Editor’s Note: Dr. James Miller is a pioneer in health diplomacy with Iran, having used Iran’s rural primary health care model to try to improve the well-being of poor people in Mississippi. He is working now to help Iran use recently unfrozen funds to purchase medical devices and pharmaceuticals, which are not restricted by U.S. sanctions.
By Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow, Middle East Perspectives
During a recent conference in Tehran sponsored by the Iranian Critical Care Society (ICCS), the opening presentation by our group focused on health diplomacy and the important role relationships between scientists can play in today’s troubled world.
The presentation included a range of recommendations for engagement developed in cooperation between ICCS and the Oxford International Development Group (OIDG), based in Oxford, Mississippi, that this author directs.
ICCS members, led by vice president and health diplomacy project coordinator, Dr. Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemian, are hoping to travel to other countries in the Persian Gulf region to discuss ideas for bilateral and multilateral cooperation among medical schools, NGOs and other institutions. OIDG, with input from the medical community in Iran, also has developed proposals to expedite the release of humanitarian-designated funds for the purchase and delivery of medical devices and pharmaceuticals to address patient safety, an ICCS priority.
U.S.-Iran relations today present a seemingly insurmountable impasse driven by more than 40 years of animosity and lost opportunities on both sides. The slide of American politics to the right with its seemingly irreplaceable need for a theocratic enemy exacerbates Iranian righteous indignation at decades of sanctions imposed by the West and fuels a hardline political trend in Tehran.
However, societies and individuals can apply lessons learned outside the political realm and benefit from respectful interaction and collaboration, people-to-people. As the catastrophic Covid pandemic demonstrated, global public health cooperation is non-negotiable and indispensable for human survival. Health diplomacy offers a way for American and Iranian doctors to bypass politics and work on very real and intractable problems.
Diplomatic cooperation in the health sector has a proven track record in improving lives around the globe even as it avoids the deepest political divides and media-driven antagonism. One of the first significant examples of discrete health diplomacy was established by American and Soviet doctors during the height of the Cold War. It started with a personal friendship between researchers Albert Bruce Sabin and Mikhail P. Chumakov. An oral vaccine developed by Sabin was tested on 10 million children in the Soviet Union in 1959. This led not only to the licensing of the polio vaccine but collaboration that helped pave the way for treaties to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons. More importantly, the U.S.-Soviet exchanges provided a critical line of communication between the two sides at a time of deep suspicion and fear.
Health Diplomacy Has a History With the US and Iran
In 2009, U.S. and Iranian public health experts collaborated to adapt the effective primary care model devised by Iran – so-called Health Houses — to rural low-resource regions of the American Mississippi Delta. The common enemy of illness created an unlikely alliance solely dedicated to improving the lives of people, regardless of country.
The Mississippi/Iran project was a modest but important step to promote peace and better understanding between the two countries at a time of rising tensions with Iran over its advancing nuclear program. For the Americans, the willingness of Iranian doctors and public health experts to freely give their knowledge and time toward solving a decades-old Delta problem was deeply appreciated.
During a visit by the American delegation to a health center in rural Iran’s Fars Province in 2009, Iranian healthcare workers told this author that the American request for assistance was, in itself, “a miracle.” One worker expressed it this way: “I always knew that rain fell down, but I never knew it could fall up.”
In 2013, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) issued a report, “The United States and Iran: Gaining and Sharing Scientific Knowledge through Collaboration,” which described a number of science and health cooperative projects. In 2016, AAAS assembled a panel of experts to encourage further scientific collaboration between the U.S. and Iran. According to the AAAS Center for Science Diplomacy, scientific collaboration is among the best ways to show that adversaries can productively work together by helping tackle the world’s greatest common challenges.
The AAAS, guided by the late Glenn Schweitzer, a pioneer in U.S.-Soviet scientific exchanges, worked with the U.S. State Department to organize more than 30 workshops, individual exchanges and joint projects in Iran focused on combatting foodborne illness, enhancing urban resilience, protecting the environment and improving the ability of buildings to withstand earthquakes, which are endemic in Iran. Before the program fell victim to rising U.S.-Iran hostility in the aftermath of the U.S. decision to quit a landmark nuclear deal in 2018, more than 1,500 scientists from 120 institutions had taken part in these collaborative efforts.
Today, for American and Iranian doctors, health diplomacy offers an important alternative to hardline vested interests on both sides. Our collective experiences confronting the COVID-19 pandemic and the poor response by the world community make it essential we eschew politics to establish alliances and advocate for increasing the availability of resources for Iranian primary and critical healthcare needs.
Dr. James Miller is Managing Director of Oxford International Development Group, an international health system research and consulting company based in Oxford, Mississippi, and Global Health Consulting, SPC, based in Muscat, Oman.
