Global Health Security Index


The Global Health Security Index is an assessment of global health security capabilities in 195 countries prepared by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

History

The index was first published in 2019 and said, among other things, that "no country is fully prepared for epidemics or pandemics, and every country has important gaps to address". The countries in the category "most prepared" were - in alphabetical order - Australia, Canada, Finland, France, the Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The United States was ranked first with an index value of 83.5 out of 100. The largest number of countries in the category "least prepared" was in Western and Central Africa.
The GHS index came to prominence during the 2020 outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The map was used by President Donald Trump as part of his argument that the United States was the best prepared country in the world for a pandemic; one of the consultants who worked on the project said that while the US does rank at the top for the index, there were areas for improvement. An article in The Lancet attacked the report, saying that countries which were ranked the most prepared, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, fared worse amid the pandemic than countries in Asia and Africa which ranked lower. The index published an article in the wake of the pandemic which said that the position of the United States on the GHS Index Score did not reflect its preparedness to respond to potentially catastrophic infectious disease outbreaks. In response to the index, an article by doctors at Public Health England criticized the validity of indicators affecting the Index Score, questioning how the index added value to assessments of global health and advised avoiding using the GHSI.

Method

The report is based on a questionnaire of 140 questions, organized across 6 categories, 34 indicators, and 85 subindicators. The six categories are:
The index relies entirely on open-source information. The researchers worked with an international advisory panel of 21 experts from 13 countries.

Funding

The development of the index was funded by, among others, the Open Philanthropy Project, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Robertson Foundation.