Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary, addressed the increasingly interconnected world and its affect on global health, innovation and the economy Monday in Boulder as part of the opening day of the Conference on World Affairs.
Sebelius delivered the 66th annual conference’s keynote address in front of a packed Macky Auditorium on the University of Colorado campus.
In her speech “The Globalization of Health,” Sebelius discussed how interconnected the world’s people are in both spreading and fighting disease outbreaks.
On her second day as secretary in April 2009, Sebelius said her first call was from Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, who wanted to talk about the H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic.
“The dual reality of a tiny planet became very clear to me very quickly,” Sebelius said. “Crises, outbreaks, emergencies, those are situations that don’t recognize or stop with national boundaries.
“And yet neither does our capacity to counter them.”
Sebelius went on to describe some of the key realities of a global society. She said that outbreaks anywhere affect countries and people all over the world.
Last year, 7 million international passengers flew through Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia, Sebelius said, compared to 26,000 international passengers at that airport in 1963.
She also described how much of the food Americans eat is imported from around the globe, which makes it important for the country to pay attention to health and health decisions in New Zealand, for example.
“We live in a world where microbes and disease are moving faster and farther than ever, and we have to work together as a global community in order to counter them,” she said.
Sebelius said that in the same way, advancements in health in one country are advancements for everyone in the world.
She said every country can benefit from preventing diseases such as HIV and AIDS, diabetes, and heart disease, no matter whose research finds the answer.
Sebelius also talked about how healthy people mean more prosperous economies around the world, and described how the total cost of smoking in the U.S. is $289 billion each year.
“That’s being seen in countries around the world,” she said. “But in 2014, a drag on one economy pulls down other economies. We no longer have the luxury of not caring as much about what happens to people in other parts of the world.”
The secretary, who was widely criticized for the botched rollout of the website healthcare.gov, hardly touched on President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, in the speech.
When talking about smoking and tobacco usage, Sebelius mentioned how the Affordable Care Act gave much-needed support to prevention and cesasstion programs.
In closing, Sebelius described how global health can shape the world and the future by creating opportunities for cooperation and collaboration.
“In many ways, human health is the great global connector,” she said. “It aligns our interests and impacts all of our economies. It compels us to work together and actually punishes us if we drift apart.
“It calls upon the greatest human impulses for compassion, for health and for love, and it motivates our greatest human capacities for discovering innovation and invention.”
Contact Camera Staff Writer Sarah Kuta at 303-473-1106, kutas@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/sarahkuta.
