Hot Topics in Global Health Financing: Accountability, Transition, & the UHC Agenda

Since 2000, a large and complex global infrastructure has emerged to help finance public health improvement in low- and middle-income countries. These institutions have helped drive historic improvements in child survival, HIV mortality, and access to modern contraception—yet serious questions have arisen about their long-term sustainability, their effects on country-led health systems, and whether they create incentives that are misaligned with long-term public health impart. Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Jason Keene, Masters in Public Administration and International Development student at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews Rachel Silverman, Assistant Director of Global Health Policy and a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Global Development, gives us a brief overview of the current health financing architecture. She also discusses three “hot topics” in global health financing: fiscal and programmatic accountability and incentive models; strategies to “transition” countries away from reliance on external financing; and the movement away from “vertical”, disease-focused financing streams toward a more comprehensive, holistic vision for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). // www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on October 26, 2018. About Rachel Silverman: Rachel Silverman is a senior policy analyst and assistant director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development, focusing on global health financing and incentive structures. During previous work at the Center from 2011 to 2013, she contributed to research and analysis on value for money, incentives, measurement, and policy coherence in global health, among other topics. Before joining CGD, Silverman spent two years supporting democratic strengthening and good governance programs in Kosovo and throughout Central and Eastern Europe with the National Democratic Institute. She holds a master's of philosophy with distinction in public health from the University of Cambridge, which she attended as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She also holds a BA with distinction in international relations and economics from Stanford University.