Recent Foundation Funding in Global Health: Helping Haitians after the Earthquake; HIV/AIDS
August 27th, 2010
by
Lee-Lee Prina
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It has been more than seven months since the terrible earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010. GrantWatch Blog mentions here two foundation-related efforts to help people from this poverty-stricken Caribbean nation. We also bring you news of some philanthropic activity related to the ongoing global HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Haiti
New report released:
“Building a More Resilient Haitian State,” Keith Crane and coauthors, released August 13, 2010, by RAND, 179 pp., http://rand.org/pubs/monographs/2010/RAND_MG1039.pdf. In a press release, coauthor James Dobbins, now with RAND and formerly special envoy to Haiti during the Clinton administration, comments, “Haiti will remain vulnerable to natural disasters, political turbulence, and civil unrest until it develops effective institutions.” The authors recommend that Haiti concentrate on several areas, including health, which is the focus of Chapter Nine of their report.
“The Haitian state should focus on monitoring and regulating the delivery of education and health services, not providing those services itself,” according to the release. Specifically, the report itself states that “consideration should be given to shifting the operation of all health centers and hospitals to NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and other private institutions, allowing the MSPP [Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population, or Ministry of Public Health and Population] to concentrate on setting policy and planning for, overseeing, monitoring, and evaluating the operation of Haiti’s public health service–delivery network.” With the “extensive donor involvement” in health care (now and even before the earthquake), however, the government needs “to coordinate, regulate, and oversee” the donors and NGOs. These comments all fall under the recommendation to “Establish Performance-Based Contracting Mechanism for Provision of Services.”
The authors also recommend examining Haiti’s health care financing options for the long term. They acknowledge that “donors will need to continue to pay for the bulk of Haiti’s health-care costs, including the technical and administrative infrastructure required to build a sustainable health system.” However, they say that “steps should be taken now to lay the foundation for a sustainable financing structure for Haiti’s health sector.” With donor support, the ministry should contract for “a study to examine in detail the various options for financing the health-care system and [to] model the implications of those options for access to care, health outcomes, and the continued viability of the system.”
The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Smith Richardson Foundation, which is located in Westport, Connecticut, funded the study. Note that Carnegie is not a health funder; read about its programs here. Also, Smith Richardson notes on its Web site that only “a small number of unsolicited proposals” that it receives are funded.
Other news from foundations:
“Responding to Haitian Devastation, at Home,” Jim Knickman of the New York State Health (NYSHealth) Foundation, August 16, 2010, on Smart Assets: The Philanthropy New York Blog. Knickman points out that “the devastating earthquake” in Haiti in January 2010 “has lately fallen off many people’s radar,” but it continues to affect “hundreds of thousands of Haitians and their families directly.” Because of NYSHealth’s funding guidelines, it “could not support on-the-ground-efforts in Haiti.” Read, though, about how this foundation, which was determined to help, is funding Haitian communities in the Greater New York area. Its money is being used to “provide needed healthcare and social services for those affected by the earthquake.” NYSHealth aims to provide support to those who lost loved ones in Haiti “or still [have] family members there, and to those newly arrived in New York because they were displaced by the earthquake,” Knickman’s post explains. One example of a gap the foundation could fill, he said, was “access to mental health counseling.”
“Scholars, Alums from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Programs Heeded the Call for Help in Haiti after Earthquake,” May 11, 2010, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Web site. Read about what several people affiliated with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program and its Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program did to help in Haiti.
Related resources:
“Remembering Haiti at the Six-Month Mark: The International Community’s Response to Overwhelming and Long-Term Need,” Heather A. Conley and Johanna Mendelson Forman of the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), July 12, 2010. This two-pager is part of the “Critical Questions” series of the CSIS. The authors state that “creation of an urban sanitation system” is among the urgent needs in Haiti. Priorities for the immediate future include “providing support in case of an outbreak of epidemic disease.”
“Volunteers Find Their Pace in Haiti,” Eric Campbell, August 5, 2010, Project HOPE in the Field blog. This post describes just one day spent trying to help people in Haiti who had medical conditions ranging from an infected jaw to excessive earwax to scabies. Military medical personnel and HOPE volunteers together helped 488 patients that day and also filled 642 prescriptions. Project HOPE, an international health education and humanitarian assistance organization, is the publisher of Health Affairs (and the GrantWatch Blog).
HIV/AIDS
New funding just announced:
“Merck Provides New Funding to Fight HIV/AIDS in Botswana: Merck Company Foundation Supports Successful HIV/AIDS Initiative Led by Government,” Merck press release, August 24, 2010. The Merck Company Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are committing $60 million in additional funding for Botswana’s African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships (ACHAP), according to the release. (Each funder is putting in $30 million over the next five years.)
The new funding will continue ACHAP’s “original efforts in treatment and care” but also will support a second phase that “will expand efforts to improve the prevention of HIV, address the link to treatment of TB [tuberculosis] for people with HIV, and create greater sustainability through the transfer of key services to the Government of Botswana and local organizations,” the release explained. “ACHAP has helped demonstrate how public–private partnerships might work to save the lives of the world’s poorest people infected with HIV.”
Merck, a major pharmaceutical company, will continue donation of its antiretroviral drugs for people in Botswana with HIV/AIDS.
Related resources on ACHAP:
Visit the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships web site here.
“Public–Private Partnerships and Antiretroviral Drugs for HIV/AIDS: Lessons from Botswana,” Ilavenil Ramiah and Michael Reich, Health Affairs, GrantWatch section, March/April 2005. This peer-reviewed article is about ACHAP’s early years.
Tutorial
“The Current State of the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic,” Kim Boortz of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), June 2010. This narrated tutorial on the KFF’s KaiserEDU.org web site reports that South Africa had the largest number of people with HIV/AIDS, per 2007 UNAIDS statistics. The slides titled “Critical Challenges” and “Accomplishments” contain important summaries. KaiserEDU.org’s target audience includes students, faculty, and others interested in learning about health policy.
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