Senior Fellow Amanda Glassman is quoted in an article on the new US Office of Global Health Diplomacy.
The State Department announced on Friday that the U.S. global AIDS coordinator, Ambassador Eric Goosby, will lead the new Office of Global Health Diplomacy while continuing to head the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
The appointment follows up on a plan announced earlier this year, when the administration shut down its Global Health Initiative (GHI), a program launched only in 2009.
"This is not a reshuffling of the deck chairs, but instead the addition of a deck chair," said Amanda Glassman, director of global health policy and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. "And it does not really solve some of the problems that are at the heart of why interagency coordination did not work so well the first time."
She wrote in a blog post on the topic that "infighting between agencies and a general lack of mandate and leadership" ultimately led to the demise of the GHI, and the establishment of the new office "puts an end to the endless debates about GHI leadership which had become unproductive and distracting."
But Glassman questioned whether diplomats should have control over the programmatic aspects of health systems.