Reimagining Global Health Governance in the Age of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us that no country acting alone can respond effectively to health threats in a globalized world. Global governance is necessary to coordinate the global health response. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed deep fissures in global health governance, with international organizations facing obstacles from nationalist governments inmanaging a common threat. The COVID-19 pandemic is reframing global health governance. Considering key structural limitations in meeting enormous challenges, how can we best realize global solidarity in an age of populist nationalism? With the sheer scale of human, social, and economic upheaval, we face an imperative to strengthen global health institutions and governance. In this editorial, we reflect on the challenges that nationalism poses in the COVID-19 response, conceptualizing how we could reimagine global health governance. We begin by examining how international organizations have sought to bring nations together in responding to global health threats. However, international institutions are facing increasing pressures from nationalist governments, and we analyze these nationalist obstacles to global solidarity. The structural limitations of the pandemic response are reframing the global health governance landscape. Given this historic opportunity to reimagine global health governance in the age of COVID-19, we consider the rise of new institutional structures that reflect the realities of a divided world. We conclude that a new governance landscape will be crucial to strengthening global public health—rising out of crisis to secure a safer future.