Happy New Year! We hope you all had a restful holiday.
Last year was quite the roller coaster for global health and there are big changes on the horizon in store for this year with new American leadership and a scheduled conclusion to the global pandemic treaty. But before we dive into these changes in future editions, we thought we would take this time to reflect on some of the biggest global health stories we published last year.
New partnership
This month, two of global health’s biggest players are coming together under a new parent company, HealthX Partners — following an announcement made by Population Services International and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation late last year.
“Given all the dynamics in the sector, the worst thing for any organization to do right now is nothing,” Karl Hofmann, PSI’s president and chief executive officer, told Devex in October. “We think a transnational, networked approach is a smart way to deliver value.”
HealthX Partners will manage a combined budget of nearly half a billion dollars — and while PSI and EGPAF will retain their names, missions and operational independence, the organizations’ back office functions — think human resources and finance — will eventually be grouped at the HealthX Partners level. That being said, PSI and EGPAF will also be exploring ways to integrate their programs, connecting a teen who received pediatric HIV/AIDS support from EGPAF, for example, to contraceptive services from PSI.
“It’s not a merger, because [the EGPAF and PSI] identities are really important,” said Chip Lyons, president and chief executive officer of EGPAF. “It’s on purpose that it’s a parent organization with subsidiaries as co-creators, and additional subsidiaries that may find [a partnership] beneficial given the challenges that they’re facing.”
It’s a move that comes amid global downturns, with a recent analysis from the ONE Campaign showing that when COVID-19 money is stripped from the equation, nearly all major donors have decreased their health financing across the world. PSI’s revenue is down by more than 40% since its high point in 2015, while, as of 2022, EGPAF’s revenue had been reduced by 15% from its high point in 2019. At the same time, the push toward localization has changed how — and if — large international agencies such as PSI and EGPAF should be responding.
ICYMI: Global health giants partner up under new umbrella (Pro)
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The next big contract
The last of the NextGen suite of supply chain contracts is due to be awarded this year by USAID. Between them, they’re potentially worth almost $17 billion. They’re meant to run over a decade, and they’re the largest awards that USAID has ever given out — in fact, some of the largest being awarded by any part of the U.S. government.
The awards replace a previous set of contracts, including a $9.5 billion award to international development company Chemonics, which has faced consistent questions over value for money.
NextGen is made up of a complex web of interconnected contracts, with nine headline awards of varying size, several of which are broken up into smaller lots.
The largest of them all, known as PSA HIV, covers the procurement of commodities to treat and prevent HIV and AIDS. The contract was unveiled in February last year, but so far, there is no word on the likely winner.
The long delay fits with the general pattern of events. USAID has made extremely slow progress on all the awards, some of which have been delayed by up to three years, with plenty of rumblings of disquiet and disputes among potential winners.
The last award to be announced was the $250 million QuTI contract, won by nonprofit FHI 360. QuTI stands for qualifying, testing, and issuing, and it will ensure that drugs and other health communities procured through NextGen are safe, effective, and of acceptable quality.
ICYMI: USAID's largest NextGen contract unveiled — who will get $5 billion? (Pro)
‘Toxic’ culture
We initially reported last May on the upheaval at the international organization Women in Global Health after its long-standing executive director and co-founder Dr. Roopa Dhatt was fired and the board appointed Jeffrey Mecaskey as interim board chair. The lack of transparency around what had happened and the move to elevate a man to the position sparked outrage from global chapter members of an organization that aims to do just the opposite — elevate women to positions of influence in global health.
However, we later found out that there was more to this story. Nine months before this turnover in leadership, seven Black women filed a whistleblower complaint against the organization’s leadership. We obtained a copy of the findings of the investigation into these complaints, commissioned by the board, which found the organization had a “toxic” work environment and evidence of a “white supremacy culture” — which the investigator defined as traits such as power hoarding and a sink-or-swim mentality.
The organization has since restructured its leadership to no longer include an executive director and now the board includes four women and no men, with Emilia Caro — co-founder of Women in Global Health Argentina’s chapter — as the new interim board chair.
Background reading:
• Probe finds Women in Global Health had ‘toxic’ environment
• Women in Global Health launches investigation, man to lead board
One big number
$250 million
—Last year, Melinda French Gates unveiled the latest piece of her $1 billion commitment to women and girls: A $250 million open call for organizations focused on women’s physical and mental health.
After an extensive search process, that grant money will be awarded to organizations across the world this year — with each winning group poised to receive between $1 million and $5 million each. At this point, the open call’s registration process has closed, and applicants have until Jan. 10 to submit online applications.
It was the last of three funding opportunities announced by French Gates last year, the first of which included $200 million for organizations focused on women’s reproductive rights in the United States. The second — worth a collective $240 million — went toward 12 individuals, each of whom received $20 million to distribute to the organizations they felt were best placed to support women and girls. And all three came after the philanthropist broke away from the Gates Foundation, the organization she’d run with her former husband, Bill Gates, until June of last year.
“For too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women’s rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense,” wrote French Gates in a New York Times op-ed published May last year. “I want to help even the match.”
Read: Melinda French Gates announces $250M open call for women's health
Growing pains
The leading Pan-African public health agency, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, has been on a journey of growth in recent years — but it's come with growing pains.
A series of accusations were sent to AU leadership, donors, and partner organizations against the agency’s new leadership. We obtained an audit of these accusations, which disproved some but also found merit in others, including raising concerns about weak financial controls and irregular hiring practices.
It also flagged concerns around procurement practices during Africa CDC’s flagship conference in Zambia, cautioning that a failure to follow the AU’s procurement rules could create an “avenue for fraud.”
Background reading: Africa CDC audit warns against creating an 'avenue for fraud'
What we’re reading
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s five decades of global health work. [The New York Times]
Israel has detained hundreds of health care workers from Gaza, according to a Gaza health ministry official. [The Washington Post]
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says he and colleagues “escaped death narrowly” at Yemen airport hit by an Israeli missile. [NPR]
About the authors
Elissa Miolene
Elissa Miolene reports on USAID and the U.S. government at Devex. She previously covered education at The San Jose Mercury News, and has written for outlets like The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Washingtonian magazine, among others. Before shifting to journalism, Elissa led communications for humanitarian agencies in the United States, East Africa, and South Asia.
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.
David Ainsworth@daveainsworth4
David Ainsworth is business editor at Devex, where he writes about finance and funding issues for development institutions. He was previously a senior writer and editor for magazines specializing in nonprofits in the U.K. and worked as a policy and communications specialist in the nonprofit sector for a number of years. His team specializes in understanding reports and data and what it teaches us about how development functions.
