Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize biosecurity, health security, biodefense, and pandemic preparedness by offering groundbreaking solutions for managing biological threats. This landscape review explores recent advancements in AI across these fields, drawing from both grey literature and peer-reviewed studies published between January 2019 and February 2024. AI has demonstrated potential in predicting viral mutations, which could enable earlier detection of outbreaks, and streamlining resource allocation by analyzing diverse data sources. It could also play a crucial role in accelerating the development and deployment of medical countermeasures, such as vaccines and therapeutics. Additionally, use of AI may enhance laboratory automation, reducing human error and increasing biosafety. Despite these promising advancements, significant challenges related to the potential misuse of AI, data security, and privacy concerns necessitate careful implementation and robust governance. This article highlights the rapid progress and vast potential of AI in biosecurity and provides key recommendations for US policymakers to effectively harness AI's capabilities while ensuring safety and security. These recommendations include expanding access to advanced computing resources, fostering collaboration across sectors, and establishing clear regulatory frameworks to support the safe and ethical deployment of AI technologies.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the term ‘global health security’ and how this has placed health within the security agenda. The chapter opens by reviewing the development of the term global health security (GHS) and other phrases that have securitised health threats. It will then examine the general policies and processes needed to prevent, detect and respond to emerging health threats that have the potential to have global impact. The key health threats of pandemics (e.g. H5N1 influenza), proliferation of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons, and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will then be summarised. The chapter will close by discussing the risks of securitisation of global health.

The objective of this study was to determine if racial differences exist between older Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) and White (NHW) men in incident dementia over 11 years (2011-2022) in the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS). The analytic sample included 2395 community-dwelling NHB and NHW men free of dementia at baseline who self-identified as Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) and White (NHW). Dementia was assessed at each visit using a validated algorithm developed by NHATS. After adjusting for demographics, place, and health-related characteristics in the Cox proportional hazard models, older NHB men had an increased risk of dementia (hazard ratio: 1.63, 95% confidence interval: [1.22-2.17]) compared to older NHW men. There may be unique factors such as stressors, patterns of genes, or perhaps nutrition that older NHB men possess and experience throughout their lives that contribute to the increased incident dementia.

We led the last large-scale exercise conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security before the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite COVID-19, pandemic exercises are more necessary than ever to prevent the loss of hard-fought gains achieved during COVID-19, keep policymakers from assuming all pandemics will be like COVID-19, and encourage continued engagement from policymakers in strengthening health resilience rather than returning to a cycle of panic and neglect. Pandemic exercises can also advance new solutions necessary to effectively meet the challenge of a future pandemic. Over 2 decades, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has developed and conducted 6 large-scale, high-level tabletop pandemic exercises. These exercises and others were designed to increase policy focus on the most critical needs in pandemic preparedness and heighten the urgency for making these changes in the near future. Pandemic experts and policymakers alike have highlighted the importance of exercises to ensure that all key actors involved in pandemic response-including the government, healthcare, public health, emergency response, and private business and industry sectors-understand both the best practices and policies to pursue before a pandemic and what to do once a pandemic occurs. These advance efforts can enhance planning, resource allocation, and coordination ahead of time and identify unique gaps and barriers. This commentary describes the approach we have developed to create and conduct such exercises and highlights key considerations that were important to successful outcomes.

In response to the new U.S. Supreme Court ban on race-conscious admissions, medical schools have an opportunity to refocus on affirmative action’s original vision.

Health SecurityAhead of Print CommentaryWastewater Collection and Sequencing as a Proactive Approach to Utilizing Threat Agnostic Biological DefenseZev Goldberg, Alexander G. Linder, Lauren N. Miller, and Erin M. SorrellZev GoldbergZev Goldberg, MSc, was a 2022-2023 Griffin Fellow; in the Elizabeth R. Griffin Program, Center for Global Health Science and Security, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.Search for more papers by this author, Alexander G. LinderAlexander G. Linder, MSc, is Junior Scientists; in the Elizabeth R. Griffin Program, Center for Global Health Science and Security, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.Search for more papers by this author, Lauren N. MillerLauren N. Miller, MSc, is Junior Scientists; in the Elizabeth R. Griffin Program, Center for Global Health Science and Security, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.Search for more papers by this author, and Erin M. SorrellAddress correspondence to: Erin M. Sorrell, PhD, MSc, Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, 700 E. Pratt St, Suite 900, Baltimore, MD 21202. E-mail Address: [email protected]Erin M. Sorrell, PhD, MSc, is a Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and an Associate Professor, Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:19 Oct 2023https://doi.org/10.1089/hs.2023.0075AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookXLinked InRedditEmail View articleFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 0Issue 0 InformationCopyright 2023, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishersTo cite this article:Zev Goldberg, Alexander G. Linder, Lauren N. Miller, and Erin M. Sorrell.Wastewater Collection and Sequencing as a Proactive Approach to Utilizing Threat Agnostic Biological Defense.Health Security.ahead of printhttp://doi.org/10.1089/hs.2023.0075Online Ahead of Print:October 19, 2023KeywordsCOVID-19Biological surveillanceWastewater surveillancePathogen agnosticPDF download