The Foreign Service Journal, May 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2017 35 themwith different aspects of reporting and accountability, involving civil society and working with local institutions. Elected officials learned to connect back to their constituencies.” All development programs can lead to improved relationships among countries, but there is something about work in global health that makes it especially true in this sphere. Global health focuses on saving and improving lives; it is a sector where num- bers are straightforward and telling. “In health we are able to show that our programs work because we can measure success more easily than in other sectors, and many of our interventions are data-driven,” says Richard Green, a Foreign Service officer who served in Sudan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Bangladesh before returning to Washington, D.C., and serving in various senior positions. “We also have low-cost modern technology that can save and trans- form lives.” A good example comes from Afghanistan, where USAID funded a significant portion of the country’s primary health care services from 2004 through 2010. Despite a complex and challenging setting, Pelzman says that the cooperation there was “one of the U.S. government’s true success stories. We had a direct impact on building a cadre of community midwives, reducing maternal morbidity and mortality, and contributing to other important health outcomes. We also advanced changes to gender norms. Our commitment to public health and our close engagement with the Ministry of Health was consistently hailed as a positive aspect of our bilateral relationship.” “In health we are able to show that our programs work because we canmeasure success more easily than in other sectors, and many of our interventions are data-driven.” —FSO Richard Green