Developing the GHS Index
To create the GHS Index, NTI, JHU, and the EIU project team—with generous grants from the Open Philanthropy Project, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Robertson Foundation—worked with an international advisory panel of 21 experts from 13 countries to create a detailed and comprehensive framework of 140 questions, organized across 6 categories, 34 indicators, and 85 subindicators to assess a country’s capability to prevent and mitigate epidemics and pandemics.
The GHS Index relies entirely on open-source information: data that a country has published on its own or has reported to or been reported by an international entity. The GHS Index was created in this way with a firm belief that all countries are safer and more secure when their populations are able to access information about their country’s existing capacities and plans and when countries understand each other’s gaps in epidemic and pandemic preparedness so they can take concrete steps to finance and fill them. The indicators and questions that compose the GHS Index framework also prioritize analysis of health security capacity in the context of a country’s broader national health system and other national risk factors.