Optimizing Global Health's Contributions to Diplomacy & Foreign Policy

This special session in Global Health Diplomacy (GHD) seeks to identify opportunities for GHD engagement among all public health stakeholders with a focus of capacity building, GHD advocacy at various levels of the policy environment, and with the overall goal of ensuring “health in all FOREIGN policies” in alignment with the APHA 143^rd Annual Meeting theme.  This will be accomplished by inviting a dynamic group of high-level speakers actively engaged in GHD and conducting an examination of several GHD topics including:  the role of Health Attachés as advanced practitioners of GHD; the role and strategy of the U.S. Government in promoting GHD in the international fora; the application of GHD principles for the current public health crisis in the Ukraine; the case study of U.S. government engagement and use of GHD in Myanmar, and a discussion of how to optimize global health’s contributions to diplomacy and foreign policy.  Collectively, this program will provide APHA members and other interested parties with an important overview of GHD; describe core practitioners of GHD; detail tangible application of GHD from the perspective of an NGO and the U.S. Government; and describe a methodology for GHD policy research in the context of current global public health concerns.  The importance of this session is its relevance to the overall APHA meeting theme, its incorporation of APHA’s overarching priorities, and its cross-cutting application to the broad health in all policies areas.