Shared value: USAID’s new global health focus

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Dr. Pablos-Mendez joined the USAID leadership team with a vision to shape the Bureau for Global Health’s programmatic efforts to accomplish scalable, sustainable and measurable impact on the lives of people in developing countries as envisioned in President Obama’s Global Health Initiative. He talks to Impact about the benefits of public-private partnerships, USAID’s efforts to promote girls and women’s health and more.

What is the relationship between public health and economic growth?

Health status clearly is correlated with economic growth, and causality appears to go in both directions: Higher economic status leads to better health, and better health status enables greater economic growth. Healthier populations tend to have higher workforce participation, and the productivity of the workforce is higher in healthier populations. Each contributes separately to economic growth. Healthier populations live longer, which increases returns to investment in skills development, improving workforce participation and productivity. Evidence is growing that early childhood health status, especially nutrition, has effects on adult productivity and cognition. Health status is a form of human capital that contributes to productivity and, hence, economic growth.

Source: Devex (link opens in a new window)

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Health Care
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public health