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Our publications keep professionals informed on the most important developments and issues in health security and biosecurity.

Showing 1 - 20 of 442 results

Learnings from COVID-19 for future respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness: a summary of the literature

Publication Type
Report

A scoping literature review of learnings from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was commissioned by WHO to inform operational priorities for future respiratory pathogen pandemic preparedness. The learnings are grouped according to WHO’s subsystems for health emergency preparedness, response and resilience. Key takeaway messages include: 1) Preparedness works; 2) Health is everyone’s business; 3) No one is safe until everyone is safe; and 4) Response must be agile and adaptive. The review will support pandemic planners at all levels to develop and update preparedness and response plans.

Practical playbook for addressing health misinformation cover

Practical playbook for addressing health misinformation

Publication Type
Report

Misleading rumors, misinformation, and disinformation can make health events more complicated, reduce trust in public health efforts, and lead to negative health impacts. The Practical playbook for addressing health misinformation provides guidance on ways public health and medical professionals can set themselves up for success, make decisions on when they need to act to address misinformation, choose which actions and approaches might be useful to their audiences and information needs, and evaluate how their efforts are working.

Authors
Annie Sundelson
Emily O’Donnell-Pazderka
Amelia M. Jamison

Response to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Request for Information (RFI) Related to NIST's Assignments Under Sections 4.1, 4.5 and 11 of the Executive Order Concerning Artificial Intelligence

Publication Type
In response
Dissecting Pandemic-Prone Viral Families Volume 2: The Paramyxoviridae

Dissecting Pandemic-Prone Viral Families Volume 2: The Paramyxoviridae

Publication Type
Report

Paramyxoviridae is a large viral family that contains many once common and well-known human pathogens, such as measles and mumps, as well as other pathogens that pose concerns for their potential to cause epidemic or pandemic disease.1

Authors

Written Comment Re: Implications of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) Commitments/Regimes and Other Proposed Commitments in the WHO Pandemic Agreement

Publication Type
In response

Lost in translation: the importance of addressing language inequities in global health security

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BMJ Global Health
Publication Type
Article

Language inequities in global health stem from colonial legacies, and global health security is no exception. The International Health Regulations (IHRs), a legally binding framework published by the WHO, lay the foundation for global health security and state the roles and responsibilities States Parties are compelled to follow to improve their capabilities to prevent, detect and respond to potential public health emergencies of international concern. It includes the submission of a mandatory status report that assesses a nation’s implementation of IHRs. Known as the States Party Self-Assessment Annual Report (SPAR) tool, WHO has made its guidance document available in all six WHO official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). The Republic of Iraq (Iraq) experienced significant challenges during the completion and submission of the 2022 SPAR. This experience demonstrated that translation of English materials to other languages, such as Arabic, is not prioritised and further underscored how scoring of a country’s global health security capacities can be significantly impacted by users’ ability to read and comprehend the materials in English. Not only can this lead to inaccurate SPAR scoring, but it can also lead to the improper allocation of resources and prioritisation of policy developments and/or amendments. By drawing attention to this issue, we aim to inform and advocate for global health security decision-makers to consider opportunities for increasing inclusion and accessibility, especially for requirements under legally binding international instruments.

Authors
Alanna S. Fogarty
Mohammed J Ahmed
Aso Zangana
Karim Muftin
Claire J. Standley

Development of the FlagIt Report and Response System for Concerning or Harassing Messages Related to Public Health Work

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Journal of Public Health Management and Practice
Publication Type
Article

In response to growing reports of concerning/harassing messages and backlash related to public health work, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health established the FlagIt report and response system. The system uses a dedicated FlagIt email inbox for faculty and staff to report harassing or concerning messages related to public-facing work and has an autoreply message sharing available institutional resources. The Johns Hopkins University public safety investigators review, inventory, and investigate the reported messages and share their findings with the reporter within 2 business days. In addition, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health faculty FlagIt team volunteers reach out to the reporter to check in on how they are doing and offer additional supports if needed The FlagIt system was developed with existing institutional resources and did not require additional funding. Given the continued backlash against public health, other public health institutions and agencies may consider implementing similar report and response systems.

Shaping the future US bioeconomy through safety, security, sustainability, and social responsibility

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Trends in Biotechnology
Publication Type
Editorial

Biomanufacturing practitioners and researchers describe the norms that should govern the growing, global field, to include safety, security, sustainability, and social responsibility. These ‘4S Principles’ should be broadly adopted so that the future of the field may provide the greatest benefits to society.

Authors
Aurelia Attal-Juncqua
Galen Dods
Nicole Crain
James Diggans
David Dodds
Steve Evans
Nick Fackler
Kevin Flyangolts
Kathleen Gibson
Margaret E. Kosal
Aditya Kunjapur
Russ Read
Brian Renda
Corinne D. Scown
Kissaou Tchedre
Krista Ternus
Beth Vitalis
Dissecting Pandemic-Prone Viral Families, Volume 1: The Picornaviridae

Dissecting Pandemic-Prone Viral Families, Volume 1: The Picornaviridae

Publication Type
Report

Among the approximately 2 dozen families of viruses that have the capacity to infect humans, roughly 25% of these families have pandemic potential (Figure 1). Specifically, this capacity is conferred by their ability to be transmitted via the respiratory route.1 Devising response plans for each of these 6 viral families — Adenoviridae, Coronaviridae, Paramyxoviridae, Picornaviridae, Pneumoviridae, and Orthomyxoviridae — is essential for pandemic preparedness.

