Take as Directed

In the tenth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, Katherine E. Bliss will sit down with Stacy Aguilera-Peterson, Deputy Director for Research, U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Josh Glasser, Assistant Director for Combatting Antimicrobial Resistance & Integrated Health Innovation (One Health), White House Office of Science an...

In the ninth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, J. Stephen Morrison will sit down with Rahul Gupta, Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.  Dr. Gupta will discuss the surprising 15 percent decline in overdose deaths in 2024, 70 percent of which are caused by fentanyl overdose, and what factors are driving this change. He will discuss measures taken nationally on...

Dan Diamond, the national health reporter at the Washington Post, reflects on the shock of both United Health executive Brian Thompson’s tragic murder and the subsequent tsunami of anger and glee on social media. We’ve entered “a staggering moment” that does not feel real, but nonetheless reveals the remarkable depth of discontent with the American health system, in particular insurers. “Everythin...

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, the NYT health correspondent, feels her decades of health and political reporting prepare her well for understanding this remarkable moment in American history. Anger and alienation against the health sector and science are surging, drawing both on historical roots and current dynamics. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. nominated to be HHS Secretary, taps into a profound mistrust that he...

How do we explain the peril that global health faces? Covid and the post-Covid backlash. The Biden years’ “status quo” approach. Less support in Europe. Excessive debt in Africa. The generational shift in Congress and aging of the flagship programs: “Time has passed.” “We never really dealt with PEPFAR’s treatment mortgage.” Dealing with the conservative critique of US global health funding Is ess...

In the seventh episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, Katherine E. Bliss will sit down with Dr. John Balbus, Director of the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Balbus will speak about the foundation of his office in 2021, the work it has engaged in so far, lessons learned, and his vision for the future.  This event is made possibl...

In the sixth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, Katherine E. Bliss will sit down with Dr. Hanan Balkhy, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean. Dr. Balkhy will speak to her evolving vision for the region, encompassing EMRO’s multiple complex humanitarian operations—in Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, and beyond. She will also reflect on the growing challenge of antimicrobial re...

Javier Guzman, Center for Global Development debriefs on the High Level Meeting on Anti-Microbial Resistance held in New York City on September 26. Successes took several forms: significant new data, analyses, and projections; a political declaration committed to the creation of a scientific panel; elevation of equity of access and accountability; a target to reduce deaths by 10% by 2030; and agre...

Dr. Michael Osterholm unpacks the history of H5N1, as we struggle with the question of whether the current H5N1 outbreak may pose a grave threat of a human-to-human pandemic. "It’s possible that H5N1 may never get over the bar for human disease and we don’t know why.” He also speaks to what we are likely to face in the months ahead from the mpox clade 1b outbreak, centered in Africa. 

Nidhi Bouri, DAA at USAID Bureau for Global Health, joined us to speak to the U.S. response to the dangerous mpox outbreak (clade 1b) centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, boosted by President Biden’s commitment at UNGA to $500m in support, including 1 million vaccine doses. Much better data is urgently needed on the needs for diagnostics and vaccines. Tensions remain high among Africa CDC...

Dr. Jerome Adams authored his 2023 memoire, Crisis and Chaos: Lessons from the Front Lines of the War Against COVID-19. In it, he reflects on his upbringing in southern Maryland and the acute “hurting” among many citizens, rural and poor, dissatisfied with the status quo. Profoundly impactful to his tenure as Indiana State Health Commissioner was managing the opioid, Hepatitis C, and HIV outbreaks...

Dr. Anthony Fauci sat down with J. Stephen Morrison, CSIS, on August 13, for a conversation on his remarkable 54 year career of service as a doctor and scientist. Listen to hear about his early upbringing in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn; his Jesuit training; his expansive leadership at NIH on HIV/AIDS in the darkest days; the creation of a position of influence in science and public health unprecedented...

