Health and Health Care

The Mosquito Network: Global Governance in the Fight to Eliminate Malaria Deaths

Publication Date: April 5, 2024

Malaria, a deadly disease transmitted by the bites of infected mosquitoes, had been effectively eliminated from the developed world since the end of the World Health Organization’s Global Malaria Eradication Campaign in 1969. In Africa,...

Leadership in Moral Conflict Simone Veil and Abortion Reform in France

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

This case tells the 1974 story of a French health minister, Simone Veil, and her ultimately successful effort to liberalize France's abortion law. It serves as a vehicle for exploring leadership in a legislative setting, in this instance a...

Integrating Systems at Scale: Coordinating Health Care in Houston

Publication Date: November 8, 2023

 This case concerns the Patient Care Intervention Center (PCIC) a values-based health technology social enterprise in Houston, Texas. This organization was founded to tackle fundamental problems in social and health services in the United...

Nothing Can Prepare You for This Job: Germany’s Health Minister Faces Tough Decisions during COVID-19

Publication Date: September 24, 2023

This case and video supplement recount three high-profile public health decisions that German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, made during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: how to procure masks, which vaccines to procure (and how many...

Youth Impact: Testing the Replicability of Proven Programs

Publication Date: September 14, 2023

Botswana-based nonprofit organization Youth Impact was interested in replicating a well-known HIV prevention program in Kenya. Youth Impact’s founders, Moitshepi Matsheng and Noam Angrist were looking to address staggeringly high rates of...

Police-Mental Health Collaborations: Lessons on Scaling and Leadership

Publication Date: August 17, 2023

Scaling public programs is a challenging task that requires thoughtful planning and purposeful leadership. Pilot programs often result in astounding outcomes that leave stakeholders excited and eager to expand the initiative. However,...

Work or Exploitation? Debating Whether to Decriminalize the Sex Industry

Publication Date: August 12, 2022

As traditionally written and enforced, laws regulating the sex trade in the United States and abroad have disproportionately penalized the least powerful players in the industry—the people, mostly cis- and transgender women, directly...

"Doing Something with Nothing" Trying to Make Kampala's Primary Schools Healthier and Safer Practitioner Guide

Publication Date: July 19, 2022

This practitioner guide accompanies HKS Case 2238.0. By late 2012, well into Jennifer Musisi’s second year as executive director of the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), city revenues were improving. But there was little in...

"Doing Something with Nothing" Trying to Make Kampala's Primary Schools Healthier and Safer

Publication Date: July 19, 2022

By late 2012, well into Jennifer Musisi’s second year as executive director of the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), city revenues were improving. But there was little in the budget for schools, and no further assistance was...

An Intractable Challenge? HIV Among Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Zambia

Publication Date: March 4, 2022

This multimedia case is set in the Southern African country of Zambia, where the rates of HIV new infections, especially among adolescent girls and young women, remain high in spite of recent government efforts. After laying out the history of...

The Making of a Public Health Catastrophe: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Flint Water Crisis

Publication Date: January 12, 2022

The Flint water crisis, which began in 2014, is widely regarded as a textbook example of structural racism and injustice. This teaching case provides a close examination of the building blocks of the catastrophe, some all-too-familiar in...

OneBlood and COVID-19: Building an Agile Supply Chain Epilogue

Publication Date: October 20, 2021

This epilogue accompanies HKS Case 2233.0. The blood supply chain is under pressure from COVID-19. How should the 3rd largest blood bank in the US, OneBlood, respond? Is adopting an agile supply chain philosophy an effective...