On Apr. 17, 2025, a study was published that shows the United States spent roughly US$12 billion on global health in 2024. Without that yearly spending, roughly 25 million people could die in the next 15 years, according to models that have estimated the impact of such cuts on programmes for tuberculosis, HIV, family planning and maternal and child health.

The United States has long been the largest donor for health initiatives in poor countries, accounting for almost one-quarter of all global health assistance from donors. These investments have contributed to consistent public-health gains for more than a decade. HIV deaths, for example, dropped by 51% globally between 2010 and 2023, and deaths owing to tuberculosis dropped by 23% between 2015 and 2023.

But the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has cut billions of dollars of spending for global health, including dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and freezing foreign-aid contributions — some of which has been temporarily restored.

Researchers have been trying to study the potential impact of the funding cuts. John Stover, an infectious-diseases modeller at Avenir Health, a global-health organization in Glastonbury, Connecticut, and his colleagues used mathematical models to estimate health outcomes, should all U..S funding for global health be cut and not replaced, compared with outcomes if funding provided in 2024 were to continue through to 2040.

The results were posted on the preprint server SSRN and have not been peer reviewed