Advancing the America First Global Health Strategy Through Landmark Bilateral Agreements on Global Health Cooperation

In September, I outlined the Trump Administration’s America First Global Health Strategy, which aims to strengthen U.S. leadership and excellence in global health while eliminating dependency, ideology, inefficiency, and waste from our foreign assistance architecture.

Today, I welcomed Kenyan President William Samoei Ruto and Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi to Washington to sign the first of what will hopefully be dozens of bilateral agreements finalized in the coming weeks.

Kenya’s agreement is a prime example of what these incentive-based bilateral health compacts aim to achieve. It supports Kenya’s leadership in charting its own health priorities by shifting more resources into the national system and reducing reliance on parallel NGO systems. The agreement invests in data, commodities procurement, and modernization to build sustainable capacity. And, most importantly, it includes meaningful co-investment commitments from Kenya aligned with ambitious yet realistic performance benchmarks, paving the way for long-term health self-reliance.

I look forward to the Department signing several more agreements in the weeks ahead, and to continuing our work with Kenya and other partners to strengthen our foreign assistance architecture and deliver on the America First Global Health Strategy.