Madagascar Says No to Mosquito Breeding Sites in Rice Fields
Health experts in Madagascar used satellite data and modeling to detect mosquito-prone rice paddies, improving local malaria early warning and targeted response.
Resource
2024 has been a year of significant developments in global health security, characterized by notable outbreaks, substantial progress, and critical challenges. The world faced health crises such as Mpox, Marburg virus, Avian Influenza, and Listeria, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo identifying severe respiratory malaria cases through its improving early warning system.
Innovations in surveillance, diagnostics, and outbreak response strategies have been crucial in managing these threats, underscoring the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in our global health preparedness efforts. Amid these challenges, the Pandemic Accord saw considerable advancements and continued tensions and the US Government expanded formal partnerships from 19 to over 50 countries and mobilized support for an additional 50.
Abt Global has spent this year focused on these challenges and opportunities, working across 28 countries with national and subnational governments and dozens of local partners to implement localized prevent, detect, and respond strategies. We look forward to continuing to work alongside our partners to identify risks early and mount timely and effective responses to global health threats.
Here, we review some of our top global health security insights from 2024 as we look ahead to 2025.
Health Security Evolution and the Path for Pandemic Preparedness
In a mini-Master Class on global health security, Carolynn Poulsen, Abt’s director of global health security, examines the progression of health security and outlines strategies to enhance pandemic preparedness. Understanding the historical impact of epidemics and pandemics must inform current and future health security strategies. To strengthen pandemic preparedness, we must invest in robust health systems that can effectively prevent, detect, and respond to health threats; implement One Health approaches; enhance surveillance and data sharing; and build sustainable financing mechanisms.
Digital Innovation in Advancing Health Security
From cross-border data sharing platforms to AI-driven predictive analytics, the world has an unprecedented opportunity to leverage digital innovation in health security solutions to detect outbreaks early, track disease spread and coordinate effective interventions on a global scale. A webinar on digital GHS showcased the transformative potential of emerging digital solutions for global health security and explored how the global community can safely adopt innovations.
Scaling Innovative Locally Led Solutions to Global Health Security Threats in Madagascar
Trusted partnerships with local innovators have enabled scaling up of locally designed solutions to global health security threats. In this film, Abt shines a light on Madagascar, where our government and community-based partners have learned from past experiences with plague response to improve their current and future response system. Reinforcing community engagement and strengthening capacity at the local level are central to addressing immediate barriers to care.
Operationalizing One Health
A One Health approach is critical to mitigating zoonotic diseases and strengthening health systems globally. In the Operationalizing One Health webinar, we delved into the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health and highlighted field-tested strategies.
Further Resources for Health Security Practitioners
- Beyond Borders and Building Blocks: The Future of Health Systems Strengthening: Explore the Health for All movement and the power of primary care to transform the future health systems in this mini-Master Class with Kelly Saldana, Abt’s Vice President of Systems Strengthening and Resilience.
- What is One Health? A Frontline Defense Against Zoonotic Diseases: One Health strategies stand as a frontline defense, promoting global health security by proactively and comprehensively managing complex and dynamic threats that could lead to disease outbreaks. Abt is at the forefront of this interdisciplinary health research and program work with the ability to assemble nimble teams that can quickly stand up large, complex, research studies to address difficult challenges.
- Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance: Integration and Health Systems Strengthening: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing global crisis, causing over 5 million deaths annually and threatening modern healthcare by rendering antibiotics, antivirals, and antifungals ineffective. Combating AMR requires a holistic One Health approach that integrates robust primary healthcare systems, antimicrobial stewardship, improved surveillance, regulatory enforcement, and community engagement. Strengthened health systems, workforce training, and cross-sector collaboration are essential to mitigate AMR's devastating health and economic impacts and ensure global health resilience.
- Bolstering Global Health Security in a Changing Environment: Extreme weather is altering the distribution, reproductive rate, and behavior of vectors such as ticks, mosquitoes, and sandflies. Health security strategies must reflect the risks and increasing complexity that a changing environment contributes to our ecosystem.
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Global Health Security
Local Health System Sustainability Project (LHSS)
Abt helped 25 countries reform their own health financing, improve access to and quality of health services, and prevent and contain disease outbreaks.
Project
Bolstering Global Health Security in a Changing Environment
Environmental hazards require adaptive global health security strategies.
Blog
What is One Health? A Frontline Defense Against Zoonotic Diseases
A One Health approach, which includes human, animal, and environmental health, is critical for fighting diseases passed between animals and humans.
