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The CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security’s bipartisan working group on the CDC recommends a package of reforms to strengthen CDC’s performance in preventing and responding to dangerous outbreaks and drive a significant reset within the agency.

A final report from the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security’s working group on Covid-19 therapies discusses how to strengthen U.S. leadership and global action to ensure development of, access to, and uptake of Covid-19 therapies worldwide.

Expanding global vaccination against the human papillomavirus is not only a long-term strategic investment in the fight against cervical cancer, but also an opportunity to strengthen life course immunization and contribute to the defense against future pandemic threats.

Prioritizing gender equity within health workforces can close gaps in global immunization coverage, contribute to the reduction of gender-related barriers in the health workforce, and strengthen the outlook for global health security.

Historically, global immunization efforts have been largely gender-blind, but decreasing global immunization coverage, coupled with greater focus on reducing inequitable access to immunizations, have inspired new efforts to reduce gender-related barriers to services.

The CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security recommends accelerating U.S. leadership and global action to ensure availability and uptake of Covid-19 therapies, including through efforts to scale financing, sustain R&D, and strengthen health systems.

The Department of Defense must be at the table from the beginning in discussions of all types of biological threats to ensure that its significant capabilities are well integrated into U.S. health security strategy and quickly deployable in an emergency pandemic response.

The creation of a new Pandemic Preparedness Fund offers a near-term opportunity to mobilize significant investments in global health security, if the instrument is equipped with the vision, purpose, resources, and legitimacy to deliver results.

As Omicron has exposed the limits of China’s Zero-Covid approach, causing waves of outbreaks and lockdowns with political, economic, and social ramifications, could there be an opportunity for China and the West to test whether a health security détente is feasible?

At the three-month mark of Russia's invasion, Ukraine, while fragile and vulnerable, is surviving. In the face of a long and bloody war of attrition unfolding in the East and the South, as Russia blockades Ukraine's access to the Black Sea, the human toll for Ukraine's citizens is likely to worsen. Can massive Western assistance reach Ukraine in time to defeat Putin? Can the transatlantic alliance hold together under mounting stress? An exceptionally high volume of Russian attacks on healthcare persists, drawing the condemnation of the World Health Organization leadership. An historic moment in international justice may be emerging, when it is possible to bring Russian war criminals to justice.

The Department of Defense (DOD) should be systematically incorporated into any evolving U.S. government vision on international health security. A process of strategic planning that encompasses a spectrum of valuable DOD contributions to contain the global Covid-19 pandemic should begin right away. DOD has broad capabilities that have consistently proven their high value in addressing the current Covid-19 pandemic and other historical disease outbreaks, in support of the U.S. civilian-led response. The knowledge and experience gained in crisis response at home and overseas contribute to military readiness and improved coordination of all actors involved in preventing, detecting, and responding to infectious disease events.

Russia's invasion has inflicted extreme physical and psychological trauma inside Ukraine. As a renewed Russian assault against Ukraine’s southeast begins, Ukrainians are likely to face persistent and intensifying public health challenges as a direct result of the conflict, compounding the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The security and safety of healthcare facilities, workers, and supply lines remain paramount concerns.

Russia's strategic failure to capture Kyiv fuels the rise in terror and atrocities against civilians. Mariupol and Bucha have become symbols of Russia’s barbarity, just as it has become clear that Putin and his commanders are committing war crimes. The second phase of the war has commenced: the campaign to lay waste to the southeast.

The startling escalation of Russian military violence against Ukraine's medical system and civilian infrastructure has displaced over 7 million people, destroyed cities, and caused enormous civilian casualties. On days 19-22 of the invasion, David Miliband, Christina Wille, Alla Soroka-Krotova, Andriy Klepikov, Seth G. Jones, and J. Stephen Morrison dissect how Putin's decisions and the course of the war are driving towards ever high destruction of Ukrainian society, and may soon widen the war and cross boundaries.

Russia has shown a pattern of indiscriminate violence in their past behavior in Syria and Chechnya, historically taking a "scorched earth" approach that targets civilian populations and medical infrastructure. On days 8 and 9 of the invasion, Seth G. Jones, Marti Flacks, Jacob Kurtzer, Leonard Rubenstein, and Alla Soroka-Krotova assess the rapid escalation of the war thus far and look forward to the dangerous days ahead.

