Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I examine a strategic shift in global health towards governing emergencies (of multiple kinds), analyze the resulting implications, and argue that global health's boundaries are being contested and renegotiated.

Paper long abstract:

While the term 'emergency' certainly existed in the lexicon of global health prior to the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic, since then, it has become a cornerstone in the global health community's new strategy for saving lives and improving well-being. As increasing investments and recent reforms, initiatives, and projects by the World Health Organization, the European Commission, and European countries such as Germany indicate - the global governance of health emergencies is not merely a site where actors come together to prepare and respond to events, but a new organizing scheme, a way to rearrange, redefine, and prioritize problems and solutions.

Drawing on my on-going ethnographic research in a Europe-based global health community comprised of experts, practitioners, bureaucrats, academics, and activists, I analyze some of the implications fostered by this strategic shift towards governing emergencies. Focusing on policies and priorities set by the World Health Organization (and its new Health Emergencies Programme) and corresponding developments in the European Union, I argue this shift towards governing emergencies in global health entails the contestation and renegotiation of boundaries. Internally - in how different projects, from Universal Health Coverage to health systems strengthening and surveillance, are linked. And externally - in what counts as a global health concern and responsibility (e.g. diseases and floods), and what conducts are part of, and therefore directed by, global health (e.g. humanitarian aid and development).