US-Iran Health Diplomacy: De-Escalation Through Humanitarian Action
By James Miller
Middle East & North Africa
Editor’s Note: Dr. James Miller is a pioneer in health diplomacy with Iran, having used Iran’s rural primary health care model to try to improve the well-being of poor people in Mississippi. He is working now to help Iran use recently unfrozen funds to purchase medical devices and pharmaceuticals, which are not restricted by U.S. sanctions.
By Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow, Middle East Perspectives
During a recent conference in Tehran sponsored by the Iranian Critical Care Society (ICCS), the opening presentation by our group focused on health diplomacy and the important role relationships between scientists can play in today’s troubled world.
The presentation included a range of recommendations for engagement developed in cooperation between ICCS and the Oxford International Development Group (OIDG), based in Oxford, Mississippi, that this author directs.
ICCS members, led by vice president and health diplomacy project coordinator, Dr. Seyed Mohammad Reza Hashemian, are hoping to travel to other countries in the Persian Gulf region to discuss ideas for bilateral and multilateral cooperation among medical schools, NGOs and other institutions. OIDG, with input from the medical community in Iran, also has developed proposals to expedite the release of humanitarian-designated funds for the purchase and delivery of medical devices and pharmaceuticals to address patient safety, an ICCS priority.
U.S.-Iran relations today present a seemingly insurmountable impasse driven by more than 40 years of animosity and lost opportunities on both sides. The slide of American politics to the right with its seemingly irreplaceable need for a theocratic enemy exacerbates Iranian righteous indignation at decades of sanctions imposed by the West and fuels a hardline political trend in Tehran.
However, societies and individuals can apply lessons learned outside the political realm and benefit from respectful interaction and collaboration, people-to-people. As the catastrophic Covid pandemic demonstrated, global public health cooperation is non-negotiable and indispensable for human survival. Health diplomacy offers a way for American and Iranian doctors to bypass politics and work on very real and intractable problems.
Diplomatic cooperation in the health sector has a proven track record in improving lives around the globe even as it avoids the deepest political divides and media-driven antagonism. One of the first significant examples of discrete health diplomacy was established by American and Soviet doctors during the height of the Cold War. It started with a personal friendship between researchers Albert Bruce Sabin and Mikhail P. Chumakov. An oral vaccine developed by Sabin was tested on 10 million children in the Soviet Union in 1959. This led not only to the licensing of the polio vaccine but collaboration that helped pave the way for treaties to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons. More importantly, the U.S.-Soviet exchanges provided a critical line of communication between the two sides at a time of deep suspicion and fear.
Health Diplomacy Has a History With the US and Iran
In 2009, U.S. and Iranian public health experts collaborated to adapt the effective primary care model devised by Iran – so-called Health Houses — to rural low-resource regions of the American Mississippi Delta. The common enemy of illness created an unlikely alliance solely dedicated to improving the lives of people, regardless of country.
The Mississippi/Iran project was a modest but important step to promote peace and better understanding between the two countries at a time of rising tensions with Iran over its advancing nuclear program. For the Americans, the willingness of Iranian doctors and public health experts to freely give their knowledge and time toward solving a decades-old Delta problem was deeply appreciated.
During a visit by the American delegation to a health center in rural Iran’s Fars Province in 2009, Iranian healthcare workers told this author that the American request for assistance was, in itself, “a miracle.” One worker expressed it this way: “I always knew that rain fell down, but I never knew it could fall up.”
In 2013, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) issued a report, “The United States and Iran: Gaining and Sharing Scientific Knowledge through Collaboration,” which described a number of science and health cooperative projects. In 2016, AAAS assembled a panel of experts to encourage further scientific collaboration between the U.S. and Iran. According to the AAAS Center for Science Diplomacy, scientific collaboration is among the best ways to show that adversaries can productively work together by helping tackle the world’s greatest common challenges.
The AAAS, guided by the late Glenn Schweitzer, a pioneer in U.S.-Soviet scientific exchanges, worked with the U.S. State Department to organize more than 30 workshops, individual exchanges and joint projects in Iran focused on combatting foodborne illness, enhancing urban resilience, protecting the environment and improving the ability of buildings to withstand earthquakes, which are endemic in Iran. Before the program fell victim to rising U.S.-Iran hostility in the aftermath of the U.S. decision to quit a landmark nuclear deal in 2018, more than 1,500 scientists from 120 institutions had taken part in these collaborative efforts.
Today, for American and Iranian doctors, health diplomacy offers an important alternative to hardline vested interests on both sides. Our collective experiences confronting the COVID-19 pandemic and the poor response by the world community make it essential we eschew politics to establish alliances and advocate for increasing the availability of resources for Iranian primary and critical healthcare needs.
Dr. James Miller is Managing Director of Oxford International Development Group, an international health system research and consulting company based in Oxford, Mississippi, and Global Health Consulting, SPC, based in Muscat, Oman.
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