The Center for Global Health and Development (previously known as the Center for Global Health and Diplomacy) was born out of the need to continue the progress made in global health over the past two decades. With resources increasingly scarce, global health leaders realized that leveraging the investments already made would require establishing new partnerships and reaching out beyond the global health community. In order to facilitate new partnerships, stakeholders needed a platform where they could communicate ideas and share best practices. In 2012, a group of innovative leaders including heads of state, public health professionals and diplomats came together to create such a platform: the Center for Global Health and Diplomacy (CGHD).

In 2017, CGHD recognized that the key to true sustainable global health initiatives rested on attracting private and public capital to these undertakings as reliance on grant or donor funding was insufficient to ensure the continuation of programs that millions of people had come to depend upon. CGHD therefore developed strong networks of both global health leaders, but also leaders in the public and private capital sectors and brought these disparate groups together to form partnerships that leveraged the different expertise of each to enable true sustainability. Thereafter, our center became known as the Center for Global Health and Development.