Revealing Principal Components, Patterns, and Structural Gaps in Health Security among High-Income Countries: A...

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted significant weaknesses in health security systems, even in high-income countries (HICs), underscoring the necessity for a more nuanced understanding of their distinct strengths and vulnerabilities. Existing research often offers broad evaluations and fails to capture the complex internal dynamics of health-security performance. This study seeks to fill this gap by identifying the latent factors that define health security capacities in HICs and clustering countries based on these factors.

A multistage analytical framework was employed based on the 2017-2021 Global Health Security Index (GHSI) dataset. Initially, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation was applied to the 37 GHSI indicators to reduce dimensionality and reveal latent structures within the data. This process identified nine principal components for the subsequent analysis. Subsequently, K-means clustering was utilized under three methodological scenarios: using countries' average scores across the nine extracted components, based on 13 high-loading indicators from the first principal component, and using aggregated scores across the six original GHSI categories. This design facilitated a comprehensive comparison of the clustering outcomes across different data representations.

Analysis found nine components that together explained 74.50% of the total differences, with the first component-"Foundational Capacity, Regulations, Resilience, and Prevention-Detection Systems"-making up 37.62% of that total. Together, the first three components explained 51.81% of the total variance. Clustering across all three scenarios categorized high-income countries into four levels, revealing significant disparities. Nauru, the Cook Islands, and Palau consistently ranked lowest, highlighting critical gaps in foundational capacities and systemic readiness despite their high-income status. This study shows that wealth alone does not ensure preparedness, revealing distinct performance patterns and weaknesses across countries.

The findings underscore the need for tailored policies, multi-method evaluations, and sustained global cooperation to enhance resilience and guide investments in national and global health security.