Smallpox Readiness: Modern Strategies Against an Ancient Disease.

This Viewpoint highlights the potential for unintentional or deliberate release of variola virus (smallpox), discusses current medical countermeasures for smallpox, and calls for greater flexibility from the US and its partners in developing safe, reliable, affordable, and equitable countermeasures.

The Supreme Court Decision on Firearm Ownership for People Subject to Restraining Orders.

This Viewpoint explicates the complex reasoning the US Supreme Court has used in rulings on gun control and raises concerns that the recent Rahimi decision poses more questions than it settled on the future of the Second Amendment.

Food and Drug Administration v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine-A Cautious Win for Reproductive Health Care and FDA Authority.

This Viewpoint discusses the recent US Supreme Court ruling allowing mifepristone­a drug used in medication abortion­to be widely available in the US, summarizes the history of challenges to the availability of mifepristone, and highlights reasons for concerns that remain after the Court's current ruling.

Pandemic preparedness and response: a new mechanism for expanding access to essential countermeasures.

As the world comes together through the WHO design and consultation process on a new medical counter-measures platform, we propose an enhanced APT-A (Access to Pandemic Tools Accelerator) that builds on the previous architecture but includes two new pillars - one for economic assistance and another to combat structural inequalities for future pandemic preparedness and response. As part of the APT-A, and in light of the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparation & Response's call for an enhanced end-to-end platform for access to essential health technologies, we propose a new mechanism that we call the Pandemic Open Technology Access Accelerator (POTAX) that can be implemented through the medical countermeasures platform and the pandemic accord currently under negotiation through the World Health Assembly and supported by the High-Level Meeting review on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response at the United Nations. This mechanism will provide (1) conditional financing for new vaccines and other essential health technologies requiring companies to vest licenses in POTAX and pool intellectual property and other data necessary to allow equitable access to the resulting technologies. It will also (2) support collective procurement as well as measures to ensure equitable distribution and uptake of these technologies.

Teaching Global Health Law: Preparing the Next Generation for Future Challenges.

Following from sweeping law reforms across the global health landscape, there is a need to prepare the next generation to advance global health law to ensure justice for a healthier world. Educational programs across disciplines have increasingly incorporated the field of global health law, with new courses examining the law and policy frameworks that apply to the new set of public health threats, non-state actors, and regulatory instruments that structure global health. Such interdisciplinary training must be expanded throughout the world to prepare future practitioners to strengthen global health law - ensuring a foundation for global health in legal studies and law and global health studies. Meeting this imperative for global health law teaching - establishing academic courses and textbooks on global legal responses to shared health threats - will be necessary to support students to address the global health challenges of the future.

Health Is on the Ballot in the Presidential Election.

This JAMA Forum discusses the markedly different records and divergent campaign messages of the 2 major party presidential candidates on the issues of health care access, prescription drug prices, reproductive rights, migrant health, gun violence, health and safety agency powers, and pandemic preparedness.

Pursuing a smoke-free generation.

The United Kingdom may soon become a world leader in forging a smoke-free generation. Last month, the country passed a bill that bans the sale of cigarettes to anyone born in 2009 or later. The prime minister claims the policy will "phase out smoking in young people almost completely as early as 2040." A final vote by Parliament is expected next month. Tobacco claims 8 million lives every year, and could claim a billion lives over this century-mostly in low- and middle-income countries. For every person that dies, at least 30 more suffer from smokingrelated chronic disease. The benefits of a tobacco-free society would be transformational.

The World Health Organization was born as a normative agency: Seventy-five years of global health law under WHO governance.

The World Health Organization (WHO) was born as a normative agency and has looked to global health law to structure collective action to realize global health with justice. Framed by its constitutional authority to act as the directing and coordinating authority on international health, WHO has long been seen as the central actor in the development and implementation of global health law. However, WHO has faced challenges in advancing law to prevent disease and promote health over the past 75 years, with global health law constrained by new health actors, shifting normative frameworks, and soft law diplomacy. These challenges were exacerbated amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as states neglected international legal commitments in national health responses. Yet, global health law reforms are now underway to strengthen WHO governance, signaling a return to lawmaking for global health. Looking back on WHO's 75th anniversary, this article examines the central importance of global health law under WHO governance, reviewing the past successes, missed opportunities, and future hopes for WHO. For WHO to meet its constitutional authority to become the normative agency it was born to be, we offer five proposals to reestablish a WHO fit for purpose: normative instruments, equity and human rights mainstreaming, sustainable financing, One Health, and good governance. Drawing from past struggles, these reforms will require further efforts to revitalize hard law authorities in global health, strengthen WHO leadership across the global governance landscape, uphold equity and rights at the center of global health law, and expand negotiations in global health diplomacy.

Public Health in the Crosshairs of Culture Wars.

This JAMA Forum discusses the topics of reproductive rights, transgender care, firearm safety, and COVID-19 vaccines in the context of public health and the political climate in the US.

Abortion Is Health Care.

This Viewpoint discusses the history behind the right to physical and mental health in the US and the right to receive care during medical emergencies under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, and argues that abortion is health care.

Wars in Gaza and Beyond: Why Protecting the Sacredness of Health Matters.

This Viewpoint discusses the importance of safeguarding health access in times armed conflict worldwide and the need to bolster compliance with international humanitarian law.

Making the World Safer and Fairer in Pandemics.

Global health has long been characterized by injustice, with certain populations marginalized and made vulnerable by social, economic, and health disparities within and among countries. The pandemic only amplified inequalities. In response to it, the World Health Organization and the United Nations have embarked on transformative normative and financial reforms that could reimagine pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (PPPR). These reforms include a new strategy to sustainably finance the WHO, a UN political declaration on PPPR, a fundamental revision to the International Health Regulations, and negotiation of a new, legally binding pandemic agreement (popularly called the "Pandemic Treaty"). We revisit the cavernous shortcomings of the global Covid-19 response, explain potentially transformative legal reforms and the ethical values that underpin them, and propose actionable solutions to advance both health and justice.