The United States Withdrawal From the World Health Organization: Implications and Challenges.

President Trump's 2025 decision to remove the United States (US) from the World Health Organization (WHO), echoing his initial 2020 move, raises existential questions about the future of global health governance. This editorial explores the immediate and long-term potential impacts of the withdrawal, noting that it poses a significant threat to the WHO financing. This, in turn, will have adverse consequences for future pandemic preparedness, health inequities, and cross-border collaboration.

Pathways to an Intergovernmental Panel on Pandemics: lessons from the IPCC and IPBES.

Pandemics pose a global threat to human wellbeing, justice, economies, and ecosystems and are comparable with other planetary crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss in terms of urgency and impact. The global community would benefit from a dedicated scientific synthesis body to assess pandemic risks and solutions. In this Personal View, we explore proposals for an Intergovernmental Panel on Pandemics and assess potential pathways to its creation.

Standing in the Light of Dr. King.

It has been ten years since the publication of Professor Larry Gostin's pathbreaking contribution to law, medicine, and public health, Global Health Law (Harvard University Press, 2014). As Professor Sofia Gruskin's review in The Lancet noted, the book "brings attention to critical aspects of law that anyone interested in global health needs to be concerned about…" This sentiment was echoed throughout the academy, civil society, among non-governmental organizations, legislative bodies, and even courts.Professor Gostin's legacy fits among those who harnessed their wisdom, expertise, and voices for the betterment of others and who recognized that chief among the worst harms for any people to endure is the denial of healthcare.

Global Health Governance: The system we inherited and the need for an equitable decolonized global health governance system.

The article examines the historical development of global health from its genesis in colonial-era tropical medicine, to the creation of the World Health Organization - formed to advance health rights for all. The authors call for continued reforms to the global health governance system to mitigate the enduring impact of colonialism.

Global Health Law: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Field.

In the decade since the first edition of Global Health Law was published, the world has moved incrementally towards global health with justice, at least by one basic metric: life expectancy has edged up globally, with more rapid gains in low- than high-income countries. But to look around the world, global health with justice still seems a distant dream. Health gaps between people in rich and poor countries remain shocking and unconscionable-as do health inequities within countries.

Introduction: Ten Years of Global Health Law.

The field of global health law has evolved over the past decade to describe new legal and policy instruments that apply to a changing set of public health threats, non-state actors, and regulatory norms that structure the global response to public health challenges. This special issue-bringing together the O'Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law and the Global Health Law Consortium-examines the expansive evolution of the field of global health law and its continuing development to face new health threats.

Global Health Law: Between Hard and Soft Law.

The field of global health law encompasses both "hard" law treaties and "soft" law policies that shape global health norms. Transitioning from "international health law" to "global health law and policy," global health policymakers have increasingly looked to soft law instruments to address public health needs in a rapidly globalizing world - within the World Health Organization and across global health governance. Yet, as policymakers have expanded the landscape of soft law policy instruments to advance global health across state and non-state actors, the COVID-19 response revealed the limitations of this soft law approach to global health threats, with states now seeking hard law reforms to strengthen global health governance.

Global and national actions to prevent trade in substandard and adulterated medicines.

Recent mass-poisoning events caused by substandard medicines placed in global markets raise the question as to what more can be done to stop it. Efforts have been underway for years at the World Health Organization and other multilateral fora, such as the National Academies of Medicine in the U.S.

Evaluation of joint external evaluation to COVID-19 and other infectious diseases mortality outcomes in 96 countries.

Background: This study evaluated the effectiveness of Joint External Evaluation (JEE) scores with regard to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and other infectious diseases performance in 96 countries. To propose a revised JEE tool, potential JEE indicators were also examined.

Methods: JEE data from 2016-2019 were linked with outcomes such as COVID-19 fatality rates and infections, as well as mortality rates for other infectious diseases.

Laws for health and care worker protection and rights: A study of 182 countries.

The unprecedented and multi-faceted challenges health and care workers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic inspired the world's health ministers to call for a new Global Health and Care Worker Compact at the 74th World Health Assembly in 2021. The Care Compact identifies key areas where governments can use law and policy to prevent harm, provide support, ensure inclusivity, and safeguard rights of health and care workers toward improving population health. Using policy surveillance methods, we conducted an empirical analysis of the national law and policy environments on health and care workers' protection and rights in 182 countries.

In defense of in vitro fertilization: time to get involved in state-level advocacy!

We share experiences in advocating to defend in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Virginia, Missouri, and Mississippi; provide historical context on the "Personhood" anti-IVF movement; and discuss why "embryo donation" is a more accurate term than "embryo adoption." Some individuals and communities have a deeply held belief that a fertilized oocyte is a very early human life, and we will likely never change their minds. In the fertility community, most providers consider embryos to be an important part of the continuum between gametes (sperm and eggs) to live birth.