Take as Directed
264 episodes - English - Latest episode: 16 days ago - ★★★★ - 41 ratingsTake as Directed is the podcast series of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center. It highlights important news, events, issues, and perspectives in global health policy, particularly in infectious disease, health security, and maternal, newborn, and child health. The podcast brings you commentary and perspectives from some of the leading voices in global health and CSIS Global Health Policy Center in-house experts
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Episodes
Dr. Chris Murray, IHME, "…we are in for a harder spell…”
February 02, 2023 14:12 - 22 minutesAs part of our series on China post-COVID-19, Chris Murray reflects on where things stand, almost two months after President Xi threw off Zero-Covid controls. A huge Covid-19 wave has likely led thus far to a million deaths. It is likely not over. Don’t expect greater Chinese government transparency on numbers. That remains a highly sensitive matter domestically and, no less important, an integral component of China’s foreign policy image and prestige. The Chinese government is driving to ge...
Dr. Scott Kennedy, CSIS -- “Give us our lives back!”
January 26, 2023 09:44 - 31 minutesIn our continued series on China post-Zero Covid, Dr. Scott Kennedy recounts the revelations from his six weeks in Beijing and Shanghai in late 2022, and reflects on what has transpired – societally, politically, medically -- since President Xi suddenly threw off the Zero-Covid controls in early December. What is the “toll” for not preparing for the colossal speak of Covid? What to make of a “crisis of confidence” that the government has to face, that is going to “hurt?” What can we expect i...
Dr. Yanzhong Huang: China’s calculations “puzzling”
January 13, 2023 14:22 - 29 minutesAs 2023 opens, Yanzhong Huang, Council on Foreign Relations/Seton Hall University, kicks off our new podcast series focused on China. Over the past month, since Xi threw off Zero-Covid, China has experienced an extraordinary pace and scale of infection. “The worst is yet to come” as Lunar New Year migration rush – 200 million – spreads the virus into the countryside. Why should Americans care? Are travel restrictions counter-productive? How should we think about what lies on the other side of...
Dr. Kristina Box and Dr. Judy Monroe, the Governor of Indiana’s Commission on Public Health, “The buffalo runs into the storm.”
November 03, 2022 13:31 - 34 minutesIn this 153rd episode, Doctors Kristina Box and Judy Monroe walk us through the recently concluded Indiana Governor’s Commission on Public Health. Why Indiana? What are the Commission’s mandate, methods, findings and recommendations? How did Commissioners navigate the polarization and anger? Indiana’s $55 per capita investment in public health lags far behind the $91 national average: how is Indiana to catch up? What’s CDC’s special value to Indiana’s public health? How important is the Commi...
Dr. Raj Panjabi, National Security Council, on the new U.S. National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan
October 27, 2022 18:17 - 1 hourIn Episode 152, we share the audio of the one-hour conversation J. Stephen Morrison held at CSIS on October 19 with Dr. Raj Panjabi, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the National Security Council. The focus is the launch of the new U.S. National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan and the issuance of the President’s National Security Memorandum-15. What do these steps promise, in strengthening the protection of America...
Dr. Ashish Jha, White House Covid Response Coordinator: “You can tackle the big stuff.”
September 28, 2022 13:29 - 31 minutesIn this special CCU episode, #151, we bring you the audio of a conversation that J. Stephen Morrison held with Dr. Ashish Jha on September 27. How is the bivalent vaccine launch going? How does the White House navigate the wildly divergent realities of the pandemic? We are living a tale of two cities: the drive to normality, built on major achievements that have lowered the threat of severe illness and death, versus persistent danger and uncertainty, and the multiple accumulating barriers to ...
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, White House Deputy Coordinator—update on monkeypox response
September 22, 2022 04:00 - 27 minutesIn episode 150, Dr. Daskalakis, White House Deputy Coordinator of the monkey pox response, has been at his job for six weeks, attempting an urgent turnaround of a response that went very badly initially. He looks at “his medium term crystal ball” and sees several causes for cautious optimism: a deceleration of spread, changed behavior, greater vaccine availability, greater flexibility in use of HIV and STD resources, improved communications. But much progress still hangs on far more funding, ...
Dr. Anthony Fauci: The Future Outlook for COVID-19
September 20, 2022 04:00 - 18 minutesIn this special episode, we bring you the audio of a broadcast interview that J. Stephen Morrison held on Monday, September 19 with Dr. Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden and Director, the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Fauci addresses the multiple tough challenges that confront us, as we approach year 3 of the pandemic, as well as the historic achievements that give us hope.
