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The Trump administration<\/span> plans to condition global health assistance on foreign countries sharing significant amounts of health data with the United States, including on abortion, according to a template for an aid agreement obtained by The Intercept.<\/p>\n The template agreement, which references the President\u2019s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR \u2014 but also applies funding to fight malaria, tuberculosis, and other pathogens \u2014 would require countries that receive global health assistance to share a broad range of health care and pathogen data for the next 25 years. <\/p>\n The model document would also require foreign governments to provide the United States with \u201cany data access or information needed to monitor compliance\u201d with the Helms Amendment, which prevents U.S. federal funds from being used to provide abortion care abroad. This stipulation would give the United States broad authority to collect data on abortion care and policy for decades to come.<\/p>\n \u201cThe [agreement] is just another example of the Trump Administration\u2019s playbook for using its power and influence to further its anti-choice agenda and undermine critical national public health responses,\u201d wrote Melissa Cockroft, global lead on abortion for the International Planned Parenthood Federation, in a statement to The Intercept.<\/p>\n The document was developed in line with the State Department\u2019s new \u201cAmerica First Global Health Strategy,\u201d which seeks to broadly eliminate multilateral cooperation on international health care initiatives, like the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system being negotiated by the World Health Organization, in favor of direct agreements between the United States and other countries.<\/p>\n After the government shutdown brought negotiations to a screeching halt, the department has renewed its efforts to reach bilateral global health agreements with dozens of countries, primarily in Africa, identified in its America First Global Health Strategy. The State Department is supposed to complete the deals by the end of the year. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Global health experts who spoke to The Intercept cautioned that these agreements appear to be highly unbalanced, giving the Trump administration sweeping authority to extract data on a number of issues, including on abortion, raising significant concerns about misuse at a time when the Trump administration is looking to limit access to abortion globally. <\/p>\n The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n Collecting data itself isn\u2019t an unusual function of a global health initiative, said Mitchell Warren, the executive director of AVAC, a nonprofit organization focused on HIV prevention.<\/p>\n PEPFAR, in particular, \u201chas always been very data rich, lots of data collected and analyzed, but in a very collaborative nature between governments, civil society, and the United States government \u2026 and there\u2019s always been great clarity on why we\u2019re collecting this data,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n However, Warren also noted that the section around \u201cany data access\u201d necessary to monitor compliance with the anti-abortion Helms Amendment \u2014 which gives broad discretion to the United States to request access to abortion-related data for decades \u2014 goes far beyond that scope.<\/p>\n \u201cThe part about Helms and requiring compliance information on that for 25 years, along with everything else, does raise some concerns about what [the administration] is doing with this,\u201d said Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, president and CEO of Global Health Council. \u201cIs there a larger play at foot to use data to monitor countries\u2019 regulatory moves around liberalizing restrictions on abortion?\u201d <\/p>\n <\/p>\n