A Call to Action for Global Health Security

Each day brings alarming headlines—H5N1, measles, tuberculosis—but the quieter underlying issues of public health security rarely break through the noise. On this World Health Day 2025, as U.S. domestic and global health policies undergo a realignment, the world must recommit to address both the urgent and the underlying health challenges that shape our lives.

What’s Happening

Global public health is being dramatically impacted by the decreasing involvement of the United States in both domestic and global health efforts.

• The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has made drastic cuts to its programs and staffing:
  • Eliminated more than $11 billion of public health grants to local health departments, including infectious disease tracking and funds to respond to future health emergencies.
  • Terminated $577 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), intended to develop antiviral drugs against SARS-CoV-2 and six other types of viruses with pandemic potential.
  • Fired thousands of vital staff members from across HHS, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and NIH, threatening the nation’s ability to track and respond to public health threats.
• 86% of USAID financial awards are being terminated – including funds that are core to saving lives internationally through vaccine donations, HIV prevention, and malaria diagnosis and treatment services.

Helpful Context

These cuts are coming at a time when global health security has already proven to need more focused attention, including for epidemic and pandemic preparedness. In 2021, the Global Health Security Index (GHS Index) found that all countries remain dangerously unprepared for future public health threats. Recent actions taken by the U.S. administration will only further exacerbate this risk. Terminating research, dismissing world class disease detectives, and defunding capacity building can only lead to a less secure future with unnecessary loss of lives and livelihoods.

Impact on Global Health Security

National-level capabilities are being threatened, leaving populations more vulnerable to future health emergencies, epidemics, and pandemic threats. As the cuts deepen and the ripple effects reach more people, the impact will only grow. For example:

• USDA and CDC cuts have threatened the critical research and real-time response needed to control the ongoing H5N1 Avian Influenza outbreak.
• The termination of NIH grants puts the lives of millions of people in jeopardy and could cripple scientific advances and breakthroughs for years to come.
• USAID ended a partnership with Gavi, the vaccine alliance, which has prevented the deaths of more than 19 million children by providing routine vaccines for preventable diseases in Africa and around the world.
• The U.S. government has cut funding to UNAIDS, the UN HIV/AIDS program that serves communities around the world, leading experts to warn that South African alone may now expect up to 500,000 deaths over the next ten years.

The GHS Index measures capacity across six categories, and these cuts will have an impact on each of them.

1. Prevention: Immunization against preventable diseases is one of the world’s most valuable tools for reducing the emergence of infectious disease threats. Vaccines have saved over 150 million lives over the last fifty years but without funding for vaccination programs, lives will be lost.
2. Detection and reporting: Changes in workforce capacity, such as the potential termination of disease outbreak investigators, will be a substantial roadblock to effectively detecting and enacting responses to infectious disease outbreaks. Early detection is key to saving lives.
3. Rapid response: Efficient rapid response is critical to protecting health, but it requires data, training, real time research capacity, healthcare workforce, countermeasure development capacity, and trust. Each of these pillars is being threatened by the recent pivots in policy.
4. Health systems: Reductions in global health capacity building previously supported by U.S. foreign aid and assistance programs will directly lead to weaker healthcare systems and infrastructure globally, costing lives.
5. Norms, financing, and national capacity: The potential U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the retraction of U.S. funding for foreign assistance will weaken vital capacities needed to support public health.
6. Risk environment: With geopolitical tensions rising, regional conflicts proliferating, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief programming in jeopardy, the risk of the next major global health emergency is constantly growing.

What’s Next?

Infectious diseases know no bounds. Investing in disease prevention, detection, and response capabilities internationally saves lives and enhances domestic national, economic, and health security.

• In the absence of U.S. programs, there must be an increase in global commitments to research and development, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and capacity building.
• National governments should do everything they can to protect the most vulnerable, ensuring every country has access to critical healthcare infrastructure and medical countermeasures, through:
  • Increasing commitments to the Pandemic Fund and international public-private partnerships like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance;
  • Supporting national capacity building for biosecurity and pandemic preparedness; and
  • Investing in basic and applied research, global manufacturing infrastructure, and equitable distribution networks for lifesaving medical countermeasures.

The GHS Index can be a powerful tool to help governments and other funders maximize the impact of investments in biosecurity and pandemic preparedness. By using data from the Index, the global health community can identify critical gaps – such as low immunization scores or trained workforce capacities – that can be alleviated through additional funding and targeted interventions.

Acting now saves lives today and for the future. National governments and other key donors must step up to provide critical funding and build the capacities needed to ensure that progress in global health security continues in the years ahead.

Learn More

• Dive into the Global Health Security Index to learn more about pandemic preparedness capacities across countries.
• Explore impactful tools and strategies that can advance global health security.