WASHINGTON DC – In a significant shift from decades-old US global health policy, the Trump administration on Thursday released a new “America First Global Health Strategy” that links foreign aid directly to American national interests.
The plan, which aims to transition recipient countries away from aid and toward “self-reliance,” has drawn immediate scrutiny for its shift in priorities and potential impact on a range of public health initiatives.
The strategy is the clearest sign yet of the US government’s new approach to international assistance following the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year.
USAID has been brought into the State Department as part of a broader push by President Donald Trump to scale back foreign aid.
“We must keep what is good about our health foreign assistance programs while rapidly fixing what is broken,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in the introduction to the strategy.
“We will continue to be the world’s health leader and the most generous nation in the world, but we will do so in a way that directly benefits the American people and directly promotes our national interest,” he emphasized.
A shift in priorities
The new plan re-focuses US aid on a select group of diseases, including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and polio, and covers the US response to pandemic threats.
Other Topics of Interest
Medvedev: No Bunker Can Shield US From Russia’s Big Bombs
Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s self-appointed attack dog, warned Kyiv and Washington that they could not defend themselves from Russia’s big bombs.
However, it notably omits a host of areas that have been prioritized by past American administrations, such as maternal and child health, cholera, and vaccine-preventable diseases like measles.
The strategy also signals a change for the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a flagship program credited with saving millions of lives.
While the new document praises PEPFAR’s successes, it criticizes the wider global health effort as “inefficient,” arguing that too much money has gone to “programmatic overheads.”Under the new model, the US will focus on direct, country-to-country agreements rather than working through contractors.
The plan also emphasizes promoting US health innovation and products overseas.
Transition timelines and additional pledges
A key element of the strategy is a shift in regional priorities. A senior State Department official confirmed that while Africa will continue to be a focus, the administration plans to “invest more in Western Hemisphere” and “more in Asia-Pacific.”
When asked by Kyiv Post about potential cuts to aid for Eastern Europe, particularly war-torn Ukraine, a State Department official explained the move to prioritize the Western Hemisphere and Asia-Pacific was to address historically low levels of US aid in those regions.
The official insisted that it doesn’t mean any particular region will be “de-emphasized,” but that the new strategy will be “bespoke, country-level strategies and plans that are based on the disease metrics, based on the wealth, based on the strategic location of the countries.”
The strategy envisions that most of the 71 countries that receive US health support will have full plans for “transition to full self-reliance” by next March, with bridge funding provided for life-saving activities in the interim.
The plan also pledges a US response within 72 hours to disease outbreaks that threaten Americans.
link
About the Author
