Health Security

The CSIS Global Health Policy Center’s work on health and security provides an in-depth analysis of this emerging complex interface between proliferating security threats and extensive global health demands

Health security encompasses many threats to U.S. national interests and the American people, from global outbreak and pandemic surveillance and response, to growing drug resistance, managing technological advances in gene editing, strengthening vaccine confidence, and assessing the impacts of conflict, natural disasters, and other humanitarian emergencies on health systems. The United States has articulated approaches through the Global Health Security Agenda, launched in 2015 with other nations, and the National Biodefense Strategy, last updated in 2022. However, there remains a need for a stronger, more coherent, better integrated, and more reliably financed U.S. approach to health security.
 
The CSIS Global Health Policy Center analyzes how U.S. policies and programs must be adapted and capacities strengthened, in both global health and international security, to advance U.S. national interests in the coming years. Topics explored include: contributions of the U.S. DOD to combat infectious disease; cultivating health security partnerships with governments in geopolitically significant regions; assessing the successes and sustainability of the Global Health Security Agenda; and tracking the epidemiological spread and policy response of the U.S. and key governments to the coronavirus pandemic.

Featured Projects

The CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security is our signature effort, convening an esteemed group of senior leaders and subject matter experts to advance a concrete, forward-leaning agenda for U.S. global health security strategy, focused on integration of effort, enhanced global coordination, and building new partnerships and alliances that advance U.S. diplomacy. The Alliance identifies options to strengthen core pandemic preparedness and response capabilities, while exploring the untapped opportunities to integrate capabilities across traditional infectious disease programming including on HIV/AIDS, routine immunization, and antimicrobial resistance, among other priorities. The two-year effort, running from spring 2023 through the end of 2024, is co-chaired by Senator Richard Burr, former Senator from North Carolina and immediate past Ranking Member on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and Dr. Julie Gerberding, CEO of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health and former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From 2018-2022, the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security was our project to bridge political divides and build a U.S. doctrine of continuous prevention, protection, and resilience. We led a distinguished and diverse group of high-level opinion leaders from both the health and national security worlds, including members of Congress, officials from previous administrations, and leaders from industry, foundations, universities, and non-governmental organizations. The Commission charted a bold vision for the future of U.S. leadership in global health security—at home and abroad, a goal more necessary now than ever. The Commission convened experts privately and publicly to discuss these pressing challenges and produced briefs and reports outlining policies to best address them. In its final report, Ending the Cycle of Crisis and Complacency in U.S. Global Health Security (November 2019), the Commission articulated a robust, long-term approach to ensure continuous protection and resilience against health security threats. To learn more, visit the Commission’s website: https://healthsecurity.csis.org/.

Featured Project

Photo: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images

Pandemic Therapies

The last two and a half years of the global Covid-19 pandemic have witnessed unprecedented research and development collaboration that has resulted in the availability—in record time—of new vaccines.

View more about Pandemic Therapies

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Preventing HPV and Eliminating Cervical Cancer in the Americas

Improving equitable access to HPV prevention, testing and treatment; raising awareness about HPV vaccination; and building capacity around HPV screening will ensure access for young people in Latin America and the Caribbean to essential cancer prevention tools.

Commentary by Katherine E. Bliss — March 4, 2024

Bridging Health and Climate at COP28

The COP28 Health Day brought overdue attention to the complex intersection of climate change and global health and helped lay out a pathway for future diplomacy. Still, the real work remains. Public health and climate can no longer be treated as parallel issues.

Critical Questions by Maclane Speer and J. Stephen Morrison — January 26, 2024

Gaza’s Human Crisis Demands a Rethink

As war in Gaza enters its fourth month, much tougher U.S. leadership is needed to press for urgent changes by Israel and Hamas to stabilize and protect the civilian population, limit further human catastrophe, and restore hope that an eventual recovery is within reach.

Commentary by Leonard Rubenstein and J. Stephen Morrison — January 12, 2024

The New Realism Needed to Secure PEPFAR’s Future

This World AIDS Day, the White House, the State Department, congressional stalwarts, and others need a new, realist strategy to defend PEPFAR’s future, in the absence of a five-year reauthorization.

Commentary by J. Stephen Morrison — November 29, 2023

Eight Commonsense Actions on Biosafety and Biosecurity

The CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security’s Working Group on R&D Innovation advocates eight commonsense actions to strengthen U.S. and global biosafety and biosecurity and promote a safer, more secure, and more innovative global bioeconomy. 

Brief by J. Stephen Morrison and Michaela Simoneau — November 21, 2023

The Moral Imperative for Supporting Ukraine

While the case for supporting Ukraine has been grounded in U.S. strategic interests, there is an equally compelling moral case for preventing continued atrocities that could destroy Ukrainian democracy, institutions, identity, and the long-term health of the population

Commentary by Leonard Rubenstein — October 30, 2023

High-Level Action Missing on Pandemic Preparedness

More high-level multisectoral leadership, both at the national and UN level, is critical to galvanizing the coordination and protections needed to ensure a rapid, effective response when the next health crisis hits.

Commentary by Nellie Bristol — October 6, 2023

The Worst Is Over—Now What?

In the post-Covid moment, if senior U.S. leaders so choose, a forward-looking U.S. health security strategy can restore trust, sustain bipartisan achievements, operationalize new security frameworks, accelerate new technology, and elevate U.S. diplomacy. 

Brief by J. Stephen Morrison and Michaela Simoneau — August 9, 2023