July 01, 2009
Rockefeller Pledges $100-Million to Improve Health Care Abroad
By Ian Wilhelm
The Rockefeller Foundation has pledged $100-million over five years to help impoverished nations build better health-care systems.
The project, called Transforming Health Systems, represents a new approach for large foundations, which have previously focused more on fighting specific diseases rather than bolstering whole health systems.
The program will pay for international advocacy and research but will primarily assist three countries — Ghana, Rwanda, and Vietnam. Depending on the success in those nations, it will be expanded to other regions of Africa and Asia.
“This new initiative will tear down barriers preventing millions of people from accessing affordable, high-quality health services,” Judith Rodin, Rockefeller’s president, said in a speech today in Nairobi. “And it will help ensure that advances in life-saving treatment can improve the lives of more people, in more places, more fully and fairly.”
Rockefeller, in New York, has a long history of supporting global health. It led a 1913 campaign to stem the spread of yellow fever in East Africa, has paid for the development of public-health training, and has forged partnerships among drug makers, governments, and philanthropies to create new drug treatments and vaccines.
For its new effort, Rockefeller said it will try three approaches:
- Training health professionals and developing better health policies, data-gathering, and financing mechanisms.
- Improving regulation and partnership of private hospitals and other nongovernment health players.
- Using mobile phones, electronic health records, and other information technology to improve access to health services and making them less expensive.
Support for global health has grown dramatically in the past 20 years. According to a recent study by the University of Washington and Harvard University, giving for overseas health efforts from foundations, federal agencies, and corporations has quadrupled to about $22-billion.
But Rockefeller said that despite the increase, many poor countries lack efficient and affordable health programs. For example, it said that the World Health Organization reports that 125 million people spend nearly half their annual income on health costs and 25 million families are forced into poverty annually because they are hit with massive health-care expenses.
What’s more, foundation spending on global health has tended to emphasize specific diseases and health problems, like HIV/AIDS or malaria. Critics have derided the approach as “stovepiping,” saying it usually doesn’t reflect the needs of poor nations.
Rockefeller’s Ms. Rodin seemed to partially agree with those concerns.
“While vertical interventions –- including revolutionary new drugs and treatments –- remain crucially important, we must also ensure that they get to the people who most need them,” she said. “We must break the bottlenecks that restrict access to quality services because no matter how powerful the drug, it won’t do any good if consumers can’t reach the doctor that prescribes it, the clinic that provides it, or pay the bill if they receive it.”
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Judging from our growing deficit, I feel like we’re an impoverished nation too. We could use some help with our health care as well. I wish some one would help us.
— Lorri Greif, CFRE Jul 1, 04:11 PM #
I heartily second Lorri Greif’s statement. The Rockefeller Foundation would do well to remember the venerable adage “Charity begins at home.”
— Sara C. Weiss, Director of Development Jul 1, 08:58 PM #
At the risk of sounding REALLY selfish…not just at home, but in our field. With the various cutbacks, many comments (here & other publications) suggest cutting costs (including salary freezes, layoffs) to continue our missions. Most of us operate at the bare minimum as it is. And we should not cut back on programs/services that support our missions, but an unspoken aspect of an NPO’s mission should be that it also is an employer in its community. Or maybe it is time to add it as a spoken aspect? I may have a big title, but I work at a small organization, with no medical & a minimal salary – I actually qualify for my state’s low-income medical assistance. I got into this field to help people, not become a recipient of the system. And I take care of myself, so I have avoided using it except for nominal preventative measures. But one accident, even a minor one, and I become a client – not a provider. And there are MANY colleagues out there teetering on the same cliff.
The non-profit sector is a benefit to this country (and the world) – we provide needed services & results with minimal spending…not to mention, MANY jobs. Yet, failed for-“profits” get bailouts to continue generating unwanted/unnecessary products & inflated salaries of the decision makers? I sympathize with the workers (and laid off workers) – they earn their salaries. But the execs making poor business decisions…
Think of it this way: “In the event of an emergency…put on your own oxygen mask first, so you have what you need to help others…”
— another director of development Jul 3, 12:41 PM #
Wow — it’s amazing how prominent American foundations are appear to be much more concerned with health conditions overseas than within their own country. There are thousands of worth-while non-profits dealing with healcare in the US which would benefit tremendously from a 100 million dollar “shot-in-the-arm.” Those kinds of funds would have an immediate and lasting impact on a huge (and might I add growing) population in our own US of A.
— D.O.D Jul 4, 01:52 PM #
The unfortunate reality of health care in America is that the system is so out-of-conrol that $100 million would not have an impact. It would only feed the monster for a few weeks. Foundations have been cool to the hospital case for support for a long time, and for good reason; there is little desire to fuel battles over market share and other management excesses.
— Health Care Fundraiser Jul 6, 11:44 AM #
In related news…click over to this Chronicle article:
http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/index.php?id=8746
Note this figure from the study they discuss: “Roughly 11 percent of charity jobs in the survey paid less than the federal poverty level.”
And a reader’s comment: “Are we ending poverty or contributing to it? How can an organization justify paying poverty wages to any of its workers?”
— another director or development Jul 7, 01:07 PM #
I am mortified at the ignorance of comments coming from fellow americans. It is evident of the abyss of ignorance that is displayed that less than 10% of Americans have been outside their own borders to see what the rest of the world is like. Well, allow me to fill you in a bit – IT IS WORSE! When you have countries where half a million children are orphaned because their parents have died of AIDS, where 20% of the population is infected, less that 20% of women know how to read, and where 50% of the country is under the age of 20…. then you will have a reason to begin complaining. (The country that I am utilizing as an example is Mozambique). I am very sad for all those who don’t get to buy a home, or perhaps even lose a home – but there are bigger problems.
People in this world are dying of diseases we CURED years ago!!!! If for one moment you all could see that this world consists of other humans, with feelings, with families, with potential that belongs to this world.
We as Americans stand on the backs of great predecessors whom advanced our society and culture and utilized this advancement to create a system which benefits Americans. I am proud to be an American – I believe in our founding fathers and the ideals and principles in which our country is founded on. I am sorry to inform you – but you are the disease that now plagues our country. Open your eyes please…. and SEE the rest of the world. It is called empathy, and without it… we are inhuman.
I sit in squalor, with children who never had a choice and die in the streets – and they too truly believe that they are less valuable than Americans. I am shamed with your ignorance, I am mortified at your inhumanity… and I fear for our future… not as Americans… but as humans…
— shocked and horrified american overseas Jul 7, 11:08 PM #