Dr. Krishna Udayakumar: “The world has moved on.”
September 15, 2022 14:26 - 30 minutesDr. Krishna Udayakumar, founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, shares his trenchant insights into this confusing moment of transition in the global response to Covid-19. What should be the priorities and the principles to guide action? How to take account of the profound changes in the pandemic, while not losing focus on equity? Please give a listen!
Dr. Rochelle Walensky: A Fireside Chat, at CSIS
September 13, 2022 14:06 - 52 minutesOn this 147th episode, we are offering the fireside chat, held on August 30 at CSIS, at which CDC Director Rochelle Walensky laid out her newly announced reform agenda, moderated by Julie Gerberding and Tom Inglesby. Julie is former director of the CDC and current director of the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health, and co-chair of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security. Tom is Director of the Johns Hopkins University Center on Health Security and co-chair ...
Dr. Chris Murray, IHME on Moving Forward Amid Uncertainty and Complacency
August 09, 2022 18:42 - 36 minutesOn this 146th episode, Dr. Chris Murray, IHME, delivers several sharp messages. Tracking Covid is increasingly difficult, a function of both underreporting of cases and overreporting of incidental hospital admissions. Studies are emerging which suggest that protection against severe ill and death may be waning after 20 weeks. Without far better data on hospital admissions, however, we are “flying blind.” Essential “big” investments in next-generation vaccines that block infections and address...
Dan Diamond, Washington Post, on Monkeypox: ”The Calendar Is Not Our Friend.”
July 29, 2022 18:29 - 36 minutesDan Diamond, Washington Post, joins J. Stephen Morrison, CSIS, for a tour d’horizon of rapidly unfolding Monkeypox developments: How to explain the early egregious USG stumbles? Are we correcting course in testing, vaccines, and therapies rapidly and effectively enough to head off the entrenchment of Monkeypox? Does the math surrounding vaccines and demand add up? Or are we sailing into a profound gap? How should we be thinking strategically about the global response?
Dr. Marci Nielsen: “With COVID, Public Health Is in Front of Us”
July 28, 2022 13:41 - 39 minutesDr. Marci Nielsen, Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at Resolve to Save Lives, joins J. Stephen Morrison for episode 144. For an 18 month period beginning in the fall of 2020, Dr. Nielsen served as Chief Advisor for COVID-19 Coordination for Kansas Governor, Laura Kelly, where she led outreach efforts across the state to advance dialogue, access to data, and transparency. Regular public fora on schools – when to close or open, promotion of tests, vaccinations, masks – were a key tool to ...
Dr. Celine Gounder: "On Monkeypox: It's not Surprising That We're Stumbling Again"
July 22, 2022 18:52 - 31 minutesDr. Celine Gounder, senior fellow & editor-at-large for public health at KFF's Kaiser Health News, joins J. Stephen Morrison and Andrew Schwartz for this 143rd episode. Monkeypox has spread beyond the endemic regions, and is rapidly becoming a pandemic. It has already become de facto politicized in the United States because of the community affected, but monkeypox per se is not a gay disease and I will soon reach beyond men-who-have-sex-with- men and endanger the immunocompromised, pregnant w...
Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux: “Meeting People Where They’re at Is Very, Very, Very Powerful."
June 28, 2022 16:02 - 50 minutesDr. Margaret Bourdeaux, Research Director of the Global Public Policy and Social Change Program, Harvard School of Medicine, joins J. Stephen Morrison for Episode 142. Her mentor Dr. Paul Farmer, who recently passed, inspired her with his exhortation to “do hard things together” even when the odds are against you. Her project, the Covid Academy, is developing a locally-informed model for standardized health security outbreak investigation and response. Though the United States is deeply divid...
Apoorva Mandavilli, NYT: On Monkeypox - "We Shouldn't Be Alarmed, but We Should Be Concerned."
June 09, 2022 16:11 - 30 minutesApoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter at The New York Times, joins J. Stephen Morrison and H. Andrew Schwartz for this 141st episode. Apoorva unpacks the sudden spread of Monkeypox into Europe and now the United States, outside African states where it is endemic, and the challenges this poses to Americans and Europeans weary of Covid-19, as well as to Africans who fear gross inequities in access to vaccines and therapies, which are presently quite limited in supply. Contai...
Dr. Jeffrey Gold: “The Communities We Serve Have to Be Our North Star.”
