Global health and finance leaders gathered in Tokyo for the 2025 Universal Health Coverage High-Level Forum as the GFF launched its new five-year strategy, TRANSFORM 2030: Transforming Health Systems, Saving Lives, which was unanimously endorsed by its two governing bodies—the Investors Group and Trust Fund Committee—during their annual meetings in Dakar, Senegal, from November 11–13.
The strategy for 2026–2030 reaffirms the GFF’s vision to end preventable deaths among women, children, and adolescents. It builds on the organization’s past successes in expanding access to lifesaving care while addressing emerging global challenges, including shifts in aid, economic instability, health crises, and climate threats that jeopardize progress in low- and middle-income countries.
Leveraging its strengths as a country-led partnership and its ability to mobilize World Bank Group financing, the GFF aims to help partner countries accelerate and scale up health and nutrition services, increase domestic and international funding, and strengthen health systems to achieve universal health coverage, self-reliance, and resilience against future shocks. The strategy also positions the GFF as a key contributor to the World Bank Group’s goal of delivering affordable, quality care to 1.5 billion people by 2030 and to shaping a sustainable, country-led global health architecture.
Hon. Austin Demby, Minister of Health and Sanitation of Sierra Leone and Chair of the GFF Ministerial Network, emphasized that the strategy highlights the GFF’s unique value in unlocking financing, aligning external support, harnessing private sector resources, and building equitable and resilient health systems. The strategy provides a clear roadmap for investments that enhance equity, value, and the transformation toward country-owned global health leadership.
Hon. Pascalle Grotenhuis, Vice Minister for International Cooperation of the Netherlands and Co-Chair of the GFF Investors Group, noted that the strategy builds on a decade of results, expanding access to essential health services and advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights. The inclusive approach to developing the strategy reflects the GFF’s commitment to country leadership, collaboration, gender equity, and ensuring no one is left behind.
The Global Financing Facility (GFF) partnership was established in 2015 to advance global goals of ending preventable maternal and child deaths, protecting sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), achieving universal health coverage (UHC), and promoting gender equality. It focuses on expanding equitable and affordable access to reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH-N) services in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with the highest burdens of maternal and child mortality. The GFF helps partner countries prioritize health system reforms, mobilize domestic resources, and align external financing to strengthen primary health care (PHC) systems, improving health and nutrition outcomes for women, children, and adolescents. Since its inception, 36 partner countries have achieved significant improvements in health and nutrition, saving millions of lives and expanding opportunities for women and families, though recent economic, aid, and climate shocks threaten these gains.
The GFF operates as a lean, country-owned, results-based financing platform, designed to bring together all relevant partners around a unified, country-led plan and budget. Its model responds to country demand, providing catalytic grant financing, technical support, and aligned resources to prioritize RMNCAH-N. This approach strengthens country ownership and aligns with growing calls for health sovereignty, particularly in LMICs. Building on lessons from its first decade, the GFF’s new five-year strategy focuses on leveraging its comparative advantage to help countries transform their PHC systems, sustainably finance health priorities, and transition from aid dependency toward long-term economic growth, security, and prosperity.
The GFF’s country-led model enables partner countries to deliver more health for the money by integrating vertical health services into PHC systems, creating efficient and sustainable health delivery. The partnership coordinates with global and regional organizations, including UNICEF, WHO, Gavi, the Global Fund, and UNFPA, to align support and apply evidence-based solutions. Inclusive multistakeholder participation—engaging civil society, youth-led organizations, philanthropies, and private sector partners—strengthens transparency, equity, and accountability, ensuring that health programs respond to the needs of the most vulnerable populations.
Over the past decade, the GFF has mobilized substantial financing for RMNCAH-N. From 2015 to 2025, it delivered US$2.5 billion in grants and co-financing grants, leveraging more than US$11 billion from World Bank Group financing. This catalytic approach has enabled countries to increase domestic health budgets, improve resource allocation, and expand access to essential health services, including family planning, antenatal care, institutional deliveries, childhood vaccinations, and nutrition programs. As a result, GFF-supported countries have reduced maternal and child mortality, decreased adolescent birth rates, and improved access to modern contraceptives and nutrition interventions at a faster rate than countries without GFF support.
Despite these achievements, the next decade presents significant challenges. Progress in health and nutrition has slowed globally, SRHR and gender equality are backsliding, and domestic and international financing is constrained. Fragility, conflict, and climate risks threaten to reverse gains, particularly in low-income and fragile, conflict-affected, and violent (FCV) settings. Additionally, a looming youth jobs crisis, especially affecting women, requires investment in human capital supported by robust PHC systems to ensure economic stability and societal resilience.
The GFF’s strategy for 2026–2030, TRANSFORM 2030: Transforming Health Systems, Saving Lives, recommits to its vision of ending preventable deaths among women, children, and adolescents. Its mission is to enable partner countries to expand and sustain access to quality, affordable PHC services. Over the next five years, the GFF will focus on two primary goals: expanding delivery of essential RMNCAH-N services and transforming health systems to prioritize and sustain these investments. The strategy emphasizes mobilizing smarter, country-led financing, improving service quality, scaling access to proven commodities and innovations, and fostering health system sustainability, sovereignty, and resilience.
By leveraging its unique position within the World Bank Group, mobilizing external and domestic financing, and strengthening country-led health planning and implementation, the GFF aims to maximize the impact of every dollar invested. Through these efforts, the GFF will ensure that health and nutrition programs reach the populations lagging furthest behind, address inequities, and build sustainable health systems that support human capital development, economic growth, and societal transformation. This strategy positions the GFF to catalyze lasting improvements in health, gender equality, and well-being across LMICs, ensuring that no women, children, or adolescents are left behind.
