By Yanzhong Huang, Senior Fellow for Global Health at Council on Foriegn Relations

At the start of this month, the United Nations replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will guide development actions worldwide for the next fifteen years. The seventeen SDGs are of unprecedented scope and ambition. In addition to traditional development priorities, which were targeted by the MDGs (e.g., poverty eradication, health, and education), the new development agenda includes a broader range of economic, social, and environmental objectives. The new goals could vastly expand access to healthcare and improve health outcomes, but may come at the expense of longstanding health targets, such as ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Translating lofty development goals into significant advances in global health depends on effective global health governance, which a 2010 CFR report defines as “use of formal and informal institutions, rules, and processes by states, intergovernmental organizations, and nonstate actors to deal with challenges to health that require crossborder collective action.” But the SDGs themselves have profound implications for global health governance. Their impact is threefold:

1. They have redefined global health problems and priorities as more broad-based and inclusive;

2. By reprioritizing the global health agenda, they may divert funding from some global health organizations and initiatives; and

3. They have laid out new norms, principles, and institutions for dealing with global health challenges.