June 08, 2022 16:52 - 38 minutesDr. Jeffrey Gold, Chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), joins J. Stephen Morrison for this 140th episode. How did UNMC evolve over the past decades to become such a lead national institution in advancing America’s health security, through its Global Center for Health Security? In 1997, UNMC created a public health lab with the state of Nebraska, followed by 2004-2005 with the establishment of one of the country’s first containment units, following the 9/11 anthrax at...
Dr. Deborah Birx: "We Prepared for the Wrong Kind of Pandemic"
May 24, 2022 19:31 - 44 minutesIn this 139th episode, Dr. Deborah Birx joins J. Stephen Morrison to discuss her new book, Silent Invasion. On that day, former President Trump responded to the book by, among other things, lamenting oddly that “Debbie Birx does not have a lot of dresses.” In her inside account, Deborah details the repeated failures both to acknowledge the power of silent transmission by fully vaccinated, asymptomatic infected individuals, and the need to keep a relentless focus on testing, masks and limiting...
North Korea: A Covid-19 Disaster Unlike Any Other
May 20, 2022 15:46 - 24 minutesIn this episode, Andrew Schwartz and J. Stephen Morrison are joined by Victor Cha to discuss the Covid-19 outbreak in North Korea - which CSIS predicted back in March, the impact of the pandemic on the unvaccinated country, and the road ahead amidst ongoing health and food crises worsened by an extreme lockdown.
Yana Panfilova: “We Are so Young, but a Lot of People Have This Belief That We Can Change Our Country”
May 19, 2022 18:55 - 21 minutesYana Panfilova, a 24-year-old Ukrainian woman born with HIV, fled Kyiv shortly after Russia’s invasion and is currently based in Berlin with her mother, grandmother and cat. Eight years ago, she helped found Teenergizer, an organization supported by UNAIDS that seeks to end discrimination against youth in Ukraine living with HIV. Over time, its scope widened to include other youth groups and its services expanded into mental health counselling and sexual health training. Affiliates arose acro...
Yasmeen Abutaleb: "No One has Succeeded in Predicting What is Going to Happen."
May 11, 2022 12:45 - 36 minutesYasmeen Abutaleb, health policy reporter at The Washington Post, joins Steve Morrison and Andrew Schwartz for this 136th episode. The Biden administration struggles on multiple fronts, from systemic dysfunction within agencies to increased polarization of virtually every measures to mitigate Covid-19. The administration wants to invest in a long-term vaccine strategy that protects against multiple variants in advance -- but lacks the resources. Omicron taught us: "You can't start buying stuf...
Dr. Dylan George: “We Need to Build an Internal Team That Can Move at a Moment’s Notice”
May 04, 2022 15:40 - 32 minutesDr. Dylan George is the Director of Operations for the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA), newly established at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. George joins J. Stephen Morrison and Andrew Schwartz for this 135th episode following the April 19th White House CFA launch. Its mission: Predict, Inform, Innovate. Its data science team will strengthen advance warning of biological emergencies, with a heavy emphasis on improved communications. Building trust ...
Dr. Larry Gostin: “Should We Allow One Federal District Court Judge to Issue a Nationwide Injunction?”
April 28, 2022 10:00 - 30 minutesDr. Larry Gostin is a professor of global health law and the faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. Dr. Gostin joins Steve Morrison and Andrew Schwartz for this 134th episode in the aftermath of the April 18 nationwide injunction to block government mask mandates on public transportation. In Judge Mizelle’s opinion, the C.D.C. has exceeded its legal authority. But if the C.D.C. doesn’t have the power to make someone do something ...
Dr. Yanzhong Huang: "What is Happening in Shanghai Has its Impacts Felt All Over the World."
April 20, 2022 13:56 - 35 minutesDr. Yanzhong Huang is Professor at Seton Hall University's School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Senior Fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, and co-chair of the US-China Working Group of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security. He joined Steve Morrison in the our 133rd episode for a wide-ranging conversation: on China’s huge immunity gap; its “dynamic Zero-Covid approach;” the spread of BA-2 beyond Shanghai to 45 cities affecting 25%...
Dr. Beth Cameron: "If We Don't Prepare Now, We are Going to Get Caught Flat-Footed by the Crises of the Future"
April 19, 2022 10:00 - 30 minutesDr. Beth Cameron, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the White House, joins Steve for Episode #132. The Biden administration is making progress on the Global Health Security and Pandemic Preparedness Fund, envisioned as a Financial Intermediary Fund at the World Bank. The fund will invest in a globally linked bio-surveillance and early warning system, aid to the most vulnerable countries to build their health security, and rapid ...
