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Speaker: Rachel Silverman, Senior Policy Analyst and Assistant Director of Global Health Policy, Center for Global Development (CGD)
About the talk: Since 2000, a large and complex global infrastructure has emerged to help finance public health improvement in low- and middle-income countries. These institutions have helped drive historic improvements in child survival, HIV mortality, and access to modern contraception—yet serious questions have arisen about their long-term sustainability, their effects on country-led health systems, and whether they create incentives that are misaligned with long-term public health impart. Rachel Silverman, Assistant Director of Global Health Policy and a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Global Development, will offer a brief overview of the current health financing architecture. Drawing on her research, she will then introduce and discuss three “hot topics” in global health financing: fiscal and programmatic accountability and incentive models; strategies to “transition” countries away from reliance on external financing; and the movement away from “vertical”, disease-focused financing streams toward a more comprehensive, holistic vision for Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
About the Speaker: Rachel Silverman is a senior policy analyst and assistant director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development, focusing on global health financing and incentive structures. During previous work at the Center from 2011 to 2013, she contributed to research and analysis on value for money, incentives, measurement, and policy coherence in global health, among other topics. Before joining CGD, Silverman spent two years supporting democratic strengthening and good governance programs in Kosovo and throughout Central and Eastern Europe with the National Democratic Institute. She holds a master's of philosophy with distinction in public health from the University of Cambridge, which she attended as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She also holds a BA with distinction in international relations and economics from Stanford University.