🔗Please read John Eligon's excellent article on the link below 👇👇👇 www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/w...

New @nytimes.com article shows US blocking basic public-health terms including equity, UHC and references to WHO during G20 Health Minister meetings. Our director @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social told NYT these principles aren’t controversial - they’re essential for global health cooperation.

Spoke to John Eligon @nytimes.com this weekend on G20: Trump admin did not send minister but still blocked consensus at ministerial over basic public health concepts like mention of WHO, Univ Healthcare, and "equity" Undermining G20 is bad for public health. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/w...

Big loss to the world

Inequality drives pandemics

Thank you to ABC Radio National in Australia for a very thoughtful interview. www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

🗣️ “Measles is an entirely preventable disease.” Our senior fellow @nschwalbe.bsky.social on @npr.org with to discuss falling vaccination rates and the misinformation crisis eroding trust. Her message: We must rebuild vaccine confidence through transparency and engagement. 🎧 Listen 👇

It’s a serious proposal, and dangerous politics. Trump wants to send checks, worked well for him before. Then people will have unaffordable healthcare, exchanges will be chaos, but ppl will get a Trump check. Terrible health policy but way easier to then argue against ACA once they break it.

Trump and Rs now effectively exploiting the fact that health insurance is a scam. they are correct, massive public transfers to private co.s ensures profit in our healthcare sys keeps prices high. Of course R ideas are worse. but Ds venerable w no public system. Bad health, vulnerable politics….

Hi from the Dubai airport at midnight where I am hoping that JNB>DBX>IAD instead of JNB>EWR>DCA will actually get me home. Was supposed to be hanging with my kid and my boo but Trump wants to end the filibuster, so...

See the thing that makes me really sad is that I spend a lot of time taking about what political science has to offer public health, but then we get this… sigh,

The fiscal anatomy of the next pandemic “Debt, austerity and collapsing public budgets are becoming the true accelerants of future pandemics, leaving countries too fiscally suffocated to respond, even if science delivers the tools to intervene. mg.co.za/health/2025-...

Science can stop outbreaks, but it’s not enough in the face of the inequality-pandemic cycle. @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social in @scidevnet.bsky.social : debt, monopolies, and lack of local production makes us all more vulnerable. Link: www.scidev.net/global/opini... @unaids.org #globalhealth

In a new op-ed from @dailymaverick.co.za, @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social and co-authors discuss the inequality-pandemic cycle, calling for investment in medicines, social protections, and global pandemic preparedness. Read more below ⬇️ dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025... @unaids.org #Globalhealth

@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social in conversation with @politico.com: "What we need is a whole new approach to global health security that centers inequality...it is the only way that we ensure health security in the United States" Full conversation below ⬇️ www.politico.com/newsletters/...

On @sabcnews.bsky.social our director @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social explains how economic inequality within and between Global South countries fuels a dangerous cycle, widening health gaps and undermining pandemic response. Watch the segment below ⤵️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohzm... @unaids.org

Watch @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social on NewzroomAfrika on the pandemic-inequality cycle. Inequality undermines trust, politics, and policy, making outbreaks more dangerous. His message: invest now in vaccine and medicine production. Link ⤵️ youtube.com/watch?v=xiEV... @unaids.org #globalhealth

The Global Council on Inequality, AIDS and Pandemics, of which @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social is a member, welcomes the #G20 Health Ministers’ Statement which sets out actions to protect public health by fighting inequalities: inequalitycouncil.org/g20-statemen... @josephestiglitz.bsky.social

I’m here in Polokwane and the US just blocked a G20 Health Minister declaration, refused to include UHC or Equity because, well, they don’t believe in universal, taxes, equity, or solidarity they say

Our very own @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social is currently addressing #G20 Health Ministers, discussing the direct corelation between inequality and pandemics. Want to learn more? Listen to his explainer here: shorturl.at/aJrvR

These two brilliant people, lucky to learn from them and be inspired by them.

It is great to see that anti-trans politics is not actually working. May that put to bed the many centrist consultants who have been everywhere on how rights is a a necessary move. Instead of, ya know, doing politics

Ahead of the #G20 Health Ministers Meeting, leaders receive Breaking the Inequality–Pandemic Cycle, a landmark report from the Global Council on Inequality, AIDS & Pandemics. 🎥 @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social on how inequality fuels deadlier, costlier pandemics. Full report ↓ #GlobalHealth #UNAIDS

Our new report: Breaking the Inequality-Pandemic Cycle We find clear empirical evidence inequality is making the world more vulnerable to pandemics: outbreaks become pandemics, pandemics last longer & do more damage, pandemics ⬆️ inequality and fuel the cycle www.inequalitycouncil.org/report-inequ...

