CSIS Launches Commission on Global Health and Smart Power

I had the opportunity to attend a CSIS launch of their new Commission on Smart Global Health Policy. The idea of the Commission is to create an action plan that will seek ways to create a more strategic approach to the way the U.S. government does "health development" abroad. (Health development in its broadest sense.) (URL: http://www.csis.org/globalhealth/)

As I listened, several things occurred to me. First, that the audience questions tended to focus on the health of recipient populations, or the urgency of need in recipient populations. And therefore one of the underlying assumptions is that U.S. global health policy is intended to make people in other countries healthy. I would suggest that's only one piece of the pie. There are a couple other reasons why we do health development around the globe: 1) because it makes us, the American tax payer, feel good; 2) medicine is a way to engage with the rest of the world that is less ethically challenging than, say, dealing in arms--so it's an engagement strategy; 3) private industry (drug manufacturers) makes money from our efforts to build health systems abroad and has a hand in the development efforts. Those three reasons are just off the top of my head, and need to be articulated better, but I hope they are recognized by the Commission.

Next, there was talk about sustainability. Panelists discussed long-term solutions like creating "systems of delivery" that would endure and help communities for longer than just one intervention. Associated with this thread of discussion was discourse about sustainable funding and I link in the topic of chronic diseases. I thought this was an interesting discussion because there was little clarity (probably due to time constraints) about the taxpayer. The reason some diseases and causes are more popular than others is because Congress pays more out to defend the U.S. from diseases which appear to "threaten" the U.S. in some way. The U.S. taxpayer is not particularly interested in saving rural Chinese populations from obesity, say, whereas the taxpayer might be lots more compelled to take an interest in the next round of influenza.

Finally, the Commission includes a media person. Her focus was unclear to me--she only had a few moments to talk. She presented a view of the media that seemed to focus on their utility as an informational device for the recipient populations (cell phones, popular shows, games etc). I think that's the obvious part of the story and again, what's forgotten here is the U.S. taxpayer. It's obvious to me that the U.S. tax payer does not know what the US is doing abroad in terms of global health, and we do not have a "story line" that the media can tie in to. I think the reason we don't have a developed story line is because America hasn't developed a story and belief about it's good work. That story is what political leaders need to begin to develop in order to influence both U.S. populations as well as foreign populations. It will be a story that the media can help develop and tap in to. Until we do this, "Smart Global Health Power" will be a fractured effort.