Gawande wants USAID's global health bureau to hit 30% local funding

Atul Gawande, the head of USAID’s global health bureau, is pushing his staff to exceed agency Administrator Samantha Power’s local funding target. In 2021 Power announced that 25% of USAID’s funding should go to local organizations by 2025. Gawande said Thursday that his bureau is already at 20% local funding, and he wants it to hit 30% by Power’s deadline. USAID’s global health bureau got a head start on localization due to its management of significant funding from PEPFAR, the U.S. global HIV initiative. In 2018, under former U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Deborah Birx, PEPFAR adopted its own target of 70% local funding, which the State Department-led initiative has already achieved. Speaking at a USAID event on gender equality and women’s empowerment, Gawande said that other global health programs still fall far short on localization, with some funding as low as 3%. “The story in global health is our variation,” Gawande said. To overcome that he has asked for localization plans from the bureau’s various offices, and more than half have provided them so far. Meanwhile, USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance will soon release its new policy for localized humanitarian assistance, Sarah Charles, who leads the bureau, said Thursday. Charles said that policy will reflect an awareness of complex power dynamics in humanitarian contexts. “Particularly in these environments of conflict, there’s a risk that in channeling resources to local organizations without that inclusion lens … that you’re concentrating resources in the hands of the most powerful local actors versus the ones that are most likely to those that are most vulnerable,” Charles said. The humanitarian assistance bureau is particularly focused on reaching women-led organizations as it works on “centering local voices in decision-making in emergencies,” she added.