Blog
Spotlight On: Advancing Fiscal Transparency & Improving Service Delivery Through PFM Support
Abt helps governments around the world enable sustainable economic growth, advance fiscal transparency and accountability, and improve service delivery.
Spotlight On
Spotlight On: Service Delivery
Abt Global implements evidence-based and high-impact service delivery projects that improve health outcomes for key, disadvantaged populations around the world.
Spotlight On
Spotlight On: Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC)
By combining technical, communications, and behavior-change expertise while applying the principles of behavioral-economics, Abt campaigns successfully encourage audiences to adopt recommended actions.
Spotlight On
Spotlight On: CDC COVID-19 Research
CDC’s real-time surveillance of COVID-19 cases and analyses of surveillance data inform public health policies, communication about protective behaviors, and guidance to public health and healthcare providers, communities, businesses, and schools.
Spotlight On
Beyond COVID-19: What Global Health Security Will Look Like
As leaders focus on pandemics and global health security, they should look at three related items: other diseases, social determinants of health, and logistics.
Blog
Costing the Earth: Swimming in Superbugs?
Intro: Abt epidemiologist Adam Schaefer was featured on a BBC podcast discussing the rise of harmful bacteria in our oceans, and their effect on humans and other wildlife. Schaefer addresses the negative impacts that antibiotic-resistant bacteria have had on dolphins along the southern coast of the United States, and describes methodology for testing the kinds of dangerous algae to which dolphins have been exposed.
News
How May Covid-19 Be Changing the Governance Discourse?
The changing face of governance discourse due to impacts of COVID-19.
Blog
Pima Community College’s Pathways to Healthcare Program Three-Year Impact Report
The Pathways to Healthcare program, operated by Pima Community College and Pima County One Stop in Tucson, Arizona, helped low-income, low-skilled adults access and complete occupational training in one of five healthcare pathways. In addition, the program included academic and non-academic advising, scholarships, basic skills remediation as needed, and job search assistance. Abt’s three-year impact report found an increase in college credentials that take a year or more to earn but no impact on earnings. The program had no impact on employment overall but did increase employment in healthcare.The program was part of the Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) Study, funded by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF).
Publication
Governing Quality in Health Care on the Path to Universal Health Coverage: A Review of the Literature and 25 Country Experiences.
As countries work to promote and achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC), maintaining and improving quality in health care is emerging as a priority. While research has been conducted on service delivery and financing schemes for UHC, little consolidated knowledge or guidance is available on institutional arrangements and their impact on quality of care in the context of UHC.Responding to this need, the Health Finance and Governance project (HFG) conducted a literature review to attempt to document global experience in institutional roles and relationships governing quality of care in the health sector, and to identify successful features or factors when structuring institutional roles, responsibilities, and relationships. Read the full report.
Publication
A Concise, Health Service Coverage Index for Monitoring Progress Towards Universal Health Coverage
There is a growing international commitment to universal health coverage (UHC), but limited means to determine progress towards that goal. The authors developed a practical index for capturing health service coverage – a critical dimension of UHC -- that was more inclusive than previous methods.The approach moved beyond common indicators of service coverage focused on infectious diseases and maternal and child health, to include information on necessary health inputs. The resulting, balanced, composite index of health service coverage demonstrated promise as a metric, likely to discriminate coverage levels between countries and regions. An important number of service provision indicators were correlated, therefore a reduced set of services performed well as a proxy for the full set of available indicators. This parsimonious index is a start toward simplifying the task of policy-makers monitoring progress on a key domain of universal health coverage.
Publication
Saving for delivery through technology: an inquiry into an electronic commitment savings product for maternal healthcare in Kenya
Many women in low-income countries cannot afford maternal healthcare services. Changamka, a Kenyan company, developed an electronic, stored-value card to help pregnant women save for maternal healthcare at a Nairobi hospital. This paper reports results from a mixed-methods process evaluation of the card's implementation. The study found high levels of uptake and identified several benefits of the program, such as facilitating payment for services. The evaluation also identified several challenges. Most users completed only one transaction before discontinuing card use; only 6% of women who acquired the card used it to pay for delivery, and slightly less than 1% used it as it was originally intended—to pay for several antenatal care visits and for delivery. According to respondents, the main reason for this discontinuation was a lack of understanding about how to use the card. Users were, on average, of a higher socioeconomic and educational status than non-card users. Most users obtained the card in their third trimester, and among those who used the card to save for delivery, most started to do so too late in pregnancy to accumulate sufficient savings to pay for that service. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Publication