Global Health Governance

NOTES FROM THE EDITOR

We are pleased to present the inaugural issue of Global Health Governance. The primary goal of the journal is to be the academic publication that addresses global health issues and their implications to governance and security at national and international levels. Devoted to the new health security paradigm, Global Health Governance is meant to provide an outlet for academics and practitioners to engage in discussions and debates over issues that are essential to the understanding of the nature of global health challenges and the strategies aimed at their solution.

For a long time, national security has been defined as the ability of a country to defend it from external aggression. We were accustomed to thinking about national security threats in terms of interstate conflicts and use of military power, despite the postwar reality that armed strife has increasingly taken the form of intrastate conflicts, which often emanate from non-state and nontraditional sources, such as terrorism, disease outbreaks, poverty, and environmental degradation. Of these security threats global health challenges stand out. We are now at greater risk than any time in recent history from recognized and emerging infectious diseases, biological weapons, chronic conditions, demographic crisis, and growing health gap between the North and the South. These threats not only have the potential to contribute to intrastate political violence, but also have profound implications to military readiness, regional stability, and international stability. As former U.S. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger reminds us, “A problem that kills huge numbers, crosses borders, and threatens to destabilize whole regions is the very definition of a national security threat….To dismiss [disease] as a ‘soft’ issue is to be blind to hard realities.” In the post-9/11 era there has been a surge of scholarly activity within the field of health and international affairs. Framed in terms of “human security,” “health security,” or “biosecurity,” a voluminous literature explores the process by which health problems function to affect national and international security. The new developments call for a new, multidisciplinary approach to understanding of global health. As Arthur Kleinman and James Watson of Harvard University have noted, if there is anything we can learn from SARS, “[v]irologists need to work in teams consisting of ecologists, biologists, soil scientists, economists, political scientists, demographers, epidemiologists, anthropologists, and ethicists.” Echoing this call, the journal provides a venue for a multidisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners to examine global health issues through a broadly defined security perspective.

Addressing the challenges of health to governance requires not only new analytical tools, but also a more focused research agenda. This first issue features the theme “health and governance.” From the Plague of Athens to Black Death, from Spanish Flu to the recent SARS debacle, history is full of cases where health affects social-political stability, economic viability, and state capacity. Using global data from 1955 to 2003, a recent study by Jack Goldstone, Robert Bates, Ted Gurr and others reveals strong correlation between infant mortality and political instability (i.e., revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, and adverse regime changes). Not surprisingly, the U.S. government flu preparedness plan includes a grim scenario for a pandemic that overwhelms hospitals, limits activity in the community, police, fire and transportation services, and disrupts supplies of food, fuel and medical supplies. Still, our knowledge on the health-governance nexus remains limited. Many of the questions are not yet addressed in a systematic and scientific manner: Where are the linkages between health and governance? Is governance and human security the same thing? To what extent do the public health challenges reflect the governance problems? How societies, both within and beyond national borders, structure their responses to challenges of infectious disease? By examining health governance at both regional and global levels, we hope the first issue will not only clarify some of the conceptual misunderstandings, but also point to new directions to study global health challenges.

The editors and staff would like to thank the Whitehead School of Diplomacy at Seton Hall University for sponsoring the journal. The views expressed in Global Health Governance represent the personal views of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of Seton Hall University. We do not accept responsibility for the views expressed in any article that appears in the Journal.

Global Health Governance
The Scholarly Journal for the New Health Security Paradigm
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	NOTES FROM THE EDITOR We are pleased to present the inaugural issue of Global Health Governance. The primary goal of the journal is to be the academic publication that addresses global health issues and their implications to governance and security at national and international levels. Devoted to the new health security paradigm, Global Health Governance is meant to provide an outlet for academics and practitioners to engage in discussions and debates over issues that are essential to the understanding of the nature of global health challenges and the strategies aimed at their solution. For a long time, national security has been defined as the ability of a country to defend it from external aggression. We were accustomed to thinking about national security threats in terms of interstate conflicts and use of military power, despite the postwar reality that armed strife has increasingly taken the form of intrastate conflicts, which often emanate from non-state and nontraditional sources, such as terrorism, disease outbreaks, poverty, and environmental degradation. Of these security threats global health challenges stand out. We are now at greater risk than any time in recent history from recognized and emerging infectious diseases, biological weapons, chronic conditions, demographic crisis, and growing health gap between the North and the South. These threats not only have the potential to contribute to intrastate political violence, but also have profound implications to military readiness, regional stability, and international stability. As former U.S. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger reminds us, “A problem that kills huge numbers, crosses borders, and threatens to destabilize whole regions is the very definition of a national security threat….To dismiss [disease] as a ‘soft’ issue is to be blind to hard realities.” In the post-9/11 era there has been a surge of scholarly activity within the field of health and international affairs. Framed in terms of “human security,” “health security,” or “biosecurity,” a voluminous literature explores the process by which health problems function to affect national and international security. The new developments call for a new, multidisciplinary approach to understanding of global health. As Arthur Kleinman and James Watson of Harvard University have noted, if there is anything we can learn from SARS, “[v]irologists need to work in teams consisting of ecologists, biologists, soil scientists, economists, political scientists, demographers, epidemiologists, anthropologists, and ethicists.” Echoing this call, the journal provides a venue for a multidisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners to examine global health issues through a broadly defined security perspective. Addressing the challenges of health to governance requires not only new analytical tools, but also a more focused research agenda. This first issue features the theme “health and governance.” From the Plague of Athens to Black Death, from Spanish Flu to the recent SARS debacle, history is full of cases where health affects social-political stability, economic viability, and state capacity. Using global data from 1955 to 2003, a recent study by Jack Goldstone, Robert Bates, Ted Gurr and others reveals strong correlation between infant mortality and political instability (i.e., revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, and adverse regime changes). Not surprisingly, the U.S. government flu preparedness plan includes a grim scenario for a pandemic that overwhelms hospitals, limits activity in the community, police, fire and transportation services, and disrupts supplies of food, fuel and medical supplies. Still, our knowledge on the health-governance nexus remains limited. Many of the questions are not yet addressed in a systematic and scientific manner: Where are the linkages between health and governance? Is governance and human security the same thing? To what extent do the public health challenges reflect the governance problems? How societies, both within and beyond national borders, structure their responses to challenges of infectious disease? By examining health governance at both regional and global levels, we hope the first issue will not only clarify some of the conceptual misunderstandings, but also point to new directions to study global health challenges. The editors and staff would like to thank the Whitehead School of Diplomacy at Seton Hall University for sponsoring the journal. The views expressed in Global Health Governance represent the personal views of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of Seton Hall University. We do not accept responsibility for the views expressed in any article that appears in the Journal.
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