Dan Diamond: "Each Covid Coordinator is Inheriting a Better Situation Than the Person Who Came Before"
April 08, 2022 17:52 - 44 minutesThe Washington Post's Dan Diamond returns for Episode #131. Public attitudes towards Covid-19 have changed, and the pandemic has become a lower political priority. "It's been a steady saga of lack of action compounded by different political priorities swamping Covid." Midterms are coming up, and candidates want to show that there are other issues they are attentive to: inflation and crime. Republicans argue that there are a lot of unused emergency funds, and there needs to be better rigor and...
DoD Mini Series: Matt Hepburn “Let’s Take Pandemics Off the Table”
March 30, 2022 18:39 - 35 minutesDr. Matt Hepburn of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy joins Steve and CSIS Senior Associate Tom Cullison for this 130th episode. Beginning as an Army infectious disease researcher and DARPA project manager, Dr. Hepburn’s visionary leadership was instrumental in the rapid availability of Covid vaccines through Operation Warp Speed. The world continues to face catastrophic consequences with the highly contagious BA2 variant. Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa, and others a...
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank: “Culture Is Hard… It Only Changes Slowly Over Time”
March 22, 2022 18:03 - 32 minutesIn this 129th episode, Steve joined in frank conversation with University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank as she approaches the conclusion of a nine-year tenure that dramatically tested her leadership and the university itself. There is considerable progress -- an increased graduation rate, shorter time to graduation, student debt reduction, improved diversity. The financial foundation of the university’s $3.6 billion budget has been systematically strengthened, through innovati...
Live From Munich: Dr. Richard Hatchett “Pandemic Preparedness Needs to Be Viewed as a Security Challenge”
March 15, 2022 16:47 - 33 minutesTwo years later, Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations rejoins Steve for the second iteration of our Live From Munich mini-series. Dr. Hatchett reminds us that having just had a pandemic does not prevent outbreak from another, and that pandemic preparedness needs to be “viewed as a security challenge, not as a health challenge, not as a development challenge”. He points to lessons in vaccine manufacturing and financing arrangements that incentivize d...
Scott Kirby: “It's About Making Real Change”
March 11, 2022 14:00 - 59 minutesIn this 127th episode, an edited version of a live event recorded on March 2, Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, joins Steve for a fireside chat. Scott Kirby has been a health security leader in the private sector, achieving a 99.7% employee vaccination rate in eight weeks. The Covid-19 pandemic forced a major change in internal culture “about leading, about doing the right thing, about a customer service culture that didn’t really exist before”, including abandoning some policies like flig...
Live From Munich: Tom Bollyky “We Can't Do This on Our Own.”
March 10, 2022 18:25 - 38 minutesIn the fourth episode of our Live From Munich Mini-Series, Steve is joined by Tom Bollyky, the Senior Fellow for Global Health, Economics, and Development and Director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Bollyky attended the Munich Security Conference “to keep the conversation about the response to the COVID crisis still on the national security agenda”. National security and global health have been historically linked, as exemplified with the birth of PEPFAR...
Live From Munich: Dr. Jeremy Farrar “We Must Not Be Caught Vulnerable Again”
March 08, 2022 15:53 - 14 minutesTwo years ago, Dr. Jeremy Farrar joined Steve for the first iteration of Live From Munich, when the Covid-19 Pandemic was just emerging. Today, for episode #125 and the third installment of this Live From Munich mini-series, he returns to discuss this murky transition into the next stage of the pandemic. Dr. Farrar predicts that “political interest will wane from the pandemic because other events take over.” Politics are turning towards an exhausted, frustrated, even sometimes violent public....
Live From Munich: Dr. Seth Berkley “It is a Security Issue”
March 04, 2022 21:17 - 28 minutesIn episode #124, the second episode of our Live From Munich mini-series, Steve is joined by Seth Berkely, CEO of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, “the largest purchaser of vaccines in the world”. He speaks on strengthening health security: “Do we prepare for our hopeful future? Or do we prepare for reality?” “The right thing to do is to continue to prepare for worsening variants, worsening disease. And the best way to do that is to make sure high-risk people all over the world are as protected as ...
