Infectious disease and economics: The case for considering multi-sectoral impacts.

Beyond the public health impacts of regional or global emerging and endemic infectious disease events lay wider socioeconomic consequences that are often not considered in risk or impact assessments. With rapid and extensive international travel and trade, such events can elicit economic shock waves far beyond the realm of traditional health sectors and original geographical range of a pathogen. While private sector organizations are impacted indirectly by these disease events, they are under-recognized yet effective stakeholders that can provide critical information, resources, and key partnerships to public and private health systems in response to and in preparation for potential infectious disease events and their socioeconomic consequences.

One Health Economics to confront disease threats.

Global economic impacts of epidemics suggest high return on investment in prevention and One Health capacity. However, such investments remain limited, contributing to persistent endemic diseases and vulnerability to emerging ones. An interdisciplinary workshop explored methods for country-level analysis of added value of One Health approaches to disease control. Key recommendations include: 1. systems thinking to identify risks and mitigation options for decision-making under uncertainty; 2. multisectoral economic impact assessment to identify wider relevance and possible resource-sharing, and 3. consistent integration of environmental considerations. Economic analysis offers a congruent measure of value complementing diverse impact metrics among sectors and contexts.

Refugees, migrants, and displaced populations: the United Nations New York Declaration and the WHO International Health Regulations.

The World Health Assembly approved the International Health Regulations (IHR) committing countries to strengthen their capacity to address public health emergencies of international concern. A mechanism to assess a country's capacity, the Joint External Evaluation (JEE), is a means to assist countries to assess their health system preparedness. The assessment teams include public health and veterinary experts, but include those with specialized knowledge about refugee, immigrant, and internally displaced persons situations. Such experts have not been regularly included in the JEE assessment teams previously. Particularly where there are significant existing or prospective populations of this cohort, the author asserts they need to be.