The Department of Defense has updated its policy on “humanitarian and civic assistance activities,” which are “conducted in conjunction with authorized military operations” abroad. See DoD Instruction 2205.02 (pdf), December 2, 2008.
Medical assistance is a potentially important element of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, argued a senior military medical officer earlier this year. See “The Role of Medical Diplomacy in Stabilizing Afghanistan” (pdf), by Donald F. Thompson, Defense Horizons, May 2008. (Interestingly, however, he noted that such assistance can sometimes backfire by “undercutting the confidence of the local population in their own government’s ability to provide essential services.”)
Former Senator Bill Frist has called for increased investment in medical diplomacy, and warned against letting U.S. adversaries get “ahead” on this front.
“We cannot allow countries in direct security and economic competition with America … to use health diplomacy as a means of building new alliances, attracting new followers, or otherwise strengthening their position vis-a-vis our nation,” he wrote (pdf) in Yale Law and Policy Review (Fall 2007).
At least 40% of Medicare beneficiaries do not have a documented AHCD. In the absence of one, medical professionals may perform major and costly interventions unknowingly against a patient’s wishes.
AI has transformative potential in the public health space, but innovation driven primarily by the private sector today may be exacerbating existing disparities by training models.
With targeted policy interventions, we can efficiently and effectively support the U.S. innovation economy through the translation of breakthrough scientific research from the lab to the market.
Crowd forecasting methods offer a systematic approach to quantifying the U.S. intelligence community’s uncertainty about the future and predicting the impact of interventions, allowing decision-makers to strategize effectively and allocate resources by outlining risks and tradeoffs in a legible format.