"Should the U.S. Fund PEPFAR Forever? Expert Explains Trump's Global Health Strategy"

After spending two weeks in South Africa and Botswana investigating the impact of USAID closures and PEPFAR funding cuts, I sat down with Dr. Jennifer Kates, Senior Vice President and Director of the Global Health and Policy Program at KFF, to ask the hard questions.

THE CONTEXT:
In my three-part investigation "U.S. AID Without USAID," I documented:

*200 HIV patients missing after their clinic lost funding overnight
*A $47 million TB program now running on $1 million from an anonymous donor
*The DREAMS Program eliminated in Botswana—leaving the population with the highest HIV infection rate (87% of new cases in girls 15-19) without prevention services
*The Trump administration canceled 83% of USAID contracts, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming they "spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve the core national interests of the United States."

THE QUESTIONS I ASKED DR. KATES:
✅ Should the U.S. fund PEPFAR in perpetuity?
✅ Are co-investment requirements from African nations fair?
✅ Will these cuts lead to a catastrophe?
✅ What does "America First Global Health Strategy" mean in practice?
✅ How long should the U.S. be expected to maintain its worldwide PEPFAR investment?

HER ANSWERS SURPRISED ME.

Dr. Kates brings decades of global health policy expertise and doesn't shy away from the complexity. She acknowledges legitimate questions about sustainability while being candid about the real-world consequences of sudden funding cuts.

KEY MOMENTS:

On perpetual funding:
"I think that's a good question. Should the U.S. do this in perpetuity?"

On co-investment:
"The U.S. has been quite generous giving funding to countries. What's being asked of countries—should there be some kind of co-investment requirement—which, frankly, is done by many other global health institutions."

On the impact of cuts:
"Will it be a catastrophe? I'm not going to say that. There were some predictions that it would be, [but] it's hard to see how it won't have a negative impact."

This is the kind of nuanced, expert analysis that's often missing from headlines about foreign aid.

ABOUT DR. JENNIFER KATES:
Dr. Jennifer Kates is Senior Vice President and Director of the Global Health and Policy Program at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), one of the nation's leading health policy research organizations. She is a recognized expert on global health policy, HIV/AIDS, and U.S. foreign assistance.

ABOUT MY INVESTIGATION:
"Aid Interrupted" is a three-part investigative series examining what happened when the Trump administration shut down USAID and canceled billions in global health contracts.

Supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, I traveled to South Africa and Botswana to document the human cost of these policy decisions.

Видео "Should the U.S. Fund PEPFAR Forever? Expert Explains Trump's Global Health Strategy" канала Larry Miller