Overview

Data last updated in 2022.

Addressing global health security requires understanding the intersection between biological outbreaks, policy, politics, economics, law enforcement, and emergency preparedness and response. Ensuring adequate financing for nations, regions and international systems to prevent, detect, and respond to biological threats is critical for the advancement of global health security, and requires awareness of the current status of funding. To identify funding requirements, develop a compelling case for investment, assess effectiveness of aid, and prioritize future funding decisions, it is necessary to understand who is funding what, and where, in the broad context of global health security.

The Georgetown Global Health Security Tracking site was developed to provide a shared resource to map the flow of disbursed funds for global health security. Global Health Security Tracking (GHS Tracking) allows both funders and recipients to identify gaps and prioritize future investments, and helps to highlight the ways in which funds can be allocated most effectively to have the greatest impact. This platform and effort serves as a basis for mutual accountability within the global health security community, promoting public accounting, and providing an opportunity for countries, organizations, and other funders to showcase their successes and identify priorities for future investments.

Global Health Security Tracking was created by the Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security and the site launched in 2017. A grant from the Open Philanthropy Project provided the funding. Data are available from 2014-2022; the last data update for GHS Tracking was in December 2022. The site data are no longer being updated, but will continue to be available on this site.

We welcome user questions and comments. We also invite you to share any research conducted using Global Health Security Tracking, so that we can link to it from this site. Please contact us at globalhealthsecurity@georgetown.edu.

Methods

A brief description of the data in the Global Health Security (GHS) Tracking site and the methods used to identify and incorporate data follow. For additional information and details, please refer to the Technical appendix.

Sources

Data for projects and transactions are collected from sources ranging from media reports (often the first reports of funding) to data submitted regularly by governments to online registries. Since data may be contained or reported in multiple sources from which GHS Tracking captures data, data obtained from different sources are deconflicted to avoid duplication. For example, early media reports announcing the start of a project may later be superseded by more official or detailed data about that project available after completion or a funder may publish reports on their website and submit data to external repositories and just the most recent, complete, or detailed source is used to capture data in GHS Tracking.

Data structure: projects and transactions

In the GHS Tracking site, financial assistance data are represented as projects with one or more transactions. Projects reflect discrete efforts and initiatives and these often include a series of activities at the transaction level (e.g., different amounts of funding to one or more recipients). Projects have titles and descriptions that provide information about the effort’s goals, while transactions define the amount of funding, the year it was provided, the funders, and the recipients. Financial transactions have a value and are shown on the site as nominal United States dollars, i.e., not adjusted for inflation.

Stakeholders

Transactions occur between one or more funders and recipients, collectively called stakeholders. Stakeholders may be country governments (e.g., “United States”), specific government agencies (e.g., “United States Agency for International Development (USAID)”), or a range of non-governmental entities such as foundations, academic institutions, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Capacity-building and event response data

The two main categories of funding data provided in GHS Tracking are (1) capacity-building data and (2) event response data (these two categories are also used for in-kind support). Capacity-building funding may be tagged with JEE core capacities, or domains identified and described in the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) as key components of building capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to public health events. Additionally, GHS Tracking contains data for funding provided in direct response to specific public health events, which currently includes data for those events declared Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEICs) by the WHO under the mechanisms of the IHR. Note that GHS Tracking does not include national-level funds invested through country budgets to build domestic capacity or support national emergency response.

Citation

Key project citation: Katz, R; Graeden, E; Kerr, J; Eaneff, S. “Tracking the Flow of Funds in Global Health Security.” EcoHealth (2019) 16:298-305. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10393-019-01402-w

Key data citation: Robertson, H., Graeden, E., Eaneff, S., John, C., Kerr, J., Lin, J., Omar, Y., Smith, K., Stevens, T., Tammareddy, H., van Maele, M., Zimmerman, R., & Katz, R. (2024). Global Health Security (GHS) Tracking dataset (1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11267145