Epistemic status: Low to medium. This is largely a personal reflection, with some scholarly literature cited as appropriate. It is also my first full post to the Forum. I wrote this quite quickly as well, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes that I may have made and welcome corrections in the comments. Questions are also welcome.
Introduction
For the first post in my cause area series, I am focusing on global health, because I was a delegate in the 2026 American Mock World Health Organization (AMWHO) International Conference. My focus here can be encapsulated by Atticus Finch’s remark in To Kill a Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” In this case, I am attempting to use my experience as a means to view global health from the perspective of a policymaker. As I have, to some extent, stood in their shoes, I can speak to the dilemmas that a policymaker faces when choosing to act for the greater good, and the stakeholders they must work with.
To organize this post, I will divide it as follows. Part I provides some background on the conference, my role as a delegate, the core issues that were discussed, and the provided sources of information for delegates like myself to make decisions (including some of the research that I did). Part II uses an article I read after the conference to provide further analysis on what was discussed. Part III focuses on a specific dilemma regarding a vote I made, and attempts to extract lessons regarding how policymakers think on their feet. Finally, Part IV wraps up my discussion with some conclusions and suggestions for how to approach global health at the international level.
Part I: Background on the Conference
According to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill chapter of AMWHO, “AMWHO is an authentic simulation of the World Health Assembly, the sole decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO). Students assume the roles of a variety of actors and engage in debates and discussion on global health challenges.” (UNC AMWHO, n.d.-b) Each conference has a theme, and this year it was child and adolescent health. Further, the theme was also divided into several subthemes: mental health; interpersonal violence; sexual and reproductive health; vaccinations and infectious diseases; substance abuse; and nutrition, physical activity, and non-communicable diseases. (UNC AMWHO, n.d.-a) This year, I was assigned to serve as the delegate for Pakistan, and I thus worked with several nations in the Eastern Mediterranean Region to write a resolution to improve child and adolescent health there. My region opted to focus primarily on nutrition; vaccinations; and expansion of healthcare services using electronic platforms, mobile clinics, and community health workers. Delegates had access to delegate guides provided by the conference organizers; I assume they also used the guest speakers’ input and their own research, but I cannot verify this.
Part II: Further Analysis
In an article for The Lancet, Jeffrey Shiffman and Yusra Ribhi Shawar discuss what causes certain causes to be prioritized over others. They identify three framing processes that shape global health action: securitization, moralization, and technification. (Shiffman & Shawar, 2022) From my reading, the efforts of effective altruism in global health would likely be interpreted through the technification frame, which focuses upon the use of science and technology to advance global health, and the moralization frame, which focuses upon fomenting action by portraying it as a moral obligation. With regards to the conference, many delegates focused upon expanding successful initiatives in their countries; I personally focused on expanding funding for initiatives endorsed by GiveWell and other charity evaluators, such as Vitamin A supplementation and lead abatement, as well as kangaroo care, the latter of which worked well in Pakistan. Many of the NGOs and industries also had their own solutions they wanted to fund and scale up. This all appears to reflect the technification frame, although I also think moralization was also present to a limited extent. We were not working on any extremely urgent issues, so (from my limited memory) securitization was not very present. Accordingly, given that the frames which favor effective altruist organizations’ initiatives exist, I should have had success. I would say that, to some extent, I did. However, given that people can think the same way but disagree on the conclusions, I did not have full success in getting everything I wanted. This is, to some extent, the nature of politics in general: one must compromise, and one often works with individuals sharing different values. While this is, to some extent, an obvious lesson here, I also firmly believe that it is important to appeal to a person’s existing values when advocating for reasons of effectiveness, and activism that does not do this fails more often than not.
Part III: A Dilemma Regarding a Vote
When I attended this conference last year, the resolution from the European Regional Organization (EURO) was voted down, and it was also voted down this year. However, unlike last year (and, from what I am told, prior years), the Southeast Asia/Western Pacific Region (SEARO/WPRO) resolution was voted down. This was likely due to North Korea and China co-sponsoring the resolution, as the presentation at plenary focused on their human rights abuses. In my capacity as the delegate from Pakistan, I voted the resolution down, although I was conflicted about it. After speaking about the matter with the delegate from North Korea, I felt even more conflicted. As I write this post, I see the argument as follows:
Voting against: It sets a bad precedent to vote for a resolution where the sponsors, who are elected based upon their contributions, abuse human rights and, as was pointed out during the plenary, likely would not be able to enforce the resolution.
Voting for: I harmed the over a billion people who call the region home but were not co-sponsors, who would have benefitted from the resolution’s genuinely reasonable content.
This dilemma is difficult to resolve, because the only way I could express disapproval of the sponsors was by voting down the resolution. It is entirely unclear to me which way I should have voted, although as I write this post I more likely lean in the direction of voting for the resolution: the expected value is probably higher that way. However, if this episode suggested something for me, it would be that policymakers can be significantly influenced by floor dynamics, and advocacy must keep this in mind.
Part IV: Conclusions
Broadly, from this post, I have reached two conclusions:
- I need to be willing to compromise, even on issues I care about.
- Even if I am the most convincing person in the room, a policymaker, even one who fully supports my ideas, could vote the opposite way simply due to floor dynamics.
The second conclusion seems relevant for any sort of advocacy effective altruists do, including me. The solution to this problem does not seem terribly obvious. The obvious one seems to be continuously showing up and genuinely changing views, but habit has a way of getting past rational action. Alternatively, perhaps the real WHO is more subdued, and that makes the problem moot. I don’t know, and would like to know.
I must also acknowledge here that, while AMWHO is intended as a simulation, even a perfect replica of an item is a distinct item in a certain sense. Accordingly, while I don’t think extrapolation from AMWHO onto the WHO is necessarily unmerited, I do think I must be careful, including in this post.
Anyways, this is my first post in the cause area exploration series. I hope that it was enjoyable to read and easy to follow. I hope to see comments and questions and respond to them, so that I can continue to improve my writing and better test my fit for global health.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank UNC AMWHO for hosting the conference, and JHU AMWHO for their support and friendship. I will also give a shoutout to Kyu Sakamoto for singing “Sukiyaki”, which was playing continuously as I wrote this post over the past two days.
The views expressed in this post are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of AMWHO or its members or staff.
References
Shiffman, J., & Shawar, Y. R. (2022). Framing and the formation of global health priorities. The Lancet, 399(10339), 1977–1990. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(22)00584-0
UNC AMWHO. (n.d.-a). 2026 UNC AMWHO INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE. UNC AMWHO. Retrieved April 29, 2026, from http://www.uncamwho.org/2026-unc-amwho-international-conference.html
UNC AMWHO. (n.d.-b). About Us. UNC AMWHO. Retrieved April 29, 2026, from http://www.uncamwho.org/about.html