By Catherine Cheney
Margaret Chan, outgoing director of the World Health Organization, is urging greater collaboration among global health organizations in the face of a challenging political environment in the United States.
Speaking at Global Health: Next Decade, Next Generation, hosted by the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health on Wednesday, Chan warned that the political climate made the work of public health more important than ever in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which she described as a “corrective strategy” to the root causes of inequality.
“In a post-truth and post-fact world, views that appeal to emotions and personal beliefs are more influential than objective evidence based on science,” she said. “We need to defend science and evidence like never before.”
Global health organizations attending the event — which marked the university department’s 10th anniversary — echoed this call for collaboration. They described coalitions they have built across sectors, countries and organizations as more necessary than ever in the face of an inward turn in politics and growing concerns regarding the direction of U.S. policy under President Donald Trump.
“There are forces of retraction to recede into our shells and cut off our ability to work together across national boundaries to improve global health — and they are part political,” said Jay Inslee, governor of Washington.
The state has become a hub for the global health sector, home to organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PATH and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
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