The CommonHealth

With the International AIDS Society’s 25th global conference taking place next week in Munich, Mark Lagon, Chief Policy Officer at Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and Bennett Freeman, Associate Fellow with Chatham House, joined Katherine to discuss a new Friends report regarding the role of the private sector and civil society organizations in advocating for global health programs, including HIV services. Lagon and Freeman argue that in a period during which restrictions on civic space seem to be increasing in many countries around the world, there is a business case to be made for the private sector in defending civil society organizations’ efforts to promote respect for human rights, monitor for equitable access to services, and encourage transparency and accountability within global health programs and beyond.

Leonard Rubenstein is Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, non-resident Fellow at CSIS, and Chair of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition. He joins us to unpack the Coalition’s 11th annual report on 2023. Four big wars—Ukraine, Myanmar, Gaza, Sudan—are driving up attacks upon civilians, and deaths, to exceptionally high levels. At the same time, attacks on the health sector reached over 2,500 recorded incidents in 2023, a 20% increase over 2022. Attacks on hospitals are often part of a deliberate, targeted military strategy. In other instances, they are a result merely of “contempt and indifference” as combatants wage war indiscriminately. What can be done, if policy is typically “hand-wringing” and “total impunity”? There could be breakthroughs through investigations and prosecutions in Ukraine and the International Criminal Court’s actions in the Israeli-Gaza war. Over time, we do see progress at the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights and the World Health Organization.

Dr. Raj Panjabi, former NSC Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense, shares his personal story, his deep ties to Liberia, the genesis of Last Mile Health, the profound lessons that emerged from Ebola in Liberia. In his time (2021-2023) heading the President’s Malaria Initiative and serving at the NSC, what accomplishments is he most proud of? Alternatively, what were the toughest revelations? As the ground shifts politically in America, what strategy might sustain and renew global health as a priority? Give a listen.

This episode is the lively conversation J. Stephen Morrison had the pleasure to hold with Dr. Angela Apeagyei and Dr. Chris Murray, IHME at CSIS on May 14. It begins with the compelling findings of the 15th IHME annual report Financing Global Health 2023. Global health is beset by high interest rates, the rising claim on resources for climate, costly geopolitical ‘forever’ wars, and an era of populism and multiple elections. What are the elements of a proactive, updated strategy to sustain support for global health? Give a listen!

France’s dynamic Ambassador for Global Health, Anne-Claire Amprou, visited CSIS for an extended conversation on the topline historical challenges that her office addresses: elevating climate’s health impacts, the pandemic treaty negotiations and reform of the IHR, anti-microbial resistance (AMR) in the year of the UN General Assembly High Level Meeting in September, navigating multiple ambitious global health replenishments amid scarcity, investing in workforce training, the WHO academy in Lyons, strengthening the French-US relationship, and France’s special engagement on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Give a listen! 

The inimitable Jennifer Kates, KFF, joins us to make sense of the multiple, convergent, competitive replenishments of the most significant instruments in global health – the Global Fund, Gavi, the Pandemic Fund, WHO at historic moment of intense geopolitical tensions and big, costly wars, the ascent of climate, fiscal scarcity, many elections in the populist era, and post-pandemic fatigue. The US elections are stirring high anxiety across the globe. Attention is focused on the Project 2025 blueprint for a Trump victory. Where is the hope and optimism? Give a listen.

In the fifth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, J. Stephen Morrison speaks with Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor, Boston University School of Public Health on the public health workforce pipeline. How to position public health schools and departments within universities to be more powerful, better funded, with better access to senior leadership? What are the concrete changes in the curricula of public health programs and the recruitment of faculty and students that are going to be most essential to meet the demands of the post-Covid era and correct the drift into illiberalism? How to make the case more effectively that public health is a national security measure? 

In our ongoing series on climate and health, we had the great fortune to enlist a friend and colleague, Noam Unger, Director of the CSIS Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative, to discuss PREPARE, the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience. Why did it take so long for adaptation to rise in significance?  PREPARE is “a presidential initiative that is not coming with a big bag of money along with it,” which means its principal focus is coordination around food, water, health, infrastructure, data forecasting, and financing and insurance. What might that achieve? Is it meaningful to compare its prospects with those of PEPFAR? How to build a geostrategic rationale, a program framework, and a mixed constituency for PREPARE incrementally over time? Give a listen to the answers to these questions and more.

Since the start of 2024, several countries in South America have experienced a rapid increase in cases of dengue, a viral disease transmitted by the aedes aegypti mosquito. According to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), this year alone at least 18 countries in the Americas have reported cases, with more than 400 deaths. In Peru, at the end of February, the government declared an emergency in 20 districts, setting up makeshift clinics and sending additional financial and human resources to affected areas. Dr. Andrés (Willy) Lescano, who leads the Emerging Infections and Climate Change Research Unit at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Peru and was one of the co-authors of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change 2022 report on South America, explains why it has been so challenging to control aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the region, the extent to which urbanization, global warming, and the el Niño phenomenon are driving the current outbreaks, and steps that can be taken to better prepare the health sector for future crises associated with a changing climate.

In the fourth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, Vanessa Kerry, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health and Austin Demby, Minister of Health and Sanitation for Sierra Leone join Julie Gerberding, CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security Co-chair and CEO of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health for a discussion about the intersection of climate change and global health. How do you make new partnerships around climate and health work? What are the expectations for wealthy countries and the United States in particular to find solutions to these challenges? How do you make the case for climate and health in a divisive environment, with scarce financial and political resources?