Global Health Council
Member profile
The Global Health Council (GHC), formerly the National Council of International Health, is a U.S.-based, nonprofit membership organization that was created in 1972 to identify priority world health problems and to report on them to the U.S. public, legislators, international and domestic government agencies, academic institutions and the global health community. GHC is the world's largest membership alliance dedicated to saving lives by improving health throughout the world. The Council works to ensure that all who strive for improvement and equity in global health have the information and resources they need to succeed.
Main activities
GHC, working with its members, serves as a strong voice for civil society in Washington and other global forums. The overall goal of the Council's advocacy efforts is to improve the health of those living in the developing world by improving the effectiveness of programs and increasing overall funding for these programs. To achieve its mission, the Council brings together the global actors in health around five key issues which have been identified as critical to improving health and promoting equity: women’s health; child’s health; HIV and AIDS; infectious diseases and health systems. Developing countries face many challenges to building robust, reliable health systems. These challenges include insufficient financing, lack of inter-agency coordination, poorly-functioning information systems, health worker shortages and supply interruptions. GHC’s health systems strengthening aims to improve health by responding to people’s needs and expectations, and by providing services in a fair and equitable manner.
Links to the health workforce crisis
GHC believes that health systems' strengthening is key to reaching overall health goals. It believes human resource capacity is one critical component. GHC chairs the U.S. based advocacy group called the Health Workforce/Health Systems Strengthening working group that aims to obtain additional U.S. foreign assistance for addressing human resource capacity. It also works on legislation introduced in Congress that would require the U.S. to develop a strategy on human resource capacity issues and provide technical assistance to African countries that are experiencing a severe health workforce shortage.
Call for knowledge information:
Alliance Members are invited to submit any relevant knowledge products such as documents, reports, tools, multimedia, links to specific project web sites by sending an email to ghwa@who.int. The Alliance Secretariat will publish relevant products on the Member's page.
Visit our Knowledge centre.
