Hear from the co-chairs of the G20 High-Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (HLIP) as they share insights from their new report, Closing the Deal: Financing Our Security Against Pandemic Threats, which outlines practical and bold steps to take pandemic threats off the table.

The G20 first established the Panel in 2021 to rethink how global preparedness is financed. This year, the Panel was reconvened by the South Africa G20 Presidency under the Joint Finance and Health Task Force to address the global pandemic financing gap at a time of profound challenges for global health and health security. The U.S. National Academy of Medicine served as the Panel’s Secretariat.

As the global health architecture undergoes major changes, drivers of pandemic risk continue to rise. The next pandemic is not a theoretical concern—it could happen at any time. Yet, despite mounting threats, countries remain severely underinvested in pandemic preparedness and response. The Panel’s new report serves as a blueprint for rapid, coordinated action.

In this virtual public briefing, hear about the Panel’s five key recommendations and learn what actions can be taken now to prevent biological catastrophe and achieve a high return on investment in global health security.

On this episode of "Halteres Presents", hosts Mickey Urdea and Rich Thayer are sitting down with Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, the Director of the Pandemic Center and Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, to comb through the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and to assess America's readiness for pathogens both natural and from a bioterrorism weapon. This at times sobering conversation covering surveillance methods to curtail disease outbreaks, how to combat health-related misinformation, and improving American prosperity through global health security initiatives can hopefully kickstart the precautions necessary to prevent the worst case scenarios. Please enjoy this episode of "Halteres Presents".

Africa is home to the youngest population on Earth. By 2060, nearly 800 million children will live on the continent – an extraordinary demographic force that should be our greatest asset. But a landmark new study published this month in PLOS Global Public Health delivers a stark reality check: the children’s hospitals responsible for caring for this generation are stretched, strained and in many places simply not equipped to meet their needs.

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Leveraging Data for High-Impact Health Security Investment 1
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant slowdown in economic growth across Africa and triggered widespread debt distress, leaving many countries struggling to recover. Growth is expected to remain sluggish for several years, contributing to significant reductions in health spending. Official development assistance (ODA) has dropped 70 percent since 2021, even as disease outbreaks have surged by more than 40 percent between 2022 and 2024. These trends place overwhelming strain on health systems across the continent.

The combination of economic slowdown and reductions in ODA is unfolding in a time of increasing​​ biological threats. Climate change disproportionately impacts African countries, driving a surge in infectious disease outbreaks across the continent. At the same time, rapid technological advances are lowering barriers to the misuse of biology. Yet many countries in the region lack the necessary data and core capacities to keep their populations and economies safe from emerging health crises.

Dr. Ashish K. Jha is dean of Brown University School of Public Health and a contributing Globe Opinion writer.

It’s easy to feel like the United States is losing ground in public health. Policies and actions from federal health leaders have fractured trust, undermined science, and disrupted essential services. This past year brought funding cuts to core health programs, the spread of dubious science, and the use of food benefits and health care as bargaining chips in political negotiations. The country urgently needs a course correction before the story of public health in America becomes one of steady decline.

The four governments of the United Kingdom responded during the COVID-19 pandemic. But they did “too little, too late,” to effectively stop the virus from spreading during a critical moment in time, according to a national inquiry published this week.

“This lack of urgency and the huge rise in infections made a mandatory lockdown inevitable,” the inquiry report explained. “It should have been introduced one week earlier. Modelling shows that in England alone there would have been approximately 23,000 fewer deaths in the first wave up until 1 July 2020.”

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The best books of 2025

Fair Doses: An Insider’s Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for Vaccine Equity. By Seth Berkley. University of California Press; 408 pages; $29.95 and £25

The story of vaccines, as told by an infectious disease epidemiologist. During the covid-19 pandemic, Seth Berkley fought against political resistance and nationalism to help distribute 2bn vaccines across the world.

(TNND) — Most Americans are confident that childhood vaccines are safe and effective.

But new polling shows many Americans are skeptical of the shots. And there are gaps in sentiment along demographic and political lines.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted last month and published Tuesday found 63% of Americans have high confidence in the effectiveness of childhood vaccines.

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Last week, the two top officials at the National Institutes of Health—the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research—debuted a new plan to help Americans weather the next pandemic: getting everyone to eat better and exercise.

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