Militaries and global health: peace, conflict, and disaster response.

Many countries show a growing willingness to use militaries in support of global health efforts. This Series paper summarises the varied roles, responsibilities, and approaches of militaries in global health, drawing on examples and case studies across peacetime, conflict, and disaster response environments. Militaries have many capabilities applicable to global health, ranging from research, surveillance, and medical expertise to rapidly deployable, large-scale assets for logistics, transportation, and security.

The disease of corruption: views on how to fight corruption to advance 21 century global health goals.

Corruption has been described as a disease. When corruption infiltrates global health, it can be particularly devastating, threatening hard gained improvements in human and economic development, international security, and population health. Yet, the multifaceted and complex nature of global health corruption makes it extremely difficult to tackle, despite its enormous costs, which have been estimated in the billions of dollars.

Global health and foreign policy.

Health has long been intertwined with the foreign policies of states. In recent years, however, global health issues have risen to the highest levels of international politics and have become accepted as legitimate issues in foreign policy. This elevated political priority is in many ways a welcome development for proponents of global health, and it has resulted in increased funding for and attention to select global health issues.

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 .

Phase-specific network differences associated with the syphilis epidemic in Baltimore city, 1996-2000.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to determine whether the syphilis epidemic in Baltimore City during the mid-1990s was associated with changes in sexual networks.

Methods: Data on index cases of syphilis and their partners were collected from 1996 to 2000 and entered into CDC STD*MIS software. Unique pairs of dyads were used to create networks using SAS Interactive Matrix Language.

Comparison of sex partner meeting venues and residences of syphilis cases in Baltimore.

Background: Traditional syphilis control tools could be limited in high-risk groups in which the disease is concentrated. Novel programmatic methods such as tracking and targeting sex partner meeting venues could be valuable.

Goal: The goals of this study were to determine if syphilis cases' sex partner meeting venues are geographically different than their residences and to determine the characteristics of identified meeting places.

Responding to a community outbreak of syphilis by targeting sex partner meeting location: an example of a risk-space intervention.

Background: Effective syphilis control and elimination require community effort and innovative case-finding techniques, especially to identify infected persons from core transmission groups.

Goal: To summarize the implementation and outcomes of a community-oriented response to a localized outbreak of syphilis directed at sex partner meeting places.

Study Design: Syphilis surveillance and rapid response data from a 7-month period were analyzed for risk behaviors, sex partner meeting locations, field investigation outcomes, and social and sexual network connections.