What problem is the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) working on?

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) conducts independent research and analysis aimed at preventing and responding to public health crises. CHS explores how new policy approaches, scientific advances and technological innovations can strengthen health security and save lives.

CHS’s mission is to “protect people’s health from epidemics and disasters and ensure that communities are resilient to major challenges.” CHS focuses on:

Improving global health security
Addressing the global rise in emerging infectious diseases and epidemics
Strengthening public health emergency and disaster preparedness, response and recovery by providing decision-makers with in-depth analyses and recommendations
Identifying and analysing the potential for accidental or intentional biological threats
Analyzing new developments in the life sciences and providing recommendations for realising the promise of biotechnology while strengthening biosecurity and biosafety
Educating a rising generation of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.

CHS was founded in 1998 and reports being the first non-governmental organisation to study the vulnerability of the US civilian population to biological weapons and how to prevent, prepare and respond to their consequences.

What does CHS do?

CHS is multidisciplinary, bringing together experts and scholars from a wide variety of related fields and connecting them with policymakers, scientists, private sector and other key stakeholders.

Specifically, CHS:

Researches scientific advances, technological innovations, and new policy approaches that can improve health security, studying “the policies, organisations, systems, and tools to prevent and respond to outbreaks and public health crises” and providing policy advice through a wide variety of projects.
Conducts research and analysis on major domestic and international health security issues.
Engages with research, the policymaking community and the private sector to make progress in the field.
Publishes Health Security, a peer-reviewed journal aimed at practitioners, policymakers, scientists, and government officials in military, scientific, health organisations, and related fields.
Convenes expert working groups, scientific meetings, conferences and tabletop exercises to stimulate new thinking and provoke action.
Sponsors and manages the Capitol Hill Steering Committee on Pandemic Preparedness & Health Security, an educational forum where staff from congressional offices, federal agencies, and the invited public discuss new topics, technologies and ideas that can improve domestic health security now and in the future.

What information does Giving What We Can have about the cost-effectiveness of CHS?^1.

We previously included the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security as one of our recommended charities based on Founders Pledge’s evaluation highlighting its cost-effectiveness. Founders Pledge found that CHS:

Has developed an excellent track record of producing quality research, analysis and policy recommendations.
Has a strong team that combines expertise in bioscience, medicine, public health and security.
Is a trusted source of independent advice to the US government.

Other indicators of CHS’s cost-effectiveness are:

Open Philanthropy, a trusted evaluative and impact-focused grantmaking organisation, has awarded several grants to CHS, including its 2019 grant for over $20 million.
CHS also receives financial support from a number of trusted foundations, including the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We’ve since updated our recommendations to reflect only organisations recommended by evaluators we’ve looked into as part of our evaluator investigations and decided to rely on; as such, we don't currently include CHS as one of our recommended programs but you can still donate to it via our donation platform.

Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.