Publications

On June 1, 2024, the World Health Assembly adopted a suite of amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR). The amendments are the most significant reform of the Regulations since their adoption following the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak two decades ago. Reflecting the global health injustices seen during successive public health emergencies, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Regulations now expressly include equity and solidarity as principles for the interpretation and implementation of the treaty.

A major challenge of pandemic preparedness is how to anticipate and prepare for future pandemic threats among the wide range of viral threats that can infect humans. Fortunately, only a subset of the 25 viral families that can infect humans have both the capability of widespread respiratory transmission in humans or animals, a prerequisite for pandemic-causing capability, as well a lack of medical countermeasures (MCMs) to prevent and treat the key viral species within them.

The International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) Monitoring and Evaluation Framework is designed to assist States Parties in assessing progress toward compliance and sustainable capacities under the IHR. The States Parties Self-Assessment Annual Report (SPAR) is the only mandatory tool in the 4-component framework.

As a result of rapidly accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, multiple national governments and multinational bodies have launched efforts to address safety, security and ethics issues related to AI models.

Objective: To explore the possible association and trends between individual-level disaster preparedness status (for natural, technological, and human-caused hazards) and the level of pandemic preparedness during the COVID-19 pandemic among adults in the U.S. from 2021 through 2023.

International law and global governance regimes for environmental health challenges have been slow to reflect the intertwined relationship between the environment and human health. Historical legacies have caused artificial fragmentation between the two that has resulted in distinct fields of international law and institutions for the environment and health. However, new global paradigms for thinking about environmental health have emerged to foster synthesis under global health law, including One Health and Planetary Health approaches, as well as through international human rights law like the recognition of the right to a clean, safe, and healthy environment.

The purpose of this article is to examine the potential role of immunomodulators as a means of protecting against a wide range of future biological threats—whether they are deliberately caused by bioweapons or naturally occurring epidemics or pandemics—and to provide policy recommendations for implementing this approach.

This article discusses the prospects and pitfalls of a legally binding pandemic agreement under the auspices of the World Health Organization, currently under negotiation in Geneva. Such an agreement could foster a rules-based pandemic prevention, preparedness and response as a reaction to the failures by states during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a lack of effective coordination for sharing all kinds of data and the global inequity in the distribution of medical goods fueled by vaccine nationalism.

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To enhance the safety and security of the US bioeconomy, a new public–private partnership should be established to facilitate information sharing and threat analysis among industry, government and academia, and to develop and deploy safeguards.