Nov 15:00 SAST, join Mail&Guardian’s livestream global launch: Breaking the inequality-pandemic cycle. Nozipho Tshabalala interviews @josephestiglitz.bsky.social @michaelmarmot.bsky.social Monica Geingos @nisiatrindadelima.bsky.social & more 📺 www.youtube.com/live/AdatXrr... @unaids.org

The US funds the bulk of biomedical research globally by far. It's not like other countries can simply take up the slack. The more likely: people leave research, new people don't become researchers. There is no happy ending. www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

On my way to Johannesburg for launch of our Global Council on Inequality, AIDS, and Pandemics big report: the inequality-pandemic cycle. Then on to present it at the G20 Health Ministers meeting (flying via Newark in govt shut down so, gulp, wish me luck!) @unaids.org @ghpp-georgetown.bsky.social

Read Dr T’s brilliant new report

Good stuff...

BIG SA NEWS IN HIV PREVENTION | Our medicines regulator approved an HIV prevention shot containing lenacapavir. It provides protection for six months with a single dose. A limited public rollout is set for April 2026. www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2025/10/27/b...

This is spot on. It also explains the MDs and PhDs that Trump & RFK Jr appointed to run the federal health agencies or chair ACIP—they’re willing accomplices to authoritarianism.

I am deeply worried we’re still stuck in public health trying to fact-check RFKjr. easily done. But Bigger Picture: he is useful to broader authoritarian moves precisely because he delegitimizes facts and institutions. Just happens to be on health… www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Was also very struck by the incredibly thin international thinking. In every rich country class dealignment? Somebody better tell Spain, NZ, but also Mexico, Brazil. Yes there’s something to be learned from US, UK, Germany, but 😒, world story re collapse of neoliberalism not that Ds are powerless.

No one should be dying of cholera

Y’all is it just on all the podcasts I listen to or is PhRMA everywhere with super intense distraction about how high drug prices are everyone’s fault (340b, Pharmacy Benefit Managers)? As if any of that holds a candle to the price mark ups from Pharma‘s Monopoly!?

Feeling this today

Washington, Chicago, Boston, Des Moines Iowa. A reminder of Erica Chenoweth's work that nearly always authoritarianism fails when at least 3.5% of the population is mobilized against it... www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/07/eric...

This 👇

BREAKING: USC HAS JOIN THE RESISTANCE! That’s four (MIT, Brown, Penn, USC) of the nine schools Trump targeted. Stay tuned! 🍿 #DefendHigherEd #StandUpFightBack

power is a “coordination game,” in which everything depends on what the public believes and does together. @himself.bsky.social in @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

The IP system is failing to deliver innovation, access, and better health in so many innovative ways…

EIS outbreak investigators, Africa-based staff on Ebola, editors of main journal updating health officials, gone. Administration is doing all it can to enable viruses. This isn’t mysterious: people this administration is actually accountable to can largely exit, stay home. Inequality=>Pandemics

📢 As the World Health Summit begins, one question is front and center: how should global health architecture adapt? With SDG deadlines looming and funding cuts deepening, reform is no longer optional. 🧵 bit.ly/GHarchitecture

Pope Leo XIV has blasted how wealthy people live in a “bubble of comfort and luxury” while the poor suffer. In his first teaching document Thursday, Leo confirms that he is in perfect lockstep with Pope Francis on matters of social injustice.

ryanenos.bsky.social and Steven Levitsky who study it: “American civil society has more than enough financial and organizational muscle to stop this authoritarian offensive. But it requires collective resolve. And it requires leadership.” www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

New study in @thelancet.com “After nearly 2 years of war and severe restrictions in humanitarian aid, tens of thousands of preschool-aged children in the Gaza Strip are suffering from preventable acute malnutrition and facing an increased risk of mortality” www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

What if decline in dominance of the west isn’t a problem? Great talk today at @ausis.bsky.social Amitav Acharya, The Once and Future World Order argues the core ideas of world order come as much from the South as from Europe or US. Diversity of ideas may help w stability and peace long term.

Ahem, yes @nytimes.com "It is illegal for the military to deliberately kill civilians — even suspected criminals — who are not directly participating in hostilities" www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/u...

For-profit healthcare is a driver of social and economic inequality, part 5848584924