Our global health programme focuses on analysing and informing efforts to prevent global health security crises and improve responses to them when they do arise. We particularly focus on the governance, political and international cooperation aspects of addressing the evolving biological risk landscape, whether the risks are related to naturally occurring, accidental or deliberately caused events.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the responses to it clearly illustrated the weaknesses in national and global preparedness and the challenges in global governance and international cooperation today. It has also demonstrated how a dangerous infectious disease outbreak anywhere can endanger us all, and the far-reaching impact that the growing threat of outbreaks can have on geopolitics, security, prosperity and global equity.
Our work bridges the security, public health, business and other relevant communities to address key issues affecting global health security. It facilitates the translation of evidence into policy, informs strategic planning and decision-making, and contributes to international processes.
We focus on three interconnected aspects of preventing and responding to global health security crises:
- Building resilient and responsive systems
- Reducing biological risks
- Preparing for emerging threats to and opportunities for health security
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Activities
We draw on the expertise of our staff, the multidisciplinary expertise of colleagues across Chatham House and an extensive network of Associate Fellows and other partners around the world to pursue our objectives by:
- Convening global health security stakeholders to provide a platform for sharing experience and knowledge, exploring common interests, brainstorming and co-developing solutions and ways to collaborate;
- Stimulating discussion on key questions for strengthening global health security and its governance; and
- Undertaking independent, original policy-relevant research and insightful analysis to inform decision-making.
Research focus
- Assessing the effectiveness of international cooperative efforts to strengthen global biodefence;
- Building supply chain resilience for pandemic and bioweapon preparedness and response through international cooperation in the strategic stockpiling of medical countermeasures;
- Facilitating political agreements for cooperation on cross-border outbreak prevention and control;
- Governance of high-consequence pathogen research and increasing the sustainability of laboratories handling high-consequence pathogens in low-resource environments; and
- Improving understanding of the impacts of and ways to counter disinformation in health resilience.
