Tagged: inequality

  • March 31, 2023

    Putting opportunity within reach

    Written by
    Tessie San Martin, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    While the pace of change around the world has been accelerating rapidly over the last few decades, the pandemic-related lockdowns that began in 2020 precipitated unprecedented transformations.

    Those lockdowns destroyed the livelihoods of those with the fewest resources, throwing global supply chains and economies into uncertainty. But we also witnessed the breathtaking speed of vaccine development that saved the lives of millions, and leaps in technology such as telehealth and artificial intelligence are making near-daily breakthroughs.

    There were breakthroughs in the international development sector as well, where organizations were forced to rethink the ways they provided assistance. FHI 360 has employed locally led development approaches for decades. But when we were cut off from many of our traditional ways of working, we witnessed how much local organizations could deliver and how much we could rely on them — frankly, much more than the sector had realized.

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  • December 11, 2019

    The darker side of development: Addressing poverty and inequality in the United States

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    This year, we’ve been exploring the darker side of development, and we’ve examined examples of the paradoxes and unintended consequences of international development efforts. In the final episode this year, I sit down with David Dodson, President of MDC, to discuss parallels and shared lessons between U.S. and global development challenges and solutions, particularly with respect to addressing poverty and inequality.

    David and I explore the structural issues that lead to inequality, the importance of data-informed decisions in addressing poverty and the ebb and flow of progress within development. We discuss how promoting individual and group agency and localization is crucial to development efforts around the globe.

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  • September 19, 2016

    Does epidemic control inadvertently reinforce inequality?

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360
    HIV clinic in Mozambique

    An HIV clinic in Maputo in Mozambique. Photo: Talea Miller/PBS NewsHour/CC BY-NC

    Over the last two years, ministries of health in sub-Saharan Africa and other countries with a high burden of HIV/AIDS have implemented strategies that concentrate resources on high prevalence areas and key populations.

    Encouraged by their donor partners, such as PEPFAR, UNAIDS and The Global Fund, these strategies employ a biomedical approach that focuses on suppressing the viral load in the population in line with UNAIDS’ 90-90-90 objectives to reduce new infections and bring the HIV epidemic under control. If successful, this approach holds out the tantalizing prospect of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

    Often referred to in U.S. government circles as “the pivot,” this shift in strategy reflects constrained foreign assistance budgets as well as a number of successes in fighting AIDS over the last decade. We now have more robust surveillance methods that allow us to better target disease hotspots and key populations, countries have improved diagnostic and laboratory capacity that enable more rapid and sophisticated analyses, and new therapies allow people who are HIV positive to treat HIV/AIDS as a chronic condition instead of a death sentence. Call it the triumph of the medical epidemiologists.

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