Date of Submission

Spring 2018

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Political Studies

Project Advisor 1

Helen Epstein

Project Advisor 2

James Ketterer

Abstract/Artist's Statement

This senior project aims to challenge the traditional thinking of public health. My inspiration from this topic simply comes from my interest in bettering global health for all people. With an ever shifting political and social environment, this paper strives to seek the most successful strategies in combating infectious diseases. By using three prominent and global infectious diseases, Ebola, Zika and Influenza, this paper analyzes the failures and successes of international support and response teams. This paper also uses the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) as a foundation to analyze and support the claim that successful global health interventions are not successful by framing diseases as if they are security threats.

Building from existing literature, this paper strives to answer the question, "Could the Global Health Security Agenda Protect Americans from Emerging Diseases?" The relationship between health and security is an ever complex and complicated topic, which involves all sectors of American policy. In order to further support this topic, and strive to seek better solutions for effective infectious disease response, there are key recommendations for the future of public health.

In all cases, it was found that the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) and securitizing the complicated issues of public health are expected to not be successful looking towards the future of public health. In order to fully support and positively affect the future of public health, governments should promote strong domestic health care systems, anti-corrupt administrations, women's empowerment and literacy, local health initiatives and treat every disease intervention uniquely. International health workers and governments should also be aware and carefully face the obstacles of cultural differences, widespread fear, and the historical, political environments.

By the end of this project, I hope the reader finds a strong and convincing argument explaining why the Global Health Security Agenda will not protect Americans, or help combat global emerging infectious diseases. While this project only skims the top of the debate of intertwining of health and security, it does provide a basic understanding for those looking to understand the complicated questions and answers of global health.

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Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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