors – such as basic living conditions, sanitation, and access to nutritious food – that are essential to delivering a sustainable heath program.[11]

A small number of institutions have shaped, and continue to shape, research on GHIs. In 2003, researchers at Abt Associates devised an influential framework for understanding the system-wide effects of the Global fund which has informed much subsequent research, including their own studies of system-wide effects of the Global Fund in Benin, Ethiopia, Georgia and Malawi – often referred to as the 'SWEF' studies.[12]

Abt continues to support ongoing research on the effects of GHIs in multiple countries. The Washington-based Center for Global Development has also been very active in its analysis of GHIs, particularly PEPFAR financing. With hubs in London and Dublin, the Global Health Initiatives Network (GHIN) has been coordinating and supporting research in 22 countries on the effects of GHIs on existing health systems.

Knowledge of the effects of GHIs on specific diseases and on health systems comes from multiple sources. Longitudinal studies enable researchers to establish baseline data and then track and compare GHI effects on disease control or country health systems over time. In addition to Abt Associates' SWEF studies, additional early examples of this type of analysis were three-year, multi-country studies of the Global Fund in Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.[13] In 2009, research findings were published from tracking studies in Kyrgyzstan, Peru and Ukraine that sought to identify the health effects of the Global Fund at national and sub-national levels.

In contrast to longitudinal studies, multi-country analyses of GHIs can provide a 'snapshot' of GHI effects but are often constrained by "aggressive timelines".[14] The Maximising Positive Synergies Academic Consortium, for example, reported in 2009 on the effects of the Global Fund and PEPFAR on disease control and health systems, drawing on data from 20 countries.[15] Most GHI evaluations – both internally and externally commissioned – rely on this type of short-term analysis and, inevitably, there is often a trade-off between depth and breadth of reporting.

Synthesis of data from multiple sources is an invaluable resource for making sense of the effects of GHIs. Early synthesis studies include a 2004 synthesis of findings on the effects of the Global Fund in four countries[16] by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), a 2005 study by McKinsey & Company[17] and an assessment of the comparative advantages of the Global Fund and World Bank AIDS programs.[18]

Two wide-ranging studies were published in 2009: a study of interactions between GHIs and country health systems commissioned by the World Health Organisation[19] and a study by researchers from LSHTM and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. The latter study – "The effects of global health initiatives on country health systems: a review of the evidence from HIV/AIDS control" – reviewed the literature on the effects of the Global fund, the World Bank MAP and PEPFAR on country health systems with respect to: 1) national policy; 2) coordination and planning; 3) stakeholder involvement; 4) disbursement, absorptive capacity and management; 5) monitoring & evaluation; and 6) human resources (Table 2).

In a comparison between the three largest donors in sponsoring efforts to win the fight against AIDS in Africa, a research study found that PEPFAR performs best in money transfer and data collection; the Global Fund outperforms in tailoring programmatic initiatives and sharing data; and MAP performs highest in collaborating with government systems, strengthening health systems, and helping to build the capacity of local recipients.[20] Each of the four GHIs summarized has been evaluated at least once since 2005 and all four produce their own annual reports.

• GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance
• Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS
• The United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief