The need for the future AIDS and global health architecture to be responsive to the needs of people across the world was the main outcome of the Think Tank Dialogue that took place on 2 December as part of the UNAIDS and Lancet Commission consultations. Participants also encourage the Commission to identify the incentives and levers available to transform the health architecture in a world where geo-political power is shifting.

Hosted by the Institute of Global Governance and the Institute for Global Health at University College London (UCL), the Dialogue was organized around three roundtable thematic sessions. Deliberations were informed by the ongoing work of the UNAIDS and Lancet Commission’s third Working Group on the AIDS and health architecture. The topics of the sessions were:

• Taking stock: Opportunities and lessons learnt from the AIDS response for global health governance
• Modernising the global heath and AIDS architecture: law, institutions, and public-private authority
• Pathways to enhancing coherence of the global health architecture

Participants

The dialogue was attended by officials from the Rockefeller Foundation, WHO, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, DFID andThe Lancet, as well as leading academics, practitioners and civil society representatives in the field of global health. Presentations were given by Dr Kent Buse (UNAIDS), Dr Simon Rushton (University of Sheffield), Dr Helena Legido-Quigley (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), and Dr Sarah Hawkes (UCL).

 Key messages

• Participants called for new approaches to address the emerging health burdens (including Non-Communicable Diseases) and the drivers of ill health—including the unhealthy lifestyles industries, as well as private health care providers.
• Concerted efforts should be made to ensure that the human right to health is realized and health inequality tackled.
• The global health architecture would benefit from the establishment of new independent accountability mechanisms which can undertake monitoring, review, and remedial activities
• The Commission was encouraged to identify the incentives and levers available to transform the architecture in a world where geo-political power is shifting, where Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows no longer exert a decisive influence, and where ideas play a more prominent role.

Outcomes

The outcome of the dialogue will inform the ongoing work of the UNAIDS and Lancet Commission’s third Working Group and a response document has been relayed to its Chair, Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator.

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