Take as Directed

Fabrizio Carboni, head of the ICRC delegation to the US and Canada, speaks to his vast experience in the wars of the past two decades, including the profound impact of 9/11 (2001) in integrating humanitarian action into battlefield strategies—including the targeting of humanitarian operations. Today, almost 25 years later, we are witnessing unrestrained violence, limitless war, and flagrant disreg...

In the thirteenth episode of The CommonHealth Live!, Katherine E. Bliss and J. Stephen Morrison discuss the outcomes of the June 25 Health and Prosperity through Immunization Global Summit, co-hosted in Brussels by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the European Union and the Gates Foundation. During the Summit, Gavi aimed to secure pledges of $11.9 billion to save at least 8 million lives and protect at...

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT, delves into what direction HHS Secretary Kennedy is taking US policy. He operates along two divergent strands – vaccines and the Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda. “Kennedy is by nature a skeptic” and has a “love of nature, and all things holistic.” He has expanded the power of the office, specifically with regard to Covid vaccines, with the CDC leaderless. The ne...

For Helen Branswell, the celebrated Stat News reporter, the SARS outbreak of 2003, while she was based in Toronto, was a thunderclap moment. Jump forward 22 years: Secretary Kennedy on May 28, posted a one-minute video on X announcing he is not recommending Covid vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women -- an “unprecedented” unilateral decision without any normal process. “It came out of t...

In this episode, Dr. Kate O’Brien, Director of the Department of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals at the World Health Organization (WHO) shares her perspective on the state of global immunization programs halfway through Immunization Agenda 2030; the challenges associated with current measles outbreaks in the United States and around the world; why people who have never seen children die fr...

“I studied hard. Hated the lab, loved the field.”  Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, Acting Director, WHO Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Threat Management, reveals her early, personal passions as a student of epidemiology. After a stint as a young PhD investigator in Cambodia, she was “desperate to work at WHO. I wanted a seat at the table.” As the technical lead at WHO during the Covid-19 outbreak in...

Dr. Margaret (Peggy) Hamburg, former FDA Commissioner, describes the profound impact the HIV epidemic has had on her personally and in terms of her career choices. She discovered in her six years as FDA Commissioner how vitally important FDA is to the safety and protection of Americans, at home and abroad. FDA has oversight responsibility for fully 20% of the American economy. She is  deeply worri...

Dr. Jennifer Kates, SVP and Director, Global Health and HIV Policy Program, KFF, provides a tour d’horizon of how global health and health security look at day #98 of the Trump revolution. “The DOGE factor was not on my bingo card,” as it became the battering ram decimating institutions, programs, budgets and staff, far beyond what was environed in Project 2025. It went against what many Republica...

In the twelfth episode of The CommonHealth Live! which falls during World Immunization Week, Katherine E. Bliss talks with Dr. Adam Ratner, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases and author of Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children's Health, and Dr. Ephrem T. Lemango, Associate Director of Immunization at UNICEF, a...

In the eleventh episode of The CommonHealth Live! Katherine E. Bliss talks with the Republic of Indonesia’s Minister of Health, H.E. Budi Gunadi Sadikin, about Indonesia’s experience expanding routine immunization coverage and prioritizing attention to non-communicable diseases, as well as how public-private sector collaboration can help ensure sustainable access to health services, including prim...

Dr. Stephanie Psaki—a newly minted CSIS Senior Adviser—shares the story of her personal evolution as a scholar, NGO policy data expert, senior political appointee at the HHS Office of Global Affairs and the White House National Security Council, and now faculty at Brown University School of Public Health. She reflects on the lessons, good and bad, from her 900 days at the White House, and what the...

Major General Paul Friedrichs (ret.), the inaugural director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR), is now a Senior Adviser at CSIS. In this conversation, Paul reviews the multiple changes in health security now unfolding in the first 100 days of the second Trump term. In biodefense, there is a wide-ranging degradation across different departments and agenci...

