Biden Hears a WHO

Abstract

Abstract The World Health Organization (WHO), the body charged with implementing global pandemic response, figured heavily in the Republican and Democratic campaigns of the 2020 US presidential election. The contrast was stark: Donald Trump drew on and ramped up dissatisfaction with the United Nations system in general and the WHO in particular, culminating in his decision to pull the US out of the WHO in the middle of the pandemic, while Joe Biden rescinded the decision to leave the WHO the day after assuming the presidency. Despite this difference, neither party heeded renewed calls during COVID to put health justice and primary healthcare at the heart of global health policy. Both parties continued to prefer private philanthropic sources of funding for global vaccine initiatives, and both sought economic returns on vaccine development, potentially missing a rare opportunity to incorporate global health justice into US global health diplomacy.