Basics of Global Health Governance

In this video, we define global health governance as the management of the global health system—the organized international response to transnational health threats that no single country can address alone. We explain why this is uniquely hard: there is no world government, so the usual national tools of taxation, law, and voting don't apply. We look at who the actors are and how the landscape grew from mostly governments and multilateral bodies in 1990 into a crowded ecosystem by 2015, review the four core functions of the system (global public goods, managing externalities, global solidarity, and stewardship), and close with the imperfect instruments—international law and WHO treaties and soft law—available to carry them out.