Release of the America First Global Health Strategy

Today, the U.S. Department of State released its America First Global Health Strategy, which outlines a comprehensive vision to make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous while saving millions of lives around the world and preventing infectious disease outbreaks from reaching American shores.  The strategy is built on three pillars.

SAFER.  We will keep Americans safe by continuing to support a global surveillance system that can rapidly detect infectious disease outbreaks.  When there is an outbreak, we will be prepared to work with local governments to respond promptly.  When necessary, we will surge resources to ensure the outbreak is contained, travelers are appropriately screened, and – to the maximum extent possible – the outbreak does not reach American shores.

STRONGER.  Our new global health foreign assistance program is not just aid – it is a strategic mechanism to further our bilateral interests around the world.  Moving forward, we will utilize our health foreign assistance to advance U.S. priorities and move countries toward resilient and durable local health systems.  We will do this thoughtfully, by entering multi-year bilateral agreements with recipient countries – bringing to an end a prolonged period of dependency on health foreign assistance.

These bilateral agreements will ensure that both 100% of frontline commodity purchases and frontline healthcare workers will continue to be funded during the agreement period.  We will partner with each country to ensure there are data systems in place that can both monitor potential outbreaks and broader health outcomes.  We will also work to rapidly transition technical assistance to support governments in taking over key functions rather than individual clinical sites.  This will include more government-to-government assistance while leveraging the private sector and faith-based organizations.  We will ask governments to coinvest in these efforts and work with the United States to align on performance benchmarks in order to strengthen capacities for countries to become self-reliant.

MORE PROSPEROUS.  We will protect American workers and the American economy by helping prevent infectious disease outbreaks from reaching our shores.  We will promote American health innovation globally by procuring and distributing goods from American companies as part of our foreign assistance programs and leverage our bilateral relationships to promote and export American health innovations and products around the world.

With our new America First Global Health Strategy, we will not only save lives and assist countries around the world in developing resilient and durable health systems, but we will also make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.