The Plan

Partnering With Countries for Better Health

The U.S. Government’s global health portfolio includes a diverse set of programs and investments in approximately 80 countries worldwide. All of the countries in which the U.S. Government has health investments are essential partners for achieving and sustaining the ambitious outcomes outlined in the Initiative.

• Collaborate for impact: Promote country ownership and align our investments with country-owned plans, including improved coordination across U.S. agencies and with other donors, with the aim of making programs sustainable; leverage and help partner governments coordinate investments by other donors; and create and use systems for feedback about program successes and challenges to focus resources most effectively.
• Do more of what works: Identify, take to scale, and evaluate proven approaches in family planning, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH), neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), safe water, sanitation and hygiene, and other health programs to improve the health of women, newborns, children and their families and communities. Phase out strategies that have not produced positive impacts on health outcomes.
• Build on and expand existing country-owned platforms to foster stronger systems and sustainable results: Strengthen health systems functions to ensure the quality and reach of health services and public health programs in the short and long terms, and work with governments to ensure the sustainability of their health programming.
• Innovate for results: Identify, implement, and rigorously evaluate new approaches that reward efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability. Focus particular attention on promising approaches to service delivery, community-based approaches, private-sector participation, performance incentives, costing of service delivery approaches, promotion of positive health behaviors, and other strategies that have potential to increase value for money. Increase tolerance for calculated risk-taking, including learning from unsuccessful efforts on the path to success.

Accelerating Impact: GHI Plus

Although GHI is being implemented everywhere U.S. Government global health dollars are at work, an intensified effort will be launched in a subset of up to 20 "GHI Plus" countries that provide significant opportunities for impact, evalua­tion, and partnership with governments. U.S. programs in these countries will receive additional technical and management support to accelerate implementation of GHI. GHI Plus countries will provide opportunities for the U.S. to learn how to build upon and strengthen existing country-owned delivery platforms, as well as how to use various programmatic inputs to deliver results in collaboration with our partners. Central to the generation of this knowledge will be robust research and monitoring and evaluation efforts. In each GHI Plus country, a learning agenda will be developed to support the overall program aims and strengthen country capacity to undertake and use evaluation and research. The learning agenda will encompass evaluation and research at the levels of policy, systems, and specific interventions. The learning agenda will: (1) support implementation decision-making with new knowledge; (2) generate cross-country findings regarding the implementation and effects of key features (principles) of GHI to inform future policy decisions; and (3) share knowledge among GHI countries to improve the effectiveness of global investments.