Kate Woods has nearly 20 years of development experience leading operational, administrative, and management processes for USAID-funded projects. She is currently the director of the USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) Project. Prior to that she lead a USAID-funded supply chain technical assistance project as the country director in Côte d’Ivoire,…
Megan Nelson is a global health and project management professional with 15 years of experience designing, implementing, and monitoring and evaluating initiatives in health, and other sectors. Through her work with international development organizations, she focuses on improving the health, leadership skills, and economic power of youth through curriculum development, capacity building and training, and…
Information and communication technology (ICT) is crucial for many projects. I see this firsthand working on the USAID E-PESO activity, which contributes to broad-based growth and financial inclusion in the Philippines by accelerating the shift to digital payments. The project aims to increase digital payments from 2 percent to 20 percent of payments by 2020 by…
This blog post originally appeared on Climatelinks. Thanks to aggressive interventions in recent decades, remarkable progress has been made across sub-Saharan Africa in reducing child mortality, malaria deaths, and stunting rates, and improving overall health. But these gains may be lost as climate and weather variability put more people at risk of infection and death…
What is cross-sectoral democracy, rights, and governance (DRG) programming and why is it important? Cross-sectoral DRG programming recognizes that development issues are not single-sector problems — they overlap with other sectors; exist in a political context; and are as much, and often more, about power and relationships as they are about technical solutions. Solving a…
What innovation in the health sector are you most excited about right now? First, I think it’s important to define “innovation,” as I think it has become an overused and misunderstood term. I side with the view which USAID and others in development and humanitarian assistance have put forth. That is, innovation is something —…
Last year, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their 169 targets were presented as part of an integrated and indivisible framework that builds on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including completing what the MDGs did not achieve. The SDGs were created to continue the focus on key development priorities – such as poverty eradication,…
The very first proposed goal of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is simply this: “End poverty in all its forms everywhere.” This is an incredibly bold statement. A commitment to END POVERTY. In ALL ITS FORMS. EVERYWHERE. I usually avoid writing in all caps, but in this case, I feel the need to emphasize…
This week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, the Global Health Council, FSG and Chemonics hosted a session addressing the question: Are Complex Global Health Partnerships Worth It? Before the audience got comfortable and the speakers took their seats at the front table, I noticed Peru’s Minister of Health, Dr. Anibal Veláquez Valdivia, had…