A Conversation with Ambassador Jimmy Kolker: Collaboration in Global Health
By Mary Kate Etscorn
On February 15, 2019, Ambassador Jimmy Kolker facilitated a lunch conversation with Global Health Initiative student fellows. Ambassador Kolker shared his wisdom with us, drawing from his diverse and extensive experiences as U.S. Ambassador to Burkina Faso (1999-2002) and Uganda (2002-2005), Deputy Global AIDS Coordinator in the Office of the US Global AIDS Coordinator (2005-2007), Chief of the AIDS Section at UNICEF’s New York headquarters (2007-2011), and Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs at the US Department of Health and Human Services (2011-2017). Throughout the conversation, he emphasized the importance of collaboration for the success of global health.
In his work to implement the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in Uganda, Ambassador Kolker shared his initial doubts about his qualification for the assignment, having only worked in diplomacy—not healthcare—prior. Yet, rather than allocating roles to outside organizations or deciding what he thought would be most effective, he used his knowledge of implementation sciences, along with the insights of those who best knew the needs of the population, to lead the implementation of PEPFAR. Ambassador Kolker explained that “you have to listen when creating programs” and “look to the people on the ground” in order to yield the greatest impact.
Ambassador Kolker noted the necessity of “dialogue between practitioners and policy-makers” prior to investing donor dollars. In the case of his PEPFAR assignment, the urgent need for a solution left his team no time to conduct more studies. Consequently, they aimed to consider the issues of the target population by seeking their direct input. Since “governments continue to bear primary responsibility for population health,” this approach allowed citizens and their practitioners to take control of their health with the help of the organized and funded efforts of PEPFAR.
Ambassador Kolker—a man with much to be proud of—was incredibly humble throughout our conversation, regularly acknowledging his limits as an individual and crediting the people with whom he worked. Despite the many successes of his diplomatic career, Ambassador Kolker listed his award for mentoring subordinates in career development as one of his proudest achievements. By his humble example and continued passion for furthering the advancement of global health, including sharing his experiences with the GHI student fellows, Ambassador Kolker both told and showed us the value of collaboration in the field of global health.
Mary Kate Etscorn (NHS ’21) is an undergraduate studying global health and a spring 2019 Global Health Initiative student fellow.