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Crawford School of Public Policy · ANU College of Law, Governance and Policy
On-campus & remote (online) learning available. Students participate in interactive, real-time classes. 2026 class dates: Covid-19 highlighted just how critical 'health' is in local, national, regional and global security. This course assesses the political and security significance of not only infectious diseases and pandemics but a broader range of existential threats to health such as climate, water and food security. From the historical experiences with smallpox, plague and cholera, to contemporary challenges posed by other infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and SARS or the Covid-19 pandemic, it is clear that pathogenic micro-organisms exercise a powerful influence over the security of people, societies and states. Yet infectious diseases are themselves increasingly influenced and moderated by climate change, agricultural intensification and the increasing fragile balance at the nexus of humans, animals, plants and their ecosystems –The One Health concept. The course draws on a broader operational definition of One Health and argues that health and security – both broadly defined – are interdependent and therefore require policy responses that are by definition multi-agency and whole of society. The course explores the relationships between not only infectious disease and the state response but how the state and its people consider and account for broader existential threats as constructs of health and security. The aim of the course is to provide students with a stronger understanding of the scientific and political nature of these threats to health and security, why and how they might threaten national and global security strategy design and implementation, and the conceptual and empirical connections between them. Course activities and assessment tasks are designed to encourage critical engagement with this key policy challenge of our age. To this end, the course includes a comparative exercise on how nations respond to these broad yet critical threats to health and security and the insights of policy practitioners will be integrated with academic teaching.
Policy brief (800 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3
Critical essay question and consultation
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3
Critical essay (2000 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3
The standard workload for a 3 unit course is 65 hours including class time and independent study.
A list of readings will be provided in lieu of a prescribed text Preliminary Reading Ezekiel J. Emanuel et al, “Fair Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources in the Time of Covid-19”, New England Journal Of Medicine, March 25, 2020. WHO, Surveillance strategies for COVID-19 human infection, World Health Organisation, 10th May 2020, https://www.who.int/publications-detail/surveillance-strategies-for-covid-19-human-infection Berlinger et al, “Framework for Health Care Institutions Responding to Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19: Guidelines for Institutional Ethics Services Responding to COVID-19”, Hastings Center Report, March 16, 2020. Meredith Celene Schwartz (ed) The Ethics of Pandemics, (Broadview Press, 2020) Simon Rushton and Jeremy Youde (eds) Routledge Handbook of Global Health Security (Oxon: Routledge, 2015). Kamradt-Scott, Adam, and Colin McInnes. The securitisation of pandemic influenza: Framing, security and public policy. Global Public Health 7, S2 (2012): S95-S110. Schuchat, Anne, Beth Bell and Stephen Redd. The Science behind Preparing and Responding to Pandemic Influenza: The Lessons and Limits of Science. Clinical Infectious Diseases 52, S1 (2011): S8-S12. Stern, Alexandra, and Howard Markel. International Efforts to Control Infectious Diseases, 1851 to the Present. Journal of the American Medical Association 292, 12 (2004): 1474-1479.