Millions Saved: New Cases of Proven Success in Global Health

Authored by Amanda Glassman and Miriam Temin with the Millions Saved Team and Advisory Group, Millions Saved: News Cases of Proven Success in Global Health, shows what works—and what doesn’t—in global health.

In a foreword to the book, Bill Gates says, “I encourage global health experts, policymakers, funders, and anyone else interested in helping create a better world to read Millions Saved. I am confident you will come away with a clearer sense of what the world has learned about fighting some of our biggest health challenges—and how we can use that knowledge to save even more lives.”

Over the past fifteen years, people in low- and middle-income countries have experienced a health revolution—one that has created new opportunities and brought new challenges. It is a revolution that keeps mothers and babies alive, helps children grow, and enables adults to thrive.

Millions Saved: New Cases of Proven Success in Global Health chronicles the global health revolution from the ground up, showcasing twenty-two local, national, and regional health programs that have been part of this global change. The book profiles eighteen remarkable cases in which large-scale efforts to improve health in low- and middle-income countries succeeded, and four examples of promising interventions that fell short of their health targets when scaled-up in real world conditions. Each case demonstrates how much effort—and sometimes luck—is required to fight illness and sustain good health.

The cases are grouped into four main categories, reflecting the diversity of strategies to improve population health in low-and middle-income countries: rolling out medicines and technologies; expanding access to health services; targeting cash transfers to improve health; and promoting population-wide behavior change to decrease risk. The programs covered also come from various regions around the world: seven from sub-Saharan Africa, six from Latin America and the Caribbean, five from East and Southeast Asia, and four from South Asia.

Amanda Glassman is vice president for programs, director of global health policy, and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, leading work on priority-setting, resource allocation and value for money in global health, with a particular interest in vaccination. She has 20 years of experience working on health and social protection policy and programs in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world. Prior to her current position, Glassman was principal technical lead for health at the Inter-American Development Bank, where she led health economics and financing knowledge products and policy dialogue with member countries, designed the results-based grant program Salud Mesoamerica 2015 and served as team leader for conditional cash transfer programs such as Mexico’s Oportunidades and Colombia’s Familias en Accion.

Miriam Temin is project director for the Building Capacity for DREAMS Girl Platforms at the Population Council. She has nearly 20 years of experience developing strategies and advising on policies for donors, United Nations agencies, think tanks, and NGOs in the United States, Africa, and Europe. Temin is an expert on adolescent girls, sexual and reproductive health, social determinants of health, HIV, and social protection. Prior to joining the Council, Temin served as a consultant to the Center for Global Development. She has also been a consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she was a lead writer for The Lancet/Harvard Women and Health Commission report on the interplay between women’s health and caregiving roles, and worked at UNICEF and the UK’s Department for International Development.