Council Establishes Senior Fellowship in Global Health and Foreign Policy with a Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

April 24, 2003 - The Council is establishing a senior fellowship in global health and foreign policy studies with a generous grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Global health issues are integral to any serious thinking about foreign policy. Widespread disease such as HIV/AIDS and SARS relate directly to U.S. national security in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago.

“Global health issues must be integrated, in study and in practice, into U.S. foreign policymaking. This will be the chief mission of the new Senior Fellow in Global Health Policy Studies,” said Council President Leslie H. Gelb. “We are deeply grateful to the Gates Foundation for supporting this goal,” he said.

The Senior Fellow in Global Health Policy Studies will be an outstanding person with credentials in both health and national security policy, and will be an agenda-setter, working with Council members and other experts to find ways to integrate global health issues into U.S. foreign policy.

The Council’s membership includes America’s leading scholars, business and financial professionals, and NGO officials who deal with health issues around the world. It has the convening power to bring these members together and to attract non-members and non-Americans to the discussion table. In particular, the global health senior fellow will work closely with the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow in Africa Policy Studies, currently Ambassador Princeton Lyman, one of whose key concerns is public health problems in Africa, above all AIDS.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is dedicated to improving people’s lives by sharing advances in health and learning with the global community. The Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program is focused on reducing global health inequities by accelerating the development, deployment and sustainability of health interventions that will save lives and dramatically reduce the disease burden in developing countries.

Established in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is a nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank, dedicated to increasing America’s understanding of the world and contributing ideas to U.S. foreign policy. The Council accomplishes this mainly by promoting constructive debates and discussions, clarifying world issues, and publishing Foreign Affairs, the leading journal on global issues.

Contact: Lisa Shields, Vice President, Communications, (212) 434-9888