The Fight against Infectious Diseases: The Essential Role of Higher-Order Thinking and Problem-Solving

The development of a vaccine marks a breakthrough in the fight against infectious diseases. However, to eradicate highly infectious diseases globally, the immunization of large parts of the population is needed. Otherwise, diseases, such as polio, measles, or more recently COVID-19, will repeatedly flare-up, with devastating effects on individuals and, in the worst case, on significant shares of the world population. For example, polio has been almost eradicated over the past three decades through an unprecedented global effort, but complete immunization has not yet been achieved. In this article, we use polio as an example to show how the global effort of developing and administering a vaccine can be understood as solving a complex problem since it involves cultural, political, and geographical barriers that demand solutions in dynamically changing and highly versatile environments. Referring to the literature on problem-solving, higher-order thinking, and complex reasoning, we demonstrate how the ability to deal with real-world environments that are complex and dynamically changing, adapting initial solutions to new circumstances and collaborate efficiently with others, has been essential for this endeavor. We argue that problem-solving abilities form one basis for solving consequential world problems.