Future Watch, August 2006: Assessing the Global Risk of Chronic Diseases

August 22, 2006

Recent events in the world of public health, including the International AIDS Conference in Toronto and the $500 million Gates Foundation grant to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, have once again catapulted the issue of global health into the public spotlight.  However, chronic disease—an issue often neglected but equally significant to our strategic interests—continues to receive scant attention from the policy community.

Earlier this year, the CSIS Global Strategy Institute hosted Dr. Carolyn Runowicz, the 2005-06 national president of the American Cancer Society, to speak at our anniversary conference on the global challenge of chronic disease. With Dr. Runowicz’s presentation as a springboard for further action, we hope to increase our efforts on this front by raising the challenge of chronic disease on the policy agenda, both nationally and internationally.

This month's Future Watch, written by GSI Research Associate Rachel Posner, examines the causes for the recent rise in chronic disease as well as the societal and economic costs of policy inaction.