The map was used by President Donald Trump as part of his argument that the United States was the best prepared country in the world for a pandemic; one of the consultants who worked on the project said that while the US does rank at the top for the index, there were areas for improvement.
[5] ...its score and rank do not indicate that the country is adequately prepared to respond to potentially catastrophic infectious disease outbreaks.
Strong health systems must be in place to serve all populations, and effective political leadership that instills confidence in the government’s response is crucial.
Specifically, the doctors said that while the process was comprehensive, questions remained over the skew of indicators towards the priorities of high-income countries, the validity of some indicators, the scoring system and its weighting, and how the GHSI added value to existing assessments of global health security.
[1] Emerging research suggests that the country scores of the index reliably predict several important health-related outcome measures, including mortality from communicable diseases.