Recently many experts have spotlighted China’s acute vulnerability in the face of Omicron and predicted the virus may soon overrun the fearsome defenses of China’s Zero-Covid policy, infecting millions of weakly protected Chinese, in particular a massive elderly population with little immune protection, who in turn could swamp China’s poorly prepared, under-resourced health system.

More than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a glaring global gap in the availability and distribution of effective Covid-19 therapies. This is exacerbated by a parallel gap in testing that makes it difficult for those with Covid-19 symptoms to access available treatments in a timely manner. A promising moment has arisen to make significant progress in advancing these essential companions: tests and therapies.

The year 2022 is the year of decision. Confronted at the year’s opening with the Omicron surge, we have no choice but to rethink U.S. approaches, at home and abroad, in both managing the ongoing pandemic and in creating better preparedness for the future.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) should be systematically incorporated into any U.S. government vision on international global health security. The United States should build on what has been learned and achieved through DOD support at home to the civilian-led Covid-19 response, as well as past DOD contributions to pandemic response overseas, and incorporate long-standing DOD international capabilities against biological threats. DOD should contribute to responding to the acute phase of the pandemic and build long-term preparedness capacities.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) should be systematically incorporated into any U.S. government vision on international global health security. The United States should build on what has been learned and achieved through DOD support at home to the civilian-led Covid-19 response, as well as past DOD contributions to pandemic response overseas, and incorporate long-standing DOD international capabilities against biological threats. DOD should contribute to responding to the acute phase of the pandemic and build long-term preparedness capacities.

Although the United States and China have entered a period of strategic competition, bilateral cooperation on health security is more important than ever. The Covid-19 pandemic, with its novel nature and devastating impact globally, represents another critical opportunity for bilateral cooperation.

Two months after the Taliban rushed to power, Afghanistan is hurtling toward economic chaos, the collapse of its health system, and a runaway humanitarian emergency.

Nearly 20 months into the Covid-19 pandemic, several profound, urgent developments have altered the world’s understanding of the pandemic and the strategic threat it poses.

On June 17, the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security convened its members and expert advisors to weigh a commission white paper that both provides an update on the global pandemic and details several concrete recommendations to strengthen U.S. international leadership.

Since the pandemic began, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has been heavily involved in addressing challenges to the armed forces while supporting the overall national Covid-19 response. Broad U.S. military expertise in health, biosecurity, and biosafety will continue to contribute substantially to coordinated, interagency global health security efforts.

Global health challenges threaten the United States’ health and economic security, a reality made painfully clear over the past 14 months. U.S. leadership is essential to mobilizing investment from the official sector and private investors.

On April 15, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the U.S. government co-hosted a high-level meeting centered around the theme of “One World Protected” to launch a fundraising campaign for the COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC). Securing the funds necessary to enable a rapid and equitable distribution of vaccines to lower- and lower-middle income countries is essential to protecting global health security and preventing further social and economic disruptions.

The United States ignores at its peril the Covid-19 pandemic that continues to rage outside its borders. The United States should launch a signature global initiative on Covid-19 vaccine supply, delivery, and demand, propelled by high-level U.S. diplomacy.

Lebanon faces cascading crises. The United States should expand its technical and financial support to the international agencies filling critical gaps in the Covid-19 response in Lebanon, and it should work with its European allies to support the Ministry of Public Health as it oversees the Covid-19 vaccine rollout.

How has the military coped with ensuring its own readiness during the pandemic and how do militaries best support the civilian response to the pandemic? Answers to these questions will not just help the United States prepare for the next public health emergency—natural, accidental, or intentional—but they will have global applications as well.

More than three decades have passed since the Declaration of Alma-Ata proclaimed primary health care (PHC), along with water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), to be basic inputs for public health. The outbreaks of Ebola virus in West Africa and in the Democratic Republic of Congo reinforced the important role WASH services play in protecting clinical staff from infection and preventing community transmission of the virus.

