Sec. 2. Findings; sense of Congress; and purposes
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Congress makes the following findings: Of all foreign assistance provided by the United States, global health appropriations are second only to security assistance. Several Federal agencies and departments execute global health activities, including the United States Agency for International Development, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of State. Global health assistance provided by the United States supports— activities carried out by numerous private, corporate, and nongovernmental organizations worldwide; and multilateral organizations, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and the World Health Organization.
The United States provides foreign assistance to achieve national security, commercial, and humanitarian objectives while demonstrating global leadership. All United States funded foreign assistance programs, regardless of the implementing agency, support the objectives referred to in paragraph (4), but the manner in which the programs achieve the objectives varies widely. The approach for global health assistance provided by the United States is largely program-based or disease-based and often does not allow agencies to work across the health system or on issues of greatest concern to the host country.
Such an approach hampers long-term stability, diplomacy with key partnerships, and sustainable capacity building. It is the sense of Congress that— each global health implementing agency should establish a program for the development of a cadre of health advisors who can serve as United States global health attachés; country or regional health teams and health development partners working groups should be established in all countries with significant United States health investments; and all global health activities supported by the United States Government should be implemented in a coordinated manner.
The purposes of this Act are— to establish a governmental framework and national policy, priorities, and goals that ensure interagency coordination for global health assistance with the overall diplomacy, development, and defense efforts of the United States Government; to establish the Senior United States Global Health Advisor and the United States Global Health Commission at the level of the National Security Council to harmonize the global health goals and priorities of the United States and promote interagency coordination for global health assistance with the overall efforts of the United States Government; to establish an Interagency Global Health Committee to implement the Unified Global Health Strategy and develop policies and frameworks to improve coordination and outcomes; and to establish the United States Global Health Attaché Program to field global health attachés as key interlocutors who coordinate the country or regional health team and ensure effective health assessment, planning, integration, and implementation across all agencies in support of the interests of the United States.