Blog Moderator's blog

“If it bleeds, it leads” is a common refrain in journalism.

Aicha gazes out the window, her crystal blue eyes taking in the gray sky outside a hospital near the Syrian border in Jordan, where she has been recovering for a month now. She was badly injured after her house in Dara’a, Syria was destroyed in a mortar attack.

I arrived home one afternoon to find my best friend in my village, Gifty, closing up her shop and preparing to go to the hospital. She told me that her two and a half-year-old son, Justice, was brought there by her husband Jackson and she was going to join them.

Over 40 governments, along with UN organizations and the World Bank, have committed to a common standard and time schedule for publishing aid information under the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). There are high expectations for this initiative. The ultimate objective is to increase the effectiveness of donor assistance, making aid work for those whom we are trying to help and contributing to accelerated development outcomes on the ground.

Last week, a delegation of ministers from the Government of the Republic of South Sudan were in DC to participate in the South Sudan Economic Partners Forum. Hosted by the U.S. and South Sudan in coordination with the European Union, Norway and the United Kingdom, more than forty other governments and international organizations were present to discuss with the South Sudanese officials their country’s current economic and development challenges and ways to address them.

Almost everyone acknowledges the importance of addressing inequality. But will it become a focus of the new post-2015 development agenda, and reinforce our priorities as a development community moving forward?

As the long-dreaded sequestration process begins to set in, U.S. government programs that have already been feeling the heat of budget pressures are now starting to feel the pinch. Across all agencies and departments, there has never been such heightened vigilance to determine the quality, value, and effectiveness of taxpayer-funded programs in order to save them from landing on the proverbial chopping block. U.S. foreign assistance is no exception, and in fact, is likely to be a popular target despite notable progress over the past decade in how aid is delivered.

Having dedicated my career to public health, I've learned that keeping people healthy is a complex job. Medicine, sanitation, nutrition, education – all are necessary and interrelated components of preventing and curing sickness. But there is one tool that stands out as the most effective way to protect fight disease: vaccines. Every child – no matter where he or she is born – has a fundamental right to vaccines.

Over the past 18 years, the American public told pollsters they believe the U.S. government spends way too much on foreign aid, reckoning that something like a fifth or a quarter of the federal budget is used for that purpose.

Do you think today’s university students and young professionals lack idealism and just lean on numbers? Last week, New York Times Columnist David Brooks wrote about the “Empirical Kids.” The article starts a fantastic conversation about the next generation of policy leaders.