Health Security and Diplomacy in 2024, Gaza's Health Crisis, AI and Climate
January 12, 2024
Editors' Note
The statute of limitations on ringing in the new year is drawing to a close, so Think Global Health starts this week's edition with a dose of positive tidings about health security and diplomacy.
TGH's Thomas Bollyky and Hillary Carter of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy cite the ways to lead, leverage, and elevate in 2024 to improve human and environmental health.
New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan then weighs in on the funding debate over the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. He reminds audiences of its global role transforming HIV treatment accessibility and explores what Washington's wrangling signals about support for U.S. public health infrastructure.
Next, Linda Hill and colleagues from the University of California San Diego's asylum seeker medical program discuss Title 42, which has reemerged as a topic on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. They fact-check the public health justification for the policy—that migrants bring diseases into the United States—by describing their firsthand experience and data from conducting tens of thousands of border health screenings in recent years.
Jay Lemery, codirector of the University of Colorado School of Medicine's climate and health program, continues Think Global Health's coverage of the twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties (COP28). Lemery, who attended COP28 as a physician emissary for climate health, delivers his on-the-ground takeaways, which include using artificial intelligence (AI) to decarbonize the health-care sector.
Natasha Ross and Mustafa Al-Bayati finish the week with a close look at how the Israel-Hamas war is damaging Gaza's already frail health-care system. They share the stories of families in Gaza who have struggled to receive adequate health care and warn that lives lost "should not be dismissed as collateral damage."
Until next week!—Nsikan Akpan, Managing Editor, and Caroline Kantis, Associate Editor
