Born Free Africa and University of California, San Francisco Global Health Delivery and Diplomacy (GHDD) have launched a strategic alliance to continue to support embedding talent to build local capacity in Ministries of Health to accelerate the elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV (eMTCT) and the provision of universal health coverage.

John Megrue, Chairman of Born Free Africa and Chairman of Apax Partners U.S., and Dr. Eric Goosby, Director, Global Health Delivery and Diplomacy at UCSF Global Health Sciences, United Nation Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Tuberculosis; Professor of medicine, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF); and U.S. Ambassador-at-Large (Ret.), announced the launch today.

The alliance brings together complementary leadership and management styles with deep technical expertise to steward Born Free’s ongoing investment with the government of Kenya through April 2017. The alliance has the potential to expand the investment model beyond eMTCT and into new countries for broader global health impact.

As the former Ambassador-at-Large and United States Global AIDS Coordinator, Dr. Goosby led all U.S. government international HIV/AIDS efforts from 2009 to 2013 and has spent many years working on the problem of how to deliver health care in developing countries with weak health systems. “Dr. Goosby is a remarkable leader and champion for health and has served as an advisor and friend to Born Free for many years,” said Megrue.

Taylor Buonocore, newly appointed President of Born Free Africa and ongoing lead for Born Free’s partnership with the government of Kenya, confirmed the organizations’ synergies, “Born Free and UCSF share a philosophy, values and ultimate vision for the role of talent in health systems change. Across the board, our partners are excited about the expertise and assets that this strategic alliance will bring.”

“We believe that local talent, both managerial and clinical, is the key to achieving the impacts on health that are possible with the science and technology available today,” said Dr. Eric Goosby, Director of UCSF’s Global Health Delivery and Diplomacy. “Partnering with local governments to codify the interventions known to drive performance, we can eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV and build on that platform to ultimately be able to deliver universal health care.”

While the expanded organization will remain laser-focused on its investment in Kenya for the next 18 months, over time, the partners plan to codify their joint approaches to investing in management talent so that the combined knowledge and experience can be shared to encourage further investments in talent and continued private sector philanthropy as means to achieve universal health coverage.