Dr. Megan Ranney, the dynamic, charismatic Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, joined us to illuminate the strategy she has pioneered to curb firearm injuries and deaths in America. It is a true epidemic that begs a serious public health approach. It requires coming to terms with suicide and homicide in America—both sensitive, disturbing phenomena. It requires a concentrated focus on data ga...

With the International AIDS Society’s 25th global conference taking place next week in Munich, Mark Lagon, Chief Policy Officer at Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and Bennett Freeman, Associate Fellow with Chatham House, joined Katherine to discuss a new Friends report regarding the role of the private sector and civil society organizations in advocating for glo...

Leonard Rubenstein is Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, non-resident Fellow at CSIS, and Chair of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition. He joins us to unpack the Coalition’s 11th annual report on 2023. Four big wars—Ukraine, Myanmar, Gaza, Sudan—are driving up attacks upon civilians, and deaths, to exceptionally high levels. At the same time, attacks on the hea...

Dr. Raj Panjabi, former NSC Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense, shares his personal story, his deep ties to Liberia, the genesis of Last Mile Health, the profound lessons that emerged from Ebola in Liberia. In his time (2021-2023) heading the President’s Malaria Initiative and serving at the NSC, what accomplishments is he most proud of? Alternatively, what were the toughest...

This episode is the lively conversation J. Stephen Morrison had the pleasure to hold with Dr. Angela Apeagyei and Dr. Chris Murray, IHME at CSIS on May 14. It begins with the compelling findings of the 15th IHME annual report Financing Global Health 2023. Global health is beset by high interest rates, the rising claim on resources for climate, costly geopolitical ‘forever’ wars, and an era of popu...

France’s dynamic Ambassador for Global Health, Anne-Claire Amprou, visited CSIS for an extended conversation on the topline historical challenges that her office addresses: elevating climate’s health impacts, the pandemic treaty negotiations and reform of the IHR, anti-microbial resistance (AMR) in the year of the UN General Assembly High Level Meeting in September, navigating multiple ambitious g...

The inimitable Jennifer Kates, KFF, joins us to make sense of the multiple, convergent, competitive replenishments of the most significant instruments in global health – the Global Fund, Gavi, the Pandemic Fund, WHO at historic moment of intense geopolitical tensions and big, costly wars, the ascent of climate, fiscal scarcity, many elections in the populist era, and post-pandemic fatigue. The US...

In the fifth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, J. Stephen Morrison speaks with Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor, Boston University School of Public Health on the public health workforce pipeline. How to position public health schools and departments within universities to be more powerful, better funded, with better access to senior leadership? What are the concrete chan...

In our ongoing series on climate and health, we had the great fortune to enlist a friend and colleague, Noam Unger, Director of the CSIS Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative, to discuss PREPARE, the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience. Why did it take so long for adaptation to rise in significance?  PREPARE is “a presidential initiative that is not coming with a b...

Since the start of 2024, several countries in South America have experienced a rapid increase in cases of dengue, a viral disease transmitted by the aedes aegypti mosquito. According to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), this year alone at least 18 countries in the Americas have reported cases, with more than 400 deaths. In Peru, at the end of February, the government declared an emergen...

In the fourth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, Vanessa Kerry, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health and Austin Demby, Minister of Health and Sanitation for Sierra Leone join Julie Gerberding, CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security Co-chair and CEO of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health for a discussion ab...

Donald G. McNeil, the prize-winning science and health reporter—45 years with the New York Times—unpacks his newly published memoir, The Wisdom of Plagues. It covers his remarkable personal and professional story, his reflections on the travails facing PEPFAR, the stark lessons of Covid, his "radical" prescriptions for the future, and his reflections three years after abruptly departing the NYT. 

In the third episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, World Health Organization (WHO) Senior Advisor Dr. Scott Dowell joins J. Stephen Morrison for a discussion about the Global Health Emergency Corps (GHEC) concept, development thus far, and plans for 2024. What will it take to bring GHEC to life? What might the U.S. role be?