The Future of Health in Africa: How U.S. Presidential Decisions Are Shaping a Generation of African Children - Dr. Ruth Gibson

Session Description

The second Trump administration has undertaken a series of decisions with profound and lasting consequences for the health and survival of Africa’s children. The abrupt dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is projected to result in approximately 14 million excess deaths, the majority concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. Concurrently, the decision to initiate hostilities with Iran and the ensuing disruption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz have severely constrained global fertilizer exports to African markets. Modeling informed by NASA agricultural forecasts indicates that the 2027 growing season in the Sahel is at high risk of significant production shortfalls and elevated famine risk. This talk presents ongoing research from the Stanford Geopolitical Human Impact Research Lab on the cascading effects of geopolitical decisions on human health. It focuses specifically on the projected impacts of the Strait of Hormuz crisis on food security and child nutrition across the Sahel in the 2027 season and outlines concrete policy options through which the United States can still act to avert a larger-scale humanitarian catastrophe.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Ruth Gibson is the Founding Executive Director of the Stanford Geopolitical Human Impact Research Lab, the first research lab at Stanford University dedicated to examining how geopolitical decisions shape human lives, with particular attention to children. Based in the Department of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine, the Research Lab brings together health modeling, open-source intelligence, and international humanitarian law to produce rigorous, policy-relevant scholarship. She co-leads The Lancet Series on Foreign Engagement and Health in an Era of Geopolitical Crisis with Professor Gary Darmstadt. Dr. Gibson earned her PhD in geopolitical coercion and global health from the University of British Columbia and completed postdoctoral training at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation from 2022 to 2025. Drawing on more than a decade of international global health experience across five continents, her research focuses on the health consequences of sanctions, blockades, and armed conflict, especially their effects on maternal and child health.