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Community health workers, social media networks, and local residents serve as the first line of defense against global health risks, especially infectious diseases and bioterrorism. While top-down initiatives provide essential resources to detect looming threats, including sophisticated surveillance and diagnostic tools, outbreaks are most likely to be detected first at th...
Often overshadowed by terrorism, nuclear weapons, and cybercrime in the public imagination, pandemics may actually be the more existential threat to human civilization. And most experts agree: We’re woefully unprepared, and crucial funding for basic research, foreign aid, and preparedness is on the chopping block. What lessons have we learned from the Ebola crisis that can...
Quick Take is a weekly dose of ideas and insights delivered in short form. Today’s episode features Gayle Smith, the State Department’s coordinator for the global response to Covid-19. Watch her full conversation from the Aspen Security Form. The talk was co-presented with the Aspen Institute Health, Medicine, and Society Program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYXL0Ppkv...
An entire generation of children in some of the world’s poorest countries are now protected against deadly infectious diseases, thanks largely to Gavi: The Vaccine Alliance. Impact: more than 16 million lives saved, vast healthcare cost savings, and greater global health security. A leading force behind the push for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, Gavi has played a...
A cyberattack can disrupt a hospital’s oxygen supply, disable cancer-fighting radiation therapy, divert emergency vehicles, and force surgeries to be canceled. While data security has received a lot of attention, the risk that hackers will hold basic healthcare services hostage has far greater implications for patient safety. Ransomware attacks have already struck hundreds...
To protect our nation’s health, safety and security, it is vital we hold public health prevention and preparedness as a high priority—as high as our nation’s military defense.
Anyone who has ever had a pet understands how deeply connected human beings are to the animals who serve as our companions, lessen our stress, and perhaps offer a buffer against cognitive decline. Puppy play date, anyone? Honeybees help to protect our food supply, vision-impaired people rely not only on seeing-eye dogs but also on seeing-eye horses, and animal research has...
Stolen medical records are worth more than financial data. If your Social Security number gets into the wrong hands, the cost to society is a dime. If your credit card is hacked, that loss is worth a quarter. But your medical records? They are valued at more than $1,000. Hackers scrape medical records for personal information that can be used to file fake insurance claims,...
Nearly 75 percent of us experience some significant adversity by the age of 20, but these experiences are often kept secret — as are our battles to overcome them. Clinical psychologist Meg Jay, author of Supernormal, tells the tale of everyday superheroes who have made a life out of dodging bullets and seeking justice, even as they hide among us as doctors, artists, entrep...
For decades, diet and exercise fads have promised to shrink waistlines, build muscle, detoxify, and so on. But evidence is mounting that there’s no one diet or routine that works for everyone. Researchers are experimenting with AI to determine personalized nutrition algorithms based on an individual’s health, lifestyle, physiology, and immune system. Christie Aschwanden, a...
What are the most pressing external and internal threats to the United States?
As new public health threats brew, we need to ensure there is capacity within our health systems to serve the people of this country. There is a strong business case for readiness, but it requires a paradigm shift in how we think about the intersection of routine care, unscheduled care, and the health of the populations we serve.
Ronald Klain was White House Ebola Response Coordinator from 2014 to 2015. This post has been updated and adopted from the author’s piece, Confronting the Pandemic Threat, published in Democracy Journal (No. 40, Spring 2016).
Join Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Kai Ryssdal, host of “Marketplace,” for a conversation about where health care goes from here. While the public debate is still to repeal or not to repeal, the fact is that the Affordable Care Act is part of the lives of millions of Americans, whose health care security depends on it. The key questions we...
Although infectious disease outbreaks, from influenza to Ebola, surface with alarming frequency, more than 80% of the world has not yet developed an adequate response plan. Does your nation have one in place? Resolve to Save Lives has launched a new website that assigns an epidemic preparedness score to 180 countries, giving journalists, advocates and citizens the tools th...
Population growth, shifting agricultural practices, and altered weather patterns are weighing on the food supply, a pressure that will only intensify over the next 30 years, when the planet holds an estimated 10 billion inhabitants. Rising temperatures will reduce crop yield and spawn more pests, higher carbon dioxide levels will lessen the nutritional value of food, and f...
Genetically modified organism. Rarely have three words generated such passionate and polarized debate. GMO has become a cultural construct, a metaphor we use to argue about a set of ideas that don’t fit neatly into any clear category: consumer and worker health; corporate greed; biodiversity; the role of the Green Revolution; productive farming in the developing world; inn...
By 2030, the world will face a shortage of almost 14 million health care workers. In the United States alone, we’ll need as many as 35,000 more primary care doctors over the next decade. Without adequately trained health professionals, universal access to health care will remain out of reach and preventable illnesses and deaths will rise. That’s a threat not only to indivi...
As the nation’s top doctor, the US surgeon general is uniquely positioned to use his bully pulpit to drive Americans toward healthy decision-making. Jerome Adams is the 20th person to serve in that capacity, where he promotes wellness strategies, warns the public against emerging health hazards, and is a leader of the 6,500-person Public Health Service Commissioned Corps,...
Infectious diseases represent one of the greatest threats to global health and security. The failures of the Ebola crisis demonstrated that we remain woefully unprepared, but they also served as a wake-up call at the highest levels of policymaking across nations. The twelve-country Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future has urgently recommended an inte...