Globally inclusive investments in health: benefits at home and abroad

Support for global health programs yields direct domestic benefits At a time when disease pandemics and the health effects of climate change are viewed as primary threats to global stability,1 the rise of right wing populism among the world’s highest donors of official development assistance (fig 1⇓) is threatening aid budgets and progress across many global health movements. The value of international engagement across all sectors is being questioned as the perspective on globalization is becoming increasingly isolationist.2 Fig 1  Distribution of total official development assistance (ODA) across the 28 member states of the OECD’s development assistance committee in 2015 according to whether they have seen an upsurge in right wing populism since 2010 In the US the future of global health initiatives in President Donald Trump’s new administration is uncertain.3 Several of these initiatives are critically linked to US national and global security—bolstering pandemic preparedness, mitigating the health effects of climate change (for example, the rising prevalence of zoonotic diseases and the increased prevalence of severe weather patterns, such as Hurricane Sandy), tackling antimicrobial drug …