Morning Briefing

Under the slogan "Every Child Deserves a Fifth Birthday," USAID on Monday launched a social media campaign featuring childhood photos of celebrities, global health leaders and lawmakers, with the aim of "build[ing] support to fight preventable deaths of children," CQ HealthBeat reports. "'By asking others to remember their own fifth birthdays, we want to remind people that more than seven million children each year never get the chance to celebrate that milestone,' USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah said in a statement," the news service writes, noting, "Children who reach age five are much more likely to become adults, experts say." The article notes, "The campaign is a different tack for USAID, engaging the public as well as congressional leaders who decide the agency's funding." "The trend follows an attempt by the Obama administration, through its Global Health Initiative (GHI), to broaden and better coordinate U.S. global health policies, ... addressing systemic health care problems in developing countries, rather than focusing primarily on individual diseases like HIV/AIDS or malaria," CQ writes, noting, "Many advocates say that while the president's [global health] plan is the right approach in terms of long-term international development," it has "attracted tepid support from some lawmakers and has been dogged by the anti-spending environment in Congress."