Since 2007, JCIE has been carrying out the Global Health and Human Security program, which has included a wide range of research, outreach, and advocacy initiatives. As part of that program JCIE and the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) collaborated on a project to analyze case studies of how the human security approach is being implemented on the ground and how it can contribute to broader goals of health, resilience, and development.

The year 2015 was an important milestone in the world of international development and global health, marking the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as the launch of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The MDGs represented an important turning point in that they focused international attention and resources on a set of very specific and widespread challenges. They have, however, been criticized for failing to address in-country disparities, and for not taking into account the ways in which the challenges relate to one another or to other challenges not included in the agenda.

The SDGs have taken a more comprehensive and aspirational approach with 17 goals, each with multiple targets that seek to tackle the interconnections among challenges and to explicitly promote equity in attaining the goals. The comprehensive nature of the new agenda and its focus on equity is reminiscent of the human security concept, which, if implemented effectively, has the potential to build more resilient communities around the world.

The JCIE study identified seven principles of human security, as well as key features of successful human security approaches, to explain to experts in the health and development fields what a human security approach is and how it can be applied to ensure that interventions are integrated so as to build and sustain health resilience at the individual, community, and institutional levels as a path toward health for all.

The project resulted in a report, Health, Resilience, and Human Security: Moving Toward Health for All, and the findings were shared broadly with policymakers and practitioners in the field through seminars in New York and  Washington DC.