The Securitization of American Public Health

October 20, 2025

Daniel Sledge, PhD: "The Securitization of American Public Health"

This talk explored the securitization of American public health andthe transformation of the political foundations of public health over the past twenty-five years. 

Despite notable successes in areas such as smoking cessation, public health institutions did a poor job of expanding beyond traditional threats such as acute andinfectious diseases to combat the challenge of chronic disease. The 9/11 attacks, 2001 anthrax mailings, and apparent threat of biological weapons opened a window of opportunity that allowedentrepreneurial bureaucrats and political leaders to frame public health as a matter of national security. The resulting infusion of resources and shift in priorities reoriented local level public health infrastructure towards specific challenges such as emergency preparedness and bioterrorism. In the model of public health that emerged, key aspects of local capacity were underfunded, institutions were designed around a narrow set of problems, andcore challenges such as chronic disease and the social drivers of health were often left unaddressed. Although public health officials were well aware of the threat of pandemic disease, the emphasis on security-framed threats came at the expense of the basic infrastructure needed to address a prolonged crisis such as COVID-19.