London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar visited the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on 10 May for a special event to launch their new book, Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?

School Director, Professor Peter Piot, welcomed the authors, who discussed the book’s main findings and answered questions from the audience of staff, students, and others working in global health.

Clinton and Sridhar highlighted that the past few decades have seen a massive increase in the number of international organisations focusing on global health. One of the more important recent trends in global health governance has been the rise of public-private partnerships (PPPs) where private non-governmental organisations, for-profit enterprises, and various other social entrepreneurs work hand-in-hand with governments to combat specific maladies. A primary driver for this development is the widespread belief that by joining together, PPPs will attack health problems and fund shared efforts more effectively than other systems.

However, they explained that until now we have known very little about the accountability and effectiveness of PPPs in relation to traditional multilateral organisations. Their analysis looked at the strengths and weaknesses of the PPP model by taking a closer look at two major public-private partnerships - the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria and the GAVI Alliance - and two more longstanding major international organisations - the World Health Organization and the World Bank.

Chelsea Clinton is Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation and a Lecturer at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia. Devi Sridhar is Professor at the University of Edinburgh's Medical School and holds the Chair in Global Public Health. Previously, she was Senior Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Fellow of Wolfson College.

The discussion was followed by a book signing by the authors to mark the launch.

Watch the video of the event to see the full discussion and Q&A: