Biohaz Alumna, Sabrina Kim, Presents at the 6th Annual Global Health Security Agenda Ministerial Meeting
Sabrina Kim, a 2020 Biohaz alumna, was selected to present her work as a member of the GHSA NextGen at the 6th Annual Global Health Security Agenda Ministerial.
Sabrina has been a member of NextGen since 2020, where she is working on a project highlighting the global health implications of coastal fisheries collapse in the Pacific Islands. Prior to joining NextGen, she worked at a think tank focusing on the intersection of ocean health, maritime security, and sustainability. She also spent time teaching wildlife conservation as an Expedition Leader in Australia. An abstract for her work can be found below and a link to the recorded session (SM2) found on the GHSA website.
In the Pacific Islands, marine resources underpin the economic and social foundation required for effective infectious diseases preparedness. Climate change and rapid population growth are putting pressure on critical coastal fisheries, threatening widespread food insecurity and economic instability. Increasing regional access and consumption of tuna offers a potential solution, but operationalizing this proposal requires more cooperation between fisheries, sustainable development, and global health actors than currently exists. An analysis of proposed interventions across the entire bait-to-plate spectrum and their current implementation status is used to identify future priority areas and serve as a foundation for their eventual realization. Without more targeted measures to encourage preferential consumption of tuna in Pacific Island communities, the already high burden of noncommunicable and communicable diseases as a result of processed food intake is likely to continue. This work recasts the development of a sustainable fisheries system in the Pacific Islands under the umbrella of global health security and serves as a case study for future efforts seeking to expand the definition of preparedness to one that better addresses the underlying determinants of health.