Live From Munich: Dr. John Nkengasong “The Concepts are Global, But the Practice is Local”
March 04, 2022 21:15 - 32 minutesDr. Nkengasong, Director of the Africa CDC and soon to be head of PEPFAR joined us for this 123rd episode, and the first episode of our Live From Munich mini-series, a collection of episodes recorded at the Munich Security Conference. He is a leader in the initiative to incorporate global health in security discussions like the Munich Security Conference. “We have seen how an outbreak of a disease can truly be a health security matter, and also human security, as well as even going as far as ...
John Barry: “The Guy Who Focuses at the End Will Win”
February 16, 2022 20:30 - 35 minutesJohn Barry, historian and author of the award-winning The Great Influenza; the Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, a study of the 1918 pandemic, joined us for this 122nd episode. He is currently working on a volume on Covid-19: “Writing books makes me happiest and craziest.” He has penned many editorials over the course of the pandemic, drawing lessons from 1918. What has he discovered? “What we learn from history is we learn nothing.” Where are we today? “Until vaccines are widely di...
Drs. Kristina Box and Judy Monroe – The Indiana Governor’s Public Health Review Commission
February 11, 2022 14:16 - 36 minutesIn 2021, Indiana Governor Holcomb launched the Public Health Review Commission, charged with asking hard questions that cover the waterfront of public health challenges in Indiana and delivering actionable answers this coming summer. Its co-chair, Dr. Judy Monroe, and its director, Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box, joined us to share what this unusual and promising, fast-moving enterprise is all about. The challenge before Hoosiers is formidable: the state ranks 48th in the ...
DoD Mini-Series: Major General Paul Friedrichs — Covid-19 and the Department of Defense
February 07, 2022 21:46 - 39 minutesIn Episode 120, the first episode of our Department of Defense mini-series, Joint Staff Surgeon Major General Paul Friedrichs, discusses how the Department of Defense has overcome challenges from the pandemic, incorporating lessons applicable to any large organization struggling to function in today’s environment. Early in the disease the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was sidelined, recruit training and military exercises were interrupted as they searched for answers on how to safel...
Dr. Peter Kilmarx: Distrust in Public Health in America “Is One of Those Wicked Problems”
February 02, 2022 14:45 - 31 minutesIn episode #119, Dr. Peter Kilmarx, Fogarty International Center, discusses the struggle to advance contact tracing. Efforts early in 2020 to create a national Covid-19 Response Corps – at least 100,000 needed – were not successful. Instead a “hunger games scenario” ensued in which each jurisdiction scrambled to make its own solution. In our federalized system, each state, and in some instances county, has had to build its own public health workforce while balancing the budget. The lack of an...
Dr. Michael Osterholm: “Don’t Be Surprised When You Are Surprised.”
January 28, 2022 19:26 - 35 minutesDr. Michael Osterholm, head of CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota, is among the most popular, respected, and trusted communicators on the pandemic. What is the recipe? Simplicity rules. He learned from his rural Iowa background, “if something doesn’t play at the 10:00 o’clock coffee club at the S&T Café on the main street of my little town, then it’s not going to play.” Be frank and honest: “Always tell the truth.” If dark things such as variants lie in the future, do not shy away from sp...
Dr. Chris Murray: “I Have Not Yet Received an Invite From Tucker… or Joe Rogan”
January 26, 2022 14:27 - 38 minutesDr. Chris Murray, head of IHME, joined us in episode 117 to discuss his recent provocative piece in The Lancet, ‘Covid-19 will continue but the end of the pandemic is near.’ “The Omicron wave is really different,” extraordinarily fast and much less severe. The current massive Omicron wave will infect 50%-60% of the world by March, creating dramatically enhanced population-level immunity. The unvaccinated and never-infected will become quite scarce, as transmission becomes very low. Aided by t...
Dr. Anthony Fauci: “Omicron Will Ultimately Find Everybody”
January 18, 2022 19:05 - 32 minutesDr. Anthony Fauci joined J. Stephen Morrison for a CSIS live-streamed conversation on January 11. Today’s podcast is based on that conversation. Does Dr. Fauci believe the pandemic is in transition? Yes. “I have been talking about a transition since October 13.” What might that mean? “Ultimately we will need a new strategy. We cannot let this virus dominate our lives for much longer. We have to get to the point where all of us get our lives back.” The pandemic remains “a moving target.” Omicr...
Dr. Gigi Gronvall: Antigen Tests “The Hottest Christmas Toy”
January 11, 2022 21:48 - 37 minutesDr. Gigi Gronvall, a leading international expert on tests, kindly joined us for a spirited tour d’horizon. People need tests for multiple purposes on a continuous basis: You “can’t just get one test and forget it” since a test is just one moment in time. Sometimes however there are unrealistic, outsized expectations that tests will peer into the future. Why is the United States so prone to stumbling on tests? In 2020, responsibilities were thrown to the states, and antibody tests in the earl...
