What is Health Security?
Healthcare professionals must adapt to shifting conditions within a changing world. That philosophy is at the heart of the answer to the question: What is health security?
Health security is defined as the activities required, both proactive and reactive, to minimize the danger and impact of acute public health events that endanger people's health.
Health impacts are not constricted by the borders of countries. Thusly, many international organizations refer to health security as “global public health security.”
Supporting that viewpoint, new diseases are emerging and old ones reemerging at unprecedented rates, disrupting health and causing social and economic impacts. Billions of passengers travel on airplanes each year, increasing the opportunities for rapid international spread of infection.
International and local
Challenges within health security and disaster management can be both international and acutely local at the same time.
Our dependence on chemicals has increased, and we are experiencing spills and leaks at a higher rate. Those incidents impact people adjacent to the spill area disproportionally. Likewise, wildfires are continuing to burn at higher rates, again most directly impacting those local to the blaze. Both chemical spills and wildfires also lead to potential wider spread hazards for health and the environment, including water and air pollution.
We continue to face increasing numbers of emergencies with health consequences from all hazards. Those are not limited to infectious disease outbreaks, chemical exposure, or wildfires. Health professionals also have to understand extreme weather events and other natural disasters -- and the potential disasters associated with them.
The challenge of complexity
Many emergencies are complex, with more than one cause, and can have significant public health, social, economic, and even political impacts. A disaster management lens helps officials address these pressing issues.
“Disaster management” includes the necessary responses to emergency events including but not limited to natural disasters such as hurricanes, local emergency events, infectious disease, and global health emergencies.
Clearly, we can see why the terms “disaster management” and “health security” are often linked together.
Be proactive
From a proactive perspective, mass gathering events and other soft targets are at increasing risk. Health threats and emergencies coupled with weak health systems and reduced states of readiness not only cost lives, but pose some of the greatest risk to overall health outcomes, and also to the global economy and security of today.
It is critical that we create and sustain a proactive and agile posture and readiness to evolving threat and resulting health security landscapes.
What is health security?
Health security is protecting people’s health during dangerous situations.
Tulane's Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine is preparing the next generation of health professionals to minimize the danger for individuals and populations during intense public health events.
Find out more about our MS in Health Security.