Dr. Tom Frieden, Resolve to Save Lives (CDC Director 2009-2017,) details the dangerous implications of deep changes underway at CDC—on tobacco, environmental toxins, and communications. It is no less dangerous that CDC should only focus on infectious diseases and not be focused on global threats. What explains CDC’s exceptional vulnerability to attacks and the deep skepticism towards CDC? What to...

Tom Bollyky, CFR, walks us through his recent incisive work on two fronts. First, will China supplant US leadership in global health in the wake of the U.S. retreat? Listen to learn why the answer is a definitive "No!" and the dangers that foretells. Second, what might the U.S. exit mean for Latin America? 

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina joins us at the fifth anniversary of the newsletter she has spearheaded,Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE). “An incredibly wild ride,” YLE reaches 370,000 subscribers, while social media accounts reach 700,000. To cross the political divide, we need to listen more, be more selective in the choice of words. The YLE operation now includes a team of 15 managing the newsletter, podca...

Dr. Jeffrey Gold, President of the University of Nebraska system, testified recently before the House Committee on Veteran Affairs Health Subcommittee on plans to replace a 1950 VA hospital with a hospital on the university grounds, with projected savings of half a billion dollars. Since the Trump administration began two months ago, it has been “a day-by-day, week-by-week course adjustment,” feat...

Politico’s global health correspondent Carmen Paun offers her insights into the White House decision on March 13 to withdraw the nomination of David Weldon to be the next Director of CDC. CDC, while vulnerable, has not seemed to be a priority target of the Trump White House, though it is “not totally out of the woods” and is proceeding cautiously in Texas in response to the measles outbreak. There...

In a special crossover episode with CSIS's The Truth of the Matter, Andrew Schwartz and Steve discuss the recent measles outbreak and risks associated with it.  The United States is experiencing the worst measles outbreak in 30 years and the highest rate of contraction in the past six years after nearly eradicating the disease. Cases have surged in communities with low immunization coverage, raisi...

Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Cameron, Professor, Brown University, and former senior official in global health security and biodefense at the White House and USAID, kindly shares her thoughts on the radical changes unfolding inside the U.S. government surrounding biothreats. Two internal factions within the Trump administration vie with one another. “It’s a bleak picture” in the accumulating damage to the...

Dr. Vanessa Kerry, founder of Seed Global Health, Associate Professor, Harvard School of Medicine, and since June 2023 the WHO Director-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change and Health, joined The CommonHealth to unpack her recent article ‘Health is a Cornerstone of Global Security,’ published February 14 in Foreign Policy. In it, she argues the need to rethink health as the first line of defe...

In the eighth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, J. Stephen Morrison sits down with Loyce Pace, Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Assistant Secretary Pace discusses the newly released HHS Global Strategy and its implications for U.S. climate and health policy. 

Dr. Elizabeth (Betsy) Bradley, President of Vassar College, shares her thoughts on the fusillade of Executive Orders signed by President Trump directed at educational institutions, including the apparent special animus toward elite private institutions. In this moment of heightened scrutiny across multiple fronts, the first step is to circle back to core values and the return on investment, to com...

Apoorva Mandavilli, the award-winning New York Times science and global health reporter, is on the front lines of several fast-breaking stories. “We should be worried” about the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). It was “already on the chopping block” before the hugely disruptive Trump pause on national grants and contracts. Secretary Rubio did issue a waiver, but there has been...

The renowned expert on vaccine confidence, Dr. Heidi Larson, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, explains why there has been a precipitous escalation in the past four years, especially among 18-24 year-olds, of vaccine skepticism and resistance. During Covid-19, “everybody got vaccinated,” everyone was exposed to the “digital swarm,” the “wildfire” on social media of mis- and dis-infor...

Since the start of her tenure in July 2023, Dr. Mandy Cohen, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has pursued several reforms intended to make CDC a stronger, nimbler agency better able to protect Americans from domestic and global public health threats and rebuild trust. She is joined in conversation with former Senator Richard Burr, Co-Chair of the CSIS Bipartis...