The Global Health Initiative (GHI) is an integrated approach to global health that leverages our country’s unprecedented investments to improve health worldwide. GHI strengthens health systems with a focus on healthier women and families, innovation, partnerships, and country ownership. GHI aims to maximize the sustainable health impact the United States achieves for every dollar invested.

The principles underlying the foundation of GHI are:

• Focus on women, girls, and gender equality
• Increase impact through strategic coordination and integration
• Strengthen and leverage key multilateral organizations, global health partnerships and private sector engagement
• Encourage country ownership and invest in country-led plans, build sustainability through health systems strengthening to save more lives
• Improve metrics and monitoring and evaluation to maximize efficiency and gain value for money
• Promote research and innovation for smart new solutions to save more lives and make smart investments

Through reliance on those principles, the GHI supports the following goals and targets:

• HIV/AIDS: The United States is using science to guide policies, strengthen programs, and maximize the impact of U.S. efforts. Three key scientific interventions have been identified as pivotal parts of our prevention and treatment portfolio: preventing mother-to-child transmission, expanding voluntary male circumcision, and scaling up treatment as prevention. When used in combination with each other, condoms and other prevention tools, these three interventions offer an historic opportunity to drive down the worldwide rate of new infection. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) will prevent more than 12 million new HIV infections; provide direct support for more than 4 million people on treatment; and support care services for more than 12 million people, including 5 million orphans and vulnerable children.
• Malaria: The President’s Malaria Initiative will halve the burden of malaria in 70 percent of the at-risk population in Africa, an estimated 450 million people. This effort will include the expansion of malaria efforts in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Tuberculosis: The U.S. Government will support efforts to reduce by 50 percent tuberculosis deaths and disease. This will involve treating 2.6 million new cases and 57,200 multi-drug resistant cases.
• Maternal Health: The U.S. Government will reduce maternal mortality by 30 percent across assisted countries.
• Child Health: The U.S. Government will reduce under-5 mortality rates by 35 percent across assisted countries.
• Nutrition: The U.S. Government will reduce child undernutrition by 20 percent across assisted food insecure countries in conjunction with the President’s Feed the Future Initiative.
• Family Planning and Reproductive Health: The U.S. Government will prevent 54 million unintended pregnancies.
• Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs): The U.S. Government will reduce the prevalence of seven NTDs, eliminate lymphatic filariasis and blinding trachoma by 2020 and eliminate onchocerciasis in Latin America by 2016.

GHI Builds on Results of U.S. Efforts in the Health Sector:

• HIV/AIDS: Under PEPFAR, in FY2010 alone, more than 3.2 million people received antiretroviral therapy; more than 600,000 pregnant women received antiviral medication to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission of the disease; and more than 11 million people received care and support services, including nearly 4 million orphans and vulnerable children.
• Child Health: The U.S. Government has supported much of the research that identified and demonstrated the effectiveness of high-impact interventions, including Oral Rehydration Therapy, vitamin A supplementation, zinc treatment for child diarrheal illness, community treatment of pneumonia and essential newborn care.
• Maternal Health: New estimates show a 34 percent decline in the number of maternal deaths from the levels of 1990. The United States has been a major donor to both maternal health and family planning.
• Malaria: During the fourth year of implementation, the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative, led by USAID and implemented with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reached more than 65 million people with malaria prevention and/or treatment measures. Specifically, more than 45 million insecticide-treated bed nets, more than 95 million antimalarial treatments, and more than 25 million rapid test kits have been procured since the initiative began. More than 36,000 health workers were trained on malaria case management in year five (2010) alone. In nine Initiative-supported countries, substantial reductions in all-cause deaths in children under five years of age (ranging from 16 -50%) have been documented; evidence suggests that malaria prevention and treatment efforts are playing a major role in these reductions.
• Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs): Since 2006, the U.S. government has supported the delivery of more than 418 million treatments through integrated programs reaching more than 185 million people in 19 countries. U.S. programs fund training of community-based and professional health care workers and the targeted mass drug administration of drugs to reduce the burden of seven debilitating neglected tropical diseases, including onchocerciasis (river blindness), trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, and three soil-transmitted helminths.
• Family Planning: Key to increasing contraceptive use has been the expansion of services available through community health workers through recruitment, training, and task-shifting; strengthening of the supply chain; and increased government commitment to family planning.
• Tuberculosis (TB): The U.S. Government’s international TB program works with high-burden countries to expand control and treatment programs that reach the most vulnerable populations. Between 1990 and 2009, death rates from TB decreased by 29 percent and prevalence rates decreased by 14 percent in countries with USAID-supported TB programs. All regions of the world are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal targets of halving TB prevalence and deaths by 2015. The U.S. Government invests a substantial part of its TB resources to strengthening the health systems and service delivery in its priority countries.
• Nutrition: Globally, the prevalence of children who are underweight has decreased from one in three to one in four since 1990. U.S. Government support has provided 12 million infants, children and women with a core package of interventions as part of Feed the Future and the Global Health Initiative. Twenty-nine million infants and children received Vitamin A supplementation in six countries. The U.S. Government also supports public-private partnerships with more than 20 companies which increase access to nutritious foods in more than 15 countries.

For more information about GHI, please visit the Global Health Initiative website or the USAID, CDC, or PEPFAR websites.

To view the full GHI dataset, click here.