Global Health Institute

Emily Mendenhall, professor in the Science, Technology and International Affairs Program in the School of Foreign Service, received a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, which is given to exceptional individuals making their mark in scholarship in their field.

Featured in the New York Times and Washington Post, a study by Colin Carlson, Ellen Bannon, Emily Mendenhall, Timothy Newfield, and Shweta Bansal finds mosquitoes responsible for transmitting malaria are spreading deeper into southern Africa and to higher elevations than previously recorded.

Working with colleagues at George Washington University and the World Bank, Syed Shabab Wahid, assistant professor of global health, led a study which links climate change to depression and anxiety in Bangladesh, the world's seventh most vulnerable country to climate change.

The O'Neill Institute's Andrés Constantin and Oscar Cabrera wrote an article on ethical issues around how free speech protections for corporations have contributed to commercialization of unhealthy foods. It was published in a special issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, for which Cabrera…

Global health law experts at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law published a report detailing how issues regarding national sovereignty may impact negotiations around the new international pandemic instrument.

A recent Washington Post article highlighted Colin Carlson (Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security) and his research team's efforts to mathematically model zoonotic spillover.

A recent study by Georgetown faculty members Colin Carlson, Gregory Albery, Casey Zipfel, and Shweta Bansal published in Nature finds connections linking climate change and the spread of viruses.

Juliette McHardy (O'Neill Institute) wrote in Health Promotion International about how commercial industries create environments that negatively impact public health. She suggests that intersectoral governance is the solution to mitigating these harmful practices.

The O'Neill Institute's Lawrence Gostin is the author of the new Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future, a book which addresses the role that policy, health systems, and global institutions play in detecting and responding to public health crises.

The Royal Society article "The future of zoonotic risk prediction" reviews technologies for surveillance of zoonotic diseases to detect and prevent future infectious threats. Georgetown-affiliated co-authors include Colin Carlson, Alexandra Phelan, Angela Rasmussen, Greg Albery, Sam Halabi, Rebecca…

Writing for the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog, Renu Singh and Mara Pillinger discuss HIV Policy Lab research that finds that Russia, despite already adopting some HIV prevention measures, is still hesitant to do more as political disagreements threaten the implementation of further safeguards.

Researchers from across Georgetown schools co-wrote an article about how countries that criminalized same sex relationships, sex work, and drug use had lower rates of HIV status awareness and lower viral suppression levels than countries that did not criminalize these choices.

Affiliates of the O'Neill Institute wrote an article published in the BioMed Central journal about the role of package labeling in increasing rates of diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The authors advocate for better front-of-package warnings.

Rebecca Katz and Matthew Boyce (Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security) are the editors of a recently published book that investigates the ways that cities have prepared for and responded to outbreaks of infectious disease. 

Georgetown's HIV Policy Lab recently produced a report that was reprinted by the American Academy of HIV Medicine. The featured piece, titled "Policy Barriers to HIV Progress," discussed translating HIV scientific advances to law and policy.

"From the Plague to the Coronavirus: Islamic Ethics and Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic" by Ayman Shabana, professor of theology at Georgetown University in Qatar, focuses on the history of global public health measures in the Muslim context.

In an interview featured in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Lawrence Gostin (O'Neill Institute) discusses solutions to COVID-19 vaccine hoarding and inequitable distribution, including an intellectual property waiver from the World Trade Organization.

In an article posted on the JAMA Forum, the O'Neill Institute's Lawrence Gostin outlines "9 Steps to End COVID-19 and Prevent the Next Pandemic," including policy recommendations, financial priorities, and systems for threat identification.

In BMJ the O'Neill Institute's Matthew Kavanagh and colleagues discuss their recommendations for addressing COVID-19 and preventing another pandemic, including equitable policymaking, capacity strengthening, and a new pandemic treaty.

Dr. Wu Zeng, associate professor of international health, co-authored the new Nature Medicine commentary "Leave No One Behind: Ensuring Access to COVID-19 Vaccines for Refugee and Displaced Populations," about addressing health inequities for an effective pandemic response.

Global Health Initiative grants supported early research now published in "Migration and Health in Social Context" in the BMJ Global Health Journal, featuring Georgetown professors addressing factors that impact migrants seeking clinical care.

In a recent Nano Letters article, Department of Physics professor Kai Liu and his group of researchers show how copper foam could be stronger and more resistant to microbes like COVID-19 than other currently used mask filters. 

How do religious communities contribute—both positively and less so—to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic? For the last year the Berkley Center's Religious Responses to COVID-19 project has addressed this question through research, commentary, and dialogue involving faith actors and development leaders.

Global Health Science and Security Director Rebecca Katz works alongside global health experts to author a report on the Global Fund's contributions to health security. This is the first study to examine financial contributions from vertical disease programs to health security.

In The Lancet Global Health, Georgetown scholars from the Center for Global Health Science and Security discuss the Global Fund’s financial contributions to health security.

Researchers from several departments at Georgetown recently co-authored an article on "Approaching 'Elective' Surgery in the Era of COVID-19" in the Journal of Hand Surgery, in which they propose an ethical framework for prioritizing elective surgery during the pandemic.

Researchers G. Ian Gallicano, John L. Casey, Jiayu Fu, and Samiksha Mahapatra of Georgetown University Medical Center co-published a paper on Nature's Gene Therapy, in which they reveal their research on using molecules comprised of small strands of RNA to shut down the production of destructive…

In a new study Aline de Souza and Kathryn Sandberg at the Georgetown Department of Medicine relay their findings about the long-term impact of drastic weight loss due to severe calorie restriction, another potential impact of food insecurity due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Matthew Kavanagh and Mara Pillinger of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law co-authored an article on how longitudinal legal data are used for comparative analysis and proposed that global policy surveillance should be involved in core global public health…

Colin J. Carlson (Center for Global Health Science and Security) and Shweta Bansal (Department of Biology) recently co-authored a “Comment” in Nature Communications discussing misconceptions about weather and seasonality's influence on COVID-19 transmission, emphasizing that this should not misguide…

Laura Norato, an associate at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, released a blog named "The Female Face of the Pandemic: A Call for Egalitarian Care Systems" conveying the urgent need to protect female caregivers in the era of COVID-19.

Prof. Lawrence Gostin co-published a paper named "Has Global Health Law Risen to Meet the COVID-19 Challenge? Revisiting the International Health Regulations to Prepare for Future Threats" in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.

Georgetown faculty from across the university reflect on the sometimes unexpected ways the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted and influenced their work.