As the United States continues to adapt to a more digital, mobile, and interconnected world, health care and public health professionals have sought to better prepare for and respond to long-standing and emerging threats to the nation's health security. Health security is the collective effort to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the health consequences of natural, man-made, and technological disasters. Although substantial progress has been made in the past 15 years toward improving health care and public health systems and capacities for health security threats, many complex challenges persist, and often the nation's preparedness efforts are not sufficient. On March 8â€"9, 2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Disasters and Emergencies hosted a two-day public workshop to acknowledge these persistent issues; to evaluate past, and perhaps inadequate, approaches to addressing them; and to discuss intentional and innovative new solutions. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

As the United States continues to adapt to a more digital, mobile, and interconnected world, health care and public health professionals have sought to better prepare for and respond to long-standing and emerging threats to the nation's health security. Health security is the collective effort to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the health consequences of natural, man-made, and technological disasters. Although substantial progress has been made in the past 15 years toward improving health care and public health systems and capacities for health security threats, many complex challenges persist, and often the nation's preparedness efforts are not sufficient. On March 8â€"9, 2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Disasters and Emergencies hosted a two-day public workshop to acknowledge these persistent issues; to evaluate past, and perhaps inadequate, approaches to addressing them; and to discuss intentional and innovative new solutions. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

This book examines the recent intersection of national security and public health regarding biological threats to the U.S. populace and proposes improvements to the executive and legislative development of U.S. policy addressing biological threat mitigation. Over the last 20 years, the national security community has engaged with disease-related issues that have traditionally been the scope of public health agencies. The federal government's response has been to create a single national biodefense strategy, which has been largely ineffective in improving conditions due to poor terminology, a lack of leadership, and a failure to assess government programs. Applying a public policy framework, Albert J. Mauroni examines how the government addresses biological threats-including disease prevention, bioterrorism response, military biodefense, biosurety, and agricultural biosecurity and food safety. He proposes a new approach to countering biological threats, arguing that lead agencies should focus on implementing discrete portfolios with annual assessments against clear and achievable objectives.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

While much progress has been made on achieving the Millenium Development Goals over the last decade, the number and complexity of global health challenges has persisted. Growing forces for globalization have increased the interconnectedness of the world and our interdependency on other countries, economies, and cultures. Monumental growth in international travel and trade have brought improved access to goods and services for many, but also carry ongoing and ever-present threats of zoonotic spillover and infectious disease outbreaks that threaten all. Global Health and the Future Role of the United States identifies global health priorities in light of current and emerging world threats. This report assesses the current global health landscape and how challenges, actions, and players have evolved over the last decade across a wide range of issues, and provides recommendations on how to increase responsiveness, coordination, and efficiency â€" both within the U.S. government and across the global health field.

In November 2018, an ad hoc planning committee at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine planned two sister workshops held in Washington, DC, to examine the lessons from influenza pandemics and other major outbreaks, understand the extent to which the lessons have been learned, and discuss how they could be applied further to ensure that countries are sufficiently ready for future pandemics. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from both workshops.