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SUMMARY:Health Emergencies\, Resource Allocation and Individual Health Sec
 urity - Jon Herington
DTSTART:20170731T150000Z
DTEND:20170731T163000Z
UID:TALK74051@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Allyson Walsh
DESCRIPTION:Seminar presented by Jon Herington\, co-hosted by the Centre f
 or the Study of Existential Risk and the Cambridge Infectious Diseases Int
 erdisciplinary Research Centre\nWhen faced with a health emergency (e.g. S
 ARS\, Ebola\, natural disasters)\, health care workers must choose whether
  to allocate resources to interventions which prioritize the emergency\, a
 t the expense of interventions which address ordinary health problems (e.g
 . malaria\, AIDS\, maternal mortality). Some have argued that devoting res
 ources to control an emergency is almost always unjustified\, because the 
 actual (ex post) and expected (ex ante) health impact is dwarfed by the be
 nefits of continuing to address the population’s ordinary\, endemic heal
 th problems. In this paper\, I argue that the provision of resources to he
 alth emergencies may be justified\, even in cases where it does not maximi
 ze health impact\, in so far as emergencies undermine the entire populatio
 ns’ health security. I begin by defining individual health security as l
 ow probabilistic variance over the amount of health one will enjoy in the 
 future. Next\, I argue that health emergencies pose a special challenge to
  health security\, disproportionate to their expected health impact\, beca
 use they radically increase the probability of near-term death or permanen
 t disability for each individual within the population. This is a special 
 harm\, I argue\, because a relatively stable expectation of individual hea
 lth enables individuals to formulate and pursue complex life plans. The sp
 ecial value of health security is not normally considered by public health
  frameworks which focus on the maximization of expected population health 
 (without special regard to the probability of catastrophe)\, and so such f
 rameworks undervalue the importance of controlling emergencies.
LOCATION:Alison Richard Building\, Sidgwick Site\, Room SG2 7 West Road\, 
  Cambridge\, CB3 9DT
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