Lois Quam, executive director of the Obama administration’s Global Health Initiative (GHI), talked about GHI projects and “defended the program even if her panel was met with some hard questions” during a presentation on Tuesday at the annual Global Health Council conference in Washington, D.C., GlobalPost’s “Global Pulse” blog reports.

Quam joined Lee Brudvig, deputy chief of mission in Kenya, and Jennifer Klein, special advisor for the Office of Global Health Women’s Issues, on a panel that discussed the strategies GHI had implemented in the eight GHI plus countries of Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nepal and Rwanda. Quam “emphasized that GHI had built on a strong foundation already in place through previous initiatives such as PEPFAR and the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), but was founded on the idea that much more could be done,” according to the blog. “However, what the panel lacked were the concrete specifics that showed GHI’s progress in each country,” the blog states, summarizing some of the questions the panel received (Karimjee, 6/14).