Global Health Security and Diplomacy

Office of Infectious Diseases and Outbreak Response (IDOR)

The Office of Infectious Diseases and Outbreak Response (IDOR) leads efforts to monitor and respond to international infectious disease outbreaks and serves as the coordination node for the State Department on outbreak response. IDOR works in collaboration with federal agency partners to support the expansion of research and development, production, and equitable distribution and use of effective medical countermeasures to address infectious diseases.  IDOR officers coordinate with federal agencies to ensure U.S. staff overseas have the tools they need to address global health threats.

Office of Global Health Security (GHS)

The Office of Global Health Security (GHS) guides policy and programmatic efforts to strengthen foreign government health security capacity at the national, subnational, and subregional level. GHS leads efforts to support U.S. global health security intensive support partner countries, as well as other foreign entities, in collaboration with federal agency partners.  The Office of Global Health Security engages internationally to strengthen health security at the nexus of human, animal, and environmental health – using a One Health approach.  We actively support U.S. leadership in the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA).

Office of Health Diplomacy and Capacity Development (HDCD)

The Office of Health Diplomacy and Capacity Development (HDCD) leads public diplomacy efforts with foreign audiences and drives global health engagement training for U.S. government staff.  HDCD collaborates closely with staff across the U.S. government to implement citizen-to-citizen exchanges with foreign countries and to ensure U.S. missions have the tools needed to engage in health public diplomacy. We focus on capacity development of diplomatic staff to support a global health workforce within the Department.  HDCD conducts robust outreach with U.S. educational institutions and civil society stakeholders to recruit future generations of diplomats working on global health.

Office of Regional and Multilateral Diplomacy (RMD)

The Office of Regional and Multilateral Diplomacy (RMD) works to strengthen the global health security architecture within multilateral fora and international organizations. RMD drives policy to fortify health security capacities at regional and multilateral levels. RMD staff support U.S. engagement with, and oversight of, multilateral and regional focused on global health security initiatives. We serve as the State Department, and where appropriate the U.S. government’s primary point of contact for global health-related multilateral and regional fora, including but not limited to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria, and Tuberculosis, UNAIDS, the organs of the African Union and the World Health Organization.