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      Applied global health diplomacy: profile of health diplomats accredited to the UNITED STATES and foreign governments

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          Abstract

          Background

          Global health diplomacy (GHD) is a burgeoning field bridging the priorities of global health and foreign affairs. Given the increasing need to mobilize disparate global health stakeholders coupled with the need to design complex public health partnerships to tackle issues of international concern, effective and timely cooperation among state actors is critical. Health Attachés represent this coordination focal point and are key diplomatic professionals at the forefront of GHD. Despite their unique mandate, little is published about this profession and the perspectives of those who work in the field.

          Methods

          Through purposive sampling, we performed in-depth qualitative interviews with seven Health Attachés: three foreign Health Attachés accredited to the United States and four U.S. Health Attachés accredited to foreign governments. Our interviews explored four key topics: the role and mission of Health Attachés, skills needed to perform GHD, examples of successes and challenges in accomplishing their respective missions, and suggestions for the future development of the diplomatic profession.

          Results

          We identified several lessons to apply to the growing field of GHD. First, GHD actors need to receive appropriate training to successfully negotiate the intersection of global health and foreign affairs. Participants suggested several areas of training that would benefit GHD actors: diplomacy and negotiation, applied science, and cross-cultural competency. Second, participants articulated the need for a career path for GHD practitioners, increased opportunities for on-the-job training and mentored experiences, and GHD competencies with defined levels of mastery that can be used in occupational evaluation and career development.

          Conclusions

          Our findings indicate that skills in diplomacy and negotiation, applied science, and cross cultural competency are essential for the statecraft of Health Attachés. Additionally, establishing a clear career pathway for Health Attachés is critical for future maturation of the profession and for fostering effective global health action that aligns public health and foreign diplomacy outcomes. Achieving these goals would ensure that this special cadre of diplomats could effectively practice GHD and would also better position Health Attachés to take the lead in advancing shared global health goals among nation states in a new era of twenty-first century diplomacy.

          Electronic supplementary material

          The online version of this article (10.1186/s12992-017-0316-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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          Most cited references21

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          Towards a common definition of global health

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            Health Diplomacy and the Enduring Relevance of Foreign Policy Interests

            Harley Feldbaum and Joshua Michaud consider the important interplay between foreign policy and global health interests, and introduce a series on Global Health Diplomacy beginning this week in PLoS Medicine.
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              Defining health diplomacy: changing demands in the era of globalization.

              Accelerated globalization has produced obvious changes in diplomatic purposes and practices. Health issues have become increasingly preeminent in the evolving global diplomacy agenda. More leaders in academia and policy are thinking about how to structure and utilize diplomacy in pursuit of global health goals. In this article, we describe the context, practice, and components of global health diplomacy, as applied operationally. We examine the foundations of various approaches to global health diplomacy, along with their implications for the policies shaping the international public health and foreign policy environments. Based on these observations, we propose a taxonomy for the subdiscipline. Expanding demands on global health diplomacy require a delicate combination of technical expertise, legal knowledge, and diplomatic skills that have not been systematically cultivated among either foreign service or global health professionals. Nonetheless, high expectations that global health initiatives will achieve development and diplomatic goals beyond the immediate technical objectives may be thwarted by this gap. The deepening links between health and foreign policy require both the diplomatic and global health communities to reexamine the skills, comprehension, and resources necessary to achieve their mutual objectives. © 2011 Milbank Memorial Fund. Published by Wiley Periodicals Inc.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                (404) 806-9619 , Matthew.Brown5@nih.gov
                jnbergmann@gmail.com
                tnovotny@mail.sdsu.edu
                tmackey@ucsd.edu
                Journal
                Global Health
                Global Health
                Globalization and Health
                BioMed Central (London )
                1744-8603
                11 January 2018
                11 January 2018
                2018
                : 14
                : 2
                Affiliations
                [1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2297 5165, GRID grid.94365.3d, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Center for Global Health, ; Bethesda, MD USA
                [2 ]ISNI 0000 0004 5897 7981, GRID grid.484476.d, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ; Washington, D.C., USA
                [3 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2107 4242, GRID grid.266100.3, Department of Medicine, Division of Global Public Health, , University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, ; San Diego, CA USA
                [4 ]Global Health Policy Institute, San Diego, CA USA
                [5 ]ISNI 0000 0001 0790 1491, GRID grid.263081.e, San Diego State University, Graduate School of Public Health, ; San Diego, CA USA
                [6 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2107 4242, GRID grid.266100.3, Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, , University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, ; San Diego, CA USA
                [7 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2107 4242, GRID grid.266100.3, Department of Anesthesiology, , University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, ; San Diego, CA USA
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6535-4940
                Article
                316
                10.1186/s12992-017-0316-7
                5765610
                29325574
                65a2e481-0920-4e5d-9691-f5d42abdb50e
                © The Author(s). 2018

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                History
                : 26 July 2017
                : 1 December 2017
                Categories
                Research
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2018

                Health & Social care
                global health diplomacy,health diplomacy,foreign affairs,international relations,health attachés

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