Dr. Ashish Jha: “Humanize Yourself… I Live in a Pandemic Too.”
December 13, 2021 19:57 - 40 minutesAshish Jha reflected as the year closes. Communications are now fundamental to public health. Most critical is to speak as though you are engaging friends or family who are outside medicine. Put the decisions in terms of your own family. Don’t tie masks and vaccines to political identity. The lessons of 2021? We were surprised by 20-30% of Americans unwilling to be vaccinated, by Delta’s power, and by limits to the federal government’s power. FDA and CDC remain weak and muddled. “Process and ...
Philip Zelikow: a Covid-19 National Commission is the Bridge We Need — Now
December 10, 2021 14:21 - 31 minutesPhilip Zelikow, former Executive Director of the 9/11 national commission, has for the past year directed the Covid-19 Commission Planning Group. He visited with us to explore where that effort stands, should a national commission move forward? How and why? It is “absolutely essential to take account of this sprawling crisis.” Our performance to date, despite our “magnificent edifice” of science and modern health tools, has been far worse than during the 1918 Spanish flu. A national commissio...
Dr. Richard Lessells: Omicron Seen Up Close in South Africa
December 01, 2021 16:30 - 32 minutesDr. Richard Lessells is among the exceptional South African experts on the front lines of discovering and investigating Omicron in South Africa. Alarm bells went off within the scientific community, as it became clear after just a few days that “an extraordinary number of mutations” are clustered in the key regions in the genome for immune protection and transmissibility. It was a “gut feeling. ” Omicron is highly transmissible, spreading very efficiently in a population with high levels of i...
Dr. Taison Bell: “You Tend to Find Yourself Back Home.”
November 23, 2021 16:09 - 44 minutesDr. Taison Bell, MD, an acclaimed African-American doctor, educator, and emergency medicine director in Charlottesville, Virginia, shares his personal story of how medicine – back home in Virginia – became the center of his life. “Success was not assumed in my neighborhood.” As a child with asthma, he connected with his physician, as he did also with his Black dentist and several teachers. Such “affirmative experiences” made the dream “seem like it was achievable.” In retrospect, “so many thi...
Cary Funk, Pew Research Center: “It Can Be Confusing”
November 16, 2021 14:39 - 36 minutesWe asked Cary Funk, Pew Research Center, to make sense of how the pandemic has impacted our society and American opinion as we approach the pandemic’s two years. “It can be confusing.” Polarization now increasingly aligns between the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, versus simple partisan identity. At the fundamental level, Americans are split over whether Covid-19 is a common problem. Does the “Big Lie” bleed over into the field of public health? “It’s all complicated.” “The political len...
Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg on Her Memorial to America’s Pandemic Loss: ‘In America: Remember'
November 09, 2021 14:25 - 35 minutesFrom September 17-October 1, Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg created the largest participatory art installation on the Washington National Mall since the AIDS quilt of 1996, entitled ‘In America: Remember,’ composed of 700,000 white flags, in the shadow of the Washington Monument. A stunning achievement. Listen to her reflections on listening to those among the 16,000 who personalized a flag to memorialize their loss. “So many of these deaths happened in isolation.” The project unfolded amid our ...
Dr. Richard Brennan, WHO Emergency Operations: The “Delicate Dance” with the Taliban
November 04, 2021 17:10 - 45 minutesDr. Richard Brennan, WHO Emergency Operations, sat down this week with Steve and Professor Leonard Rubenstein, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Rick has been at the very center of urgent efforts, following the Taliban’s coming to power in mid-August, to avoid the collapse of Afghanistan’s health system, through fast-moving negotiations to bring emergency funding, opening air links, resuming Covid-19, polio, and measles immunization programs, and delivering emergency medical su...
Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo: An Inbox Full of Dangerous Threats
October 26, 2021 13:27 - 38 minutesDr. Jennifer Nuzzo has emerged as a forceful expert voice making sense of the complex and times confusing, shifting shoals of the pandemic. ”All of us have had to step into this sphere,” filling “a power vacuum.” It has however been chaotic. Public communication is essential “to move the needle” but the experience can be “tough.” Vocal experts are the subject of attacks, the worst during the Black Lives Matter protests. The field of public health needs to invest more in how to message on vacc...