The Covid-19 pandemic has glaringly illuminated and exacerbated gender inequalities in health and development around the world. These mutually reinforcing crises, further compounded in countries with high HIV burdens, demonstrate that strengthening global health security requires a concerted focus on the health, development, and leadership of women and girls.

The novel coronavirus pandemic disrupted years of progress against vaccine-preventable diseases and created several new obstacles to sustaining access to global immunization. As the world surpasses 100 million cases of Covid-19, how are efforts such as the Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator’s COVAX Facility working to secure global collaboration, to ensure access to Covid-19 vaccines for all affected populations, and to begin to turn the tide of the pandemic?

SARS-CoV-2 variants confer a new competitive edge to the virus and threaten to change the pandemic game fundamentally, at the very moment when many countries are facing runaway outbreaks and worsening economic and social crises.

The Covid-19 pandemic has profoundly changed our world. CSIS Health Security Commission Co-Chairs Kelly Ayotte and Julie Gerberding define this extraordinary moment and the work the Commission has begun to advance a U.S. global health security agenda in the Covid-19 era.

Nearly a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, as the world marks [International Universal Health Coverage Day](https://universalhealthcoverageday.org/) on December 12, ensuring widespread access to essential services has gained new visibility as a critical global health priority.

_The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the acute vulnerabilities in the United States’ health security policies and capacities. While the Covid-19 crisis is far from over, we cannot afford to be complacent about what has long been understood to be a principal health security threat: influenza viruses._

J. Stephen Morrison and Carolyn Reynolds offer advice to the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response on how to meet this historic moment and capture the attention of world leaders to effect meaningful change.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump share a Covid-19 response playbook that has led each country into deep trouble. Yet historic failures of leadership in the United States have led to runaway outbreaks and staggering death counts that far outrace Russia’s.

In the global scramble for a Covid-19 vaccine, the United States has pursued a nationalist approach. This paper argues that it is in the core national security interests of the United States to adopt a hybrid strategy, one that blends nationalism and internationalism.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a slow-moving epidemic that kills hundreds of thousands annually. The COVID-19 pandemic will worsen the problem. The U.S. government should take immediate action to mitigate the threat posed by AMR domestically and globally.

President Trump's suspension of funding to WHO could gravely compromise the global response to Covid-19. If common sense and diplomacy prevail, the administration and WHO can walk back from the ledge, with a bipartisan nudge from Congress and gentle pressure from the G-7.

How bad is Covid-19 likely to be for the District of Columbia and the broader region? CSIS’s J. Stephen Morrison analyzes the key factors affecting the outlook for the U.S. capital.

Many countries that have slowed the spread of Covid-19 have used digital tools to monitor transmission and movement. This poses a challenge for the United States as it seeks to expand contact tracing and roll back social distancing measures while protecting privacy rights.

The Covid-19 pandemic will change history, but its path is not yet clear. This commentary summarizes the major drivers behind the pandemic—both natural and political—and sketches three possible scenarios for how the Covid-19 pandemic may play out.

CSIS experts analyze new satellite imagery showing that the Chinese government has made exceptional progress in constructing two emergency medical facilities in Wuhan.

A new coronavirus rattles China and threatens to become a global pandemic. CSIS’s J. Stephen Morrison, Jude Blanchette, Scott Kennedy, and Stephanie Segal weigh in on the global health security, economic, and geopolitical implications of the cascading outbreak of 2019-nCoV.

A categorical shift is required for the U.S. to prioritize women’s and girls’ health and protection in crisis settings to advance resiliency and health security. This report proposes an approach to harness USG capacities and catalyze action for women and girls.

Despite recent progress in health security policy formulation, there are still critical gaps in global health security preparedness, and the threat of a deadly pandemic is growing. The United States cannot afford not to invest in global health security.

The convergence of digital technologies with health systems, or “digital health,” has major health security implications. This brief outline recommendations for policymakers to ensure the necessary data are available in the right place, at the right time, and to the right people.

Over a year into the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), insecurity and chaos are impeding access and crippling the response. CSIS’s J. Stephen Morrison lays out what it will take to end the outbreak.

The CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security examines Russian behavior in the global health sphere and outlines an opportunity to expand U.S. engagement to promote health security and counter Russian influence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Following the third meeting of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security, Commission co-chairs Kelly Ayotte and Julie Gerberding call for Congress and the administration to advance a U.S. doctrine of continuous prevention, protection, and resilience.

Our rapidly expanding ability to understand and manipulate life is outpacing biosafety, the practice of preventing accidental exposure of people, animals or the environment to dangerous microbes. This brief proposes targeted research to address this health security threat.

The CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security proposes ways to strengthen and integrate the Department of Defense’s unique capabilities into a cohesive U.S. health security approach.

The financing gap for preparedness is one of the starkest problems in health security. The CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security proposes some sensible pathways for leveraging this year’s IDA19 replenishment to help close this gap.

J. Stephen Morrison and Dr. Victor Dzau of the National Academy of Medicine discuss the future of human genome editing.

Ahead of the Trump-Kim Vietnam summit, Commission Secretariat Director J. Stephen Morrison argues that the Trump administration should take concrete steps to address urgent health and humanitarian needs in North Korea.

China’s commitment to ban fentanyl as a drug class, a welcome announcement at the December 2018 G20 summit in Buenos Aires, was just the most recent, powerful signal of the growing understanding that fentanyl, the front edge of a new era of synthetic opioids, poses a grave, direct health security threat.

J. Stephen Morrison and Victor Cha discuss the bleak health realities in North Korea, an understudied part of the larger problem of potential instability on the Korean peninsula and a potential health security threat.

The Ebola outbreak unfolding in Eastern DRC is the most recent, powerful showcase of what it means to battle dangerous health security threats in a disordered world. While categoric judgments are elusive, the high risk of losing the game in the DRC is becoming apparent.

The Gathering Health Storm Inside North Korea examines the rapid decay of North Korea’s health systems and the dangers it poses to neighboring countries, through interviews with experts on North Korea and health security and exclusive footage from inside the little-seen nation.

The Gathering Health Storm Inside North Korea examines the rapid decay of North Korea’s health systems and the dangers it poses to neighboring countries, through interviews with experts on North Korea and health security and exclusive footage from inside the little-seen nation.

We are at a turning point in thinking about what comes next in controlling HIV/AIDS in the coming years.

Peter Salama, WHO Deputy Director-General of Emergency Preparedness and Response, discusses the response to the current Ebola outbreak in a conflict-ridden region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Elhadj As Sy, Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), discusses the role of the IFRC in humanitarian and outbreak response and preparedness.

On May 9, the day after the Democratic Republic of the Congo confirmed an Ebola outbreak, the Trump administration dismissed Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer and dissolved his post as senior director for global health security and biothreats.

Daniel Lucey, a senior scholar with the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, discusses the global threat of yellow fever.

Christos Stylianides, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management and European Union Ebola Coordinator, discusses the European Union’s role in the May-June 2018 Ebola response.

Beth Cameron, CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security expert advisor and Vice President of Global Biological Policy and Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, discusses global health security and pandemic preparedness efforts with Amadou Sall and Andrew Kitua.

Kee B. Park, Harvard Medical School Paul Farmer Global Surgery Scholar and Korean American Medical Association Director of North Korea Programs, discusses opportunities for diplomatic progress with North Korea through health.

Health realities in North Korea are grim, poorly understood, and seldom studied as part of the larger problem of potential instability on the Korean peninsula.

Immunizations are one of the most effective and cost-effective health promotion tools, yet despite focused efforts to increase global vaccine delivery, more than one in ten children received no vaccines in 2016.

The Spanish influenza cataclysm ignited 100 years ago, and while we certainly live today in a superior state of preparedness, modernization and globalization have also driven up health security risks.

Healthcare and humanitarian workers are increasingly in the crosshairs as hospitals and aid centers have become part of the battlefield in today’s wars.

Since 2014, Venezuela, which at one time enjoyed international recognition for its malaria elimination program, achievements in life expectancy, and progress addressing infectious diseases, has shown increasingly negative health indicators.

Ebola in America: Epidemic of Fear” is a groundbreaking feature-length documentary that tells the story of the 2014 Ebola outbreak’s effect on America as well as the public health and government response.