How the biden administration can reinvigorate global health security, institutions, and governance

ABSTRACT

Joseph R. Biden was elected President of the United States during a period of compound crises for global health and security the worst pandemic in a century, as well as steep reverses in progress toward reducing poverty, hunger, and disease. The United States has been in full retreat from global health leadership, fraying relationships with allies, weakening global institutions, and engaging in nationalist populism that threatens global cooperation to address worldwide challenges. Yet these tragic circumstances are also fertile soil for deep structural reforms. President Biden can both bolster the immediate responses to COVID-19 and its vast ramifications, and spearhead lasting changes to create a healthier and safer world, from which the United States would richly benefit.1 His immediate task will be to bring U.S. economic and scientific strength to the COVID-19 response in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO). The Biden administration should also assume financial and strategic leadership in bolstering world efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including its singular pledge to leave no one behind. Finally, President Biden should empower the WHO and lead on reforms to the global health architecture to advance the right to health. At a time when the United States is facing its own COVID-19 crisis, the agenda we propose for President Biden is ambitious. And global health leadership will need to complement other, related actions to address pressing global crises that have immense health consequences, like climate change and mass migration. Yet bold leadership on global health will benefit all people, including Americans. As COVID-19 devastatingly demonstrates, Americans' health security is inextricably tied to global health security. Healthier populations are more economically productive;better global health will mean larger markets for U.S. goods and services. U.S. global health leadership will open doors for cooperation on global challenges that themselves threaten the United States, from climate change and antimicrobial resistant organisms to cybersecurity. Such leadership should also help the United States to gain allies for stopping the global advance of authoritarianism and the erosion of human rights. While requiring new funds, the spending linked to our proposals would be minute compared to the overall federal budget, much less the U.S. economy. © Lawrence O. Gostin, Eric A. Friedman, Sarah Wetter 2021. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http//creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.