Over the past five years, governments have rewritten global health law at a rapid pace. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, states revised the International Health Regulations (IHR) in 2024 and signed a pandemic treaty in 2025, alongside billions in new preparedness funding.
The recent adoption of a Pandemic Agreement by the World Health Organization (WHO) member states has been widely hailed as a historic achievement for global health governance and security.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing global health threat, but its impact is particularly severe in Africa, where resistance infection rates and death are highest.
This special event kicks off the Petrie-Flom Center’s 20th Anniversary year. Join us throughout 2025 to learn and gather inspiration for our next 20 years. Join us to reflect on a turbulent, world-changing year with an esteemed panel of experts. COVID-19, political unrest, and a societal reckoning all contributed to “the year everything changed,” according…
We marked the publication of COVID-19 and the Law: Disruption, Impact and Legacy, an edited volume based on the Petrie-Flom Center’s 2021 annual conference, published in partnership with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School. In this moderated discussion, prominent experts and contributors to the volume will reflect on the ethical, legal,…
Leading experts in health and human rights shared the capstone webinar to Harvard Petrie-Flom Center’s Bill of Health symposium on the 2023 Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies. Recording
Event Description If the COVID-19 pandemic was a stress test for multilateral cooperation, the world failed both in relation to intellectual property regimes and economic solidarity. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed serious weaknesses in the framework of global governance for health, as well as in the normative standards relating to public health emergencies. The International Health…
Event Description The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the national and global conversation about disrupting the panic-neglect cycle in public health. It has also shown us that no single sector can do this alone—for instance, the rapid delivery of mRNA vaccines and the establishment of large-scale, end-to-end testing infrastructure for COVID-19 were products of private-sector innovation…
Event Description After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is flagging support for many of the public health interventions designed to help control the virus. The Biden Administration has struggled to secure additional funding for COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests. Most states and municipalities have rolled back their mask mandates, as well as testing…
Event Description Crisis standards of care are guidelines that inform health care systems’ decisions around access to scarce medical resources. This includes access to medical beds, ventilators, medications, dialysis, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and other resources. The concept has received increased attention as the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged our health care systems. These guidelines pose concerns…
