Hot Topics in Global Health Financing: Accountability, Transition, & the UHC Agenda

Since 2000, a large and complex global infrastructure has emerged to help finance public health improvement in low- and middle-income countries. These institutions have helped drive historic improvements in child survival, HIV mortality, and access to modern contraception—yet serious questions have arisen about their long-term sustainability, their effects on country-led health systems, and whether they create incentives that are misaligned with long-term public health impart. Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Jason Keene, Masters in Public Administration and International Development student at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews Rachel Silverman, Assistant Director of Global Health Policy and a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Global Development, gives us a brief overview of the current health financing architecture. She also discusses three “hot topics” in global health financing: fiscal and programmatic accountability and incentive models; strategies to “transition” countries away from reliance on external financing; and the movement away from “vertical”, disease-focused financing streams toward a more comprehensive, holistic vision for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). // www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on October 26, 2018. About Rachel Silverman: Rachel Silverman is a senior policy analyst and assistant director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development, focusing on global health financing and incentive structures. During previous work at the Center from 2011 to 2013, she contributed to research and analysis on value for money, incentives, measurement, and policy coherence in global health, among other topics. Before joining CGD, Silverman spent two years supporting democratic strengthening and good governance programs in Kosovo and throughout Central and Eastern Europe with the National Democratic Institute. She holds a master's of philosophy with distinction in public health from the University of Cambridge, which she attended as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She also holds a BA with distinction in international relations and economics from Stanford University.

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Incredible progress has been made throughout the world in recent years. However, globalization has failed to deliver on its promises. As problems like unequal access to education and healthcare, environmental degradation, and stretched finances persist, we must continue building on decades of transformative development work. The Center for International Development (CID) is a university-wide center based at the Harvard Kennedy School that seeks to solve these pressing development problems—and many more. At CID, we believe leveraging global talent is the key to enabling development for all. We teach to build capacity, conduct research that guides development policy, and convene talent to advance ideas for a thriving world. Addressing today’s challenges to international development also requires bridging academic expertise with practitioner experience. Through collaborative, in-country partnerships, CID’s research programs, faculty, and students deploy an analytical framework and context-dependent approaches to tackle development problems from all angles, in every region of the globe.