Disinvesting in the future leadership of global health has already begun: What can we do about it? - PubMed (original) (raw)

Disinvesting in the future leadership of global health has already begun: What can we do about it?

Shashika Bandara et al. PLOS Glob Public Health. 2025.

Abstract

Following the abrupt and significant funding cuts by the U.S. and increasing retreat by high-income countries from development aid for health, global health as a field requires reimagining and urgent solution building by all parties involved. In this essay, we aim to draw attention to an important and urgent challenge that deeply affects our collective future: the destruction of global health training opportunities and the weakening of future global health leadership. If we do not approach this challenge with a sense of urgency, global health research and training face irreversible shifts, weakening global preparedness to face future pandemics, address climate crisis, and achieve global goals such as universal health coverage or health for all. We outline existing best practices that we can build on and pathways to build better approaches in global health training.

Copyright: © 2025 Bandara et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have read the journal’s policy and have the following competing interests: Shashika Bandara is an academic editor at the PLOS Global Public Health Journal. Canice Christian is funded by the National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

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