For four decades, governments and global health leaders have relied on a stable backbone of surveys that collected population-level health and demographic data to understand everything from child mortality to HIV prevalence. Then, almost overnight, it was cut off.
Early last year, the Trump administration abruptly terminated a $236.8 million contract that was supposed to run from 2024 to 2029 with the American global technology company ICF for the Demographic and Health Surveys program, or DHS — abruptly halting over two dozen active surveys and, more broadly, the foundation behind one of the world’s most trusted health data sources.
The cancellation was part of the Trump administration’s termination of over $76.5 billion — nearly half — of the U.S. Agency for International Development multiyear foreign assistance awards early last year. The move stunned the global community, which has long relied on DHS surveys to calculate over 30 indicators tied to the Sustainable Development Goals. In some countries, they’re the only nationally representative population survey and are embedded within government statistical systems, guiding planning and investments.