Under the Trump administration, global health programs once managed by the U.S. Agency for International Development will transition to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy, or GHSD, by July 1. This bureau has been tasked with hiring 80 positions — 50 in Washington, D.C., and 30 overseas.
This is according to a series of emails sent to USAID global health staff and an informational call the State Department hosted Friday — which had breakout sessions for different bureaus. Attendees on the call were told that referrals are the bureau’s preferred route for hiring overseas positions, rather than people applying themselves.
But USAID employees, who asked to remain anonymous, expressed concern to Devex around the transparency of this fast-paced hiring process and whether it is competitive and merit-based. They said there’s been a lack of public advertisements of positions and a dependency on an opaque referral process.
About the author
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.
