Health Security

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.

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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/.