Why does global health matter to diplomacy?
Global health as a security and economic challenge and as an opportunity for world leaders, with a special focus on the G7 Ise-Shima Summit
Kotono Hara & Satoshi Ezoe
Why does global health matter to diplomacy as an agenda of world leaders while those leaders are facing other competing agendas? To respond to this question, the authors, who engaged in the preparatory and follow-up process of the global health agenda at the G7 Ise-Shima Summit, analyze the reasons why and how global health became a priority agenda of G7 Leaders, using the Ise-Shima Summit as a case. With regard to why, the authors discuss that global health became a center of global attention, being strongly linked with pressing security and economic challenges, as well as the attainment of sustainable development towards 2016，and that the G7 and its Presidency in 2016 had a comparative advantage to demonstrate a prescription on global health for the international community based on their rich expertise and experiences in the field. Then, with regard to how, the authors discuss the unique approach to global health taken at the G7 Ise-Shima Summit and the measures that successfully solidified the status of health as a priority agenda of world leaders, which led to upgrading global health to leaders’ agendas at subsequent major international occasions.