Francis Collins, the new NIH director, on Monday outlined his top five priorities for the U.S. research agency during a town hall meeting with NIH staff, Science’s blog “Science Insider” reports. Collins emphasized the agency’s commitment to “high-throughput technologies,” “translational research,” “health care reform,” “global health” and “empower[ing] the biomedical research community,” the blog writes (Kaiser, 8/17).

Obama Must ‘Urgently’ Appoint ‘Strong’ USAID Leader According to a Lancet editorial examining USAID, though there is “deep involvement” from the State Department, “without a strong leader” at USAID, there is “justifiable fear” that programs could be “directed to achieve short-term political gain.” The Lancet writes, “[a]ll the building blocks…

As part of her seven country, 11-day trip to Africa, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday in Nairobi will meet with Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed at the new U.S. embassy in Kenya, according to Associated Press (Lee, 8/6).

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton kicked off a seven country 11-day trip — “her longest overseas journey to date as the top U.S. diplomat — by flying Monday night to Kenya where she will address an African trade and development forum, meet top Kenyan officials and see the beleaguered president of lawless Somalia’s interim government,” the Associated Press reports.

“U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads this week on a seven-nation tour of Africa aiming to prove U.S. commitment to the continent after the administration’s early focus elsewhere,” AFP/ABS-CBN News reports.

The global economic downturn has “reversed a 20-year decline in world poverty” and could “add up to 90 million to the ranks of the hungry in 2009, an increase of six percent over current totals,” according to a U.N. report on the Millennium Development Goals, which U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon launched in Geneva on Monday, Reuters reports.

“Global health funding boosted by private donors has quadrupled since 1990, but the extra money has not always gone to the right countries and diseases, according to a pair of studies released Friday,” in the journal Lancet, AFP/Google.com reports.

“To some, human trafficking may seem like a problem limited to other parts of the world,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton writes in a Washington Post opinion piece, but “it occurs in every country, including the U.S., and we have a responsibility to fight it just as others do.”

U.S. Should Double Newborn, Maternal Health Spending, Encourage Other G8 Countries To Do The Same Although “child survival is improving – albeit way too slowly – in most regions of the world,” sub-Saharan Africa “continues to have the world’s highest child-mortality rates,” former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who…