Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The spectre of ‘Disease X,’1 a pathogen currently unknown but with the potential to cause a serious international epidemic, has shifted from a hypothetical scenario to an acknowledged reality, urging a fundamental change in our approach to global health security and urban resilience.2 When outbreak data remain confined within discrete institutional silos, essential insights for tracking disease spread and optimising interventions are lost or delayed.3 In the USA, the absence of a national public health system and centralised leadership forced state, local, tribal and territorial health departments to operate in isolated silos, resulting in critical gaps in COVID-19 data tracking, ineffective guidance development and a torrent of falsehoods.4 While past decades have seen us react to specific named threats like SARS, MERS, Ebola, and most recently COVID-19, the core challenge lies in preparing for an undefined future, demanding not just reactive countermeasures but proactive, networked and deeply integrated systems.5 This requires moving beyond traditional, siloed approaches to embrace innovative strategies that acknowledge the hyperconnected and complex nature of our modern world.
Source: BMJ Global Health
Authors: Zhenchao Wu, Taikang Yao, Ning Shen
Institution: Peking University Third Hospital
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,679
OpenAlex ID: W4412048174