Authors

Contagion, Care, and Interdependence in Pandemics

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Health Security
Publication Type
Article

How we share in the work of caring for one another during a pandemic is a common thread in the papers comprising this special feature. The collection itself represents another round of retrospection and forward thinking about ways to improve upon readiness and response for a catastrophic health event now that we have lived through the COVID-19 pandemic. Such was the theme, “Reimagining Preparedness in the Era of COVID-19,” around which the National Association of County and City Health Officials organized the 2023 annual Preparedness Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, and later elicited submissions to a special supplement of Health Security, of which these articles comprise a subset.1,2

One Health Systems Assessment for Priority Zoonoses

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Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science & Security and Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
Publication Type
Report

A tool for cross-sectoral prioritization of zoonotic diseases, and mapping of systems for One Health coordination.

Authors
Alanna S. Fogarty
Lauren N. Miller
Claire J. Standley

Mass-gathering decision making and its implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic

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The Lancet
Publication Type
Article

Mass-gathering events are a public health challenge and have the potential to amplify the transmission of infectious diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA)—a WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Security—developed a global database of mass gatherings, which we continue to maintain. The purpose of this database is to monitor the planning and execution of mass-gathering events and to document the uptake of WHO-recommended policies by organisers; for example, the use of a risk-based approach.

Authors
Amaia Artazcoz Glaria
Albis Francesco Gabrielli
Rebecca Grant
Nedret Emiroglu
et al.

Building Case Investigation and Contact Tracing Programs in US State and Local Health Departments: A Conceptual Framework

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Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness
Publication Type
Article

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to this day, US state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments lacked comprehensive case investigation and contact tracing (CI/CT) guidelines that clearly define the capabilities and capacities of CI/CT programs and how to scale up these programs to respond to outbreaks. This research aims to identify the capabilities and capacities of CI/CT programs and to develop a conceptual framework that represents the relationships between these program components.

Authors
Alexandra Woodward

Advancing Governance Frameworks for Frontier AIxBio: Key Takeaways and Action Items from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Meeting with Industry, Government, and NGOs

Publication Type
Meeting Report

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, including foundation models such as large language models (LLMs), are rapidly becoming more powerful, and governments and industry are racing to better understand the potential benefits and risks of this technology.

Innovative approaches to COVID-19 medical countermeasure development

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Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
Publication Type
Article

The COVID-19 pandemic, while unfortunately notable for immense strain and death throughout the world, has also shown great promise in the development of medical countermeasures. As the global scientific community shifted almost entirely towards vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics, new trial designs most significantly adaptive platform trials, began to be used with greater speed and broader reach. These designs allowed for deploying and investigating new therapeutics, repurposing currently existing therapeutics and flexibly removing or adding additional medications as data appeared in real-time. Moreover, public–private sector partnering occurred at a level not seen before, contributing greatly to the rapid development and deployment of vaccines.

Authors
Gavin Harris

Wastewater Collection and Sequencing as a Proactive Approach to Utilizing Threat Agnostic Biological Defense

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Health Security
Publication Type
Article

Humans in the 21st century live in an unprecedentedly connected and dense world.1 Modern air travel infrastructure allows people and animals to traverse the globe in a manner of hours. Climate change has put tremendous pressure on ecosystems; as such, humans are encountering new animals and environments with increased frequency. These changes to human living and travel have considerably increased the risk of infectious disease spillover and global pandemics.2 Never before has the ability to rapidly detect and characterize any pathogen, be it known or novel, been so important to protecting global health. Pathogen agnostic tools, such as next-generation sequencing (NGS), enhance global biological defense and public health by addressing this exact need, but they must be deployed in a proactive manner to reach their full benefit. Using pathogen agnostic tools only during an outbreak is too retroactive and does not allow time for containment, particularly of a novel pathogen. In this commentary, we propose the development of national guidelines for a proactive, pathogen agnostic wastewater surveillance system in the United States with a focus on localities identified for risk of zoonoses and international ports of entry.

Authors
Zev Goldberg
Lauren N. Miller

Post-epidemic health system recovery: A comparative case study analysis of routine immunization programs in the Republics of Haiti and Liberia

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PLoS One
Publication Type
Article

Large-scale epidemics in resource-constrained settings disrupt delivery of core health services, such as routine immunization. Rebuilding and strengthening routine immunization programs following epidemics is an essential step toward improving vaccine equity and averting future outbreaks. We performed a comparative case study analysis of routine immunization program recovery in Liberia and Haiti following the 2014-16 West Africa Ebola epidemic and 2010s cholera epidemic, respectively. First, we triangulated data between the peer-reviewed and grey literature; in-depth key informant interviews with subject matter experts; and quantitative metrics of population health and health system functioning. We used these data to construct thick descriptive narratives for each case. Finally, we performed a cross-case comparison by applying a thematic matrix based on the Essential Public Health Services framework to each case narrative.

Protecting Your Health at Work: A Brief Guide on Indoor Air Quality for Immunocompromised Individuals & Transplant Recipients

Protecting Your Health at Work: A Brief Guide on Indoor Air Quality for Immunocompromised Individuals & Transplant Recipients

Publication Type
Fact Sheet