By: Alanna Shaikh

One of the most challenging things about global health is the need to keep telling our stories. Our work isn’t funded by the people who benefit directly from our efforts. Instead, it’s supported by a whole network of donors: individuals, foundations, governments, UN agencies, and more. None of these donors gets much direct benefit from their support.

That means, in practice, that an awful lot of global health work involves talking about that work. Donors need proof that their money is being well-spent. They need to know the works it supports is important. And they need to be reminded of the benefits they reap from improved global health. That means conferences where program results are trumpeted. Success stories for donors to publish. High resolution pictures suitable for reprinting and as much media coverage as you can generate and still implement your program simultaneously.

It’s tough.  Showing your donors that their money is being carefully husbanded and efficiently used is probably the easiest part of the task. For one thing, you don’t have to collect any new data. Any good program knows where their money goes, and what its impact is. Packaging that information into a form that your donor can understand is time-consuming, but rarely all that difficult.

Convincing donors your work is important is trickier. With so many problems in the world, it can be very hard to convey why your particular health issue is important enough for a share of finite donor funding. (many people feel that’s the greatest strength of the Global Fund – it turned HIV funding from an issue that had to compete for money to a moral imperative that is taken for granted.) It’s tempting to pit your problem against others, and explain why your health issue is the winner of the misery Olympics. That’s the low road, though, and I think in the long run it’s bad for everyone. Another low road is to play up the pathos, helplessness, and despair of your affected population of victims. (I think this is a special temptation with NTDs because they so consistently harm the poorest of the poor.) The high road, as far as I can tell, is to remind donors why health in general is an important topic, and then be very clear about how your project supports a healthy population.

But the hardest thing to communicate to donors is how they themselves benefit from funding global health. It’s the kind of thing that voters question over and over. Why do we care about the health of people far away? Infectious diseases are intuitive to some degree. We fight dengue fever and Chagas disease overseas, because if we don’t they’ll cross our own borders soon. Linking, say, stronger health systems to British well-being is a more challenging explanation.

I have some hope. I think social media helps. It breaks down the wall between “us” and “them.” I think the global health community is getting more sophisticated about how it communicates. And I think that high profile donors like the Gates Foundation and Bono have helped bring global health to prominence as a valuable public good. Maybe, in ten years, telling our stories will be a little less exhausting.

Alanna Shaikh is an expert in health consulting, writing about global health for UN Dispatch and about international relief and development at Blood & Milk. She also serves as a frequently contributing blogger to ‘End the Neglect.’ The views and opinions expressed by guest bloggers are not neccesarily the views and opinions of the Global Network. All opinions expressed here are Alanna’s own and not those of any employer or the US government.

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