Navigating the Global Health Terrain: Mapping Global Health Diplomacy

This article engages in mapping thinking and practice on global health diplomacy. Increased interest in “global health diplomacy” and “health diplomacy” heightens the need for more rigorous descriptive, conceptual, analytical, and practical approaches to these phenomena. This article discusses why more rigor is needed with respect to global health diplomacy, provides a way to describe global health diplomacy that provides a foundation for further analysis, explores conceptual underpinnings of global health diplomacy to deepen the mapping exercise, and offers a simple but flexible analytical template for use in mapping different aspects of global health diplomacy. The article concludes with thoughts on the importance of mapping for helping States, intergovernmental organizations, and non-State actors move towards shaping global health diplomacy in ways that contribute to improvements to humanity’s health.