The CommonHealth

Steve joined with CSIS Senior Vice President Heather Conley and Professor Judyth Twigg, Virginia Commonwealth University, to discuss the fast-breaking controversy of this week, as Russia announced it had registered the first Covid-19 vaccine, without first conducting large late-stage human trials, and would soon commence mass immunizations, in Russia and beyond. What domestic and international cal...

In this episode, Steve is joined by two members of the global health team to discuss their new commentary on the race for a Covid-19 vaccine: Katherine Bliss, GHPC Senior Fellow and Anna Carroll, GHPC Associate Fellow. Nationalism among the wealthier and more powerful countries dominates the global scramble for a vaccine. They have locked up much of the future production of promising vaccines, whi...

What happens at the state level can be profoundly decisive. Steve sat with Rep. Peter Welch to discuss how Vermont became such a dramatic outlier, in its quick and effective control of the coronavirus, and the actions taken to preserve those gains. The conversation quickly migrated to Vermont’s state political leadership, the predisposition to respect science, the centrality of social trust and po...

Steve Morrison sat down with Dr. Beth Cameron, Vice President at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and former senior White House official responsible for health security and bio defense, to talk through what the accelerating race for vaccines for Covid-19 means. Should we be excited and hopeful? Should we feel cautious, skeptical? Perhaps both. We survey the landscape – the White House ‘Operation War...

Steve Morrison asks Marc Daalder, an incisive American reporter in New Zealand: how and why did New Zealand succeed in locking down the country, winning public support, and eliminating the virus? So, what now? Can tourists and other visitors ever return, even while the movie industry and other big earning events are exempted? How is New Zealand managing new cases of Covid-19? Marc Daalder is the p...

J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, sat down for a conversation on July 24 with Dr. Anthony Fauci, as America’s runaway crisis continued to unfold. Will a return to basics be enough, or are lockdowns in our future? Do we really have reliable science on how Covid-19 impacts children, as we debate whether to reopen schools? Can we rely exc...

Andrew and Steve gathered with David Sanger to discuss the NYT's recent investigative team’s efforts, which chronicled the momentous White House decisions taken in early April to step back and push lead responsibility on to the states. This occurred at the same time that the President balked on any national testing strategy, refused to embrace masks, and persisted in escalating pressure upon state...

Dr. Peter Hotez joins us from Houston. How did Texas and many other wildfire states run so out of control? What needs to change in the federal response? How can scientists and the biomedical research community best contribute to escaping this spiral? Dr. Peter Hotez is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine and Director of the Texas Children’s Center for...

"This is a marathon." Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), a renowned leader in Congress on racial justice and global health, discusses her proposed Commission on Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the awakening across America, this historic moment for elected Black women leaders, and this week’s virtual ‘AIDS 2020’ International AIDS Conference. Congr...

In this episode, Steve and Andrew invite Frances Stead Sellers, senior writer on the American desk at the Washington Post. Frances, through her eyes as an English immigrant to America -- and a renowned, veteran journalist -- has thought hard about what makes America what it is, in these days of a pandemic, economic pain and racial injustice. Her recent experiences in reporting have taught her abou...

In this episode, Steve and Andrew speak with Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) on the most pressing health issues before America. What is driving the astonishing resurgence of Covid-19 in the south and west, and what is now required? Why are we as a nation still hung up politically over masks and failing to reach the true level of testing we need? What should guide the U.S. in the race for a vaccine? In...

In this episode, the hosts are joined by Julie Gerberding, a senior executive at Merck, a longstanding friend, and generous contributor to CSIS’s work. Congress was highly active the week of June 22 examining across several committees the hard lessons of the past months of the coronavirus pandemic in America and what needs to happen right now -- as the outbreak explodes in the west and south -- an...

In this episode, the hosts engage with Sheryl Gay Stolberg, renowned Washington Correspondent at The New York Times. Since early this year she has been charged with unpacking -- in the midst of the pandemic -- the complex intersection of health, policy, politics and culture. She’s dived into the controversy around hydroxychloroquine, a saga that starkly revealed the collision between science and p...

In this episode, Renee DiResta, a prominent expert who studies malign narratives across social networks and what can be done to rebut them, walks Steve and Andrew through her thinking on several provocative questions: Why does the coronavirus pandemic invite pseudoscience, government conspiracy theories and misinformation campaigns? What to make of the recent release of the "Plandemic" video in wh...

In this episode, Steve speaks with Dr. Jean William (Bill) Pape, a renowned public health professor and practitioner appointed in late April by Haitian President Moïse to co-chair the country’s Covid-19 response commission. Having combatted HIV/AIDS, cholera, hurricanes, and an earthquake, Bill deems the coronavirus pandemic as the toughest challenge he has seen, a “perfect storm.” Haiti’s extreme...

In this episode, we speak with Professor Salim Abdool Karim (Slim), a preeminent HIV scientist based in Durban who chairs the scientific Covid-19 advisory group launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa to guide the national response. Looking back to March, Slim bluntly surveys South Africa’s successes and achievements, the acute vulnerabilities of those living with HIV and TB, tough controversies, ma...

In this episode, on the day when the number who have died from Covid-19 in America reached 100,000, we speak with special guests Eustace and Carol Theodore, both longtime friends of Steve. After vacationing in England in the first half of March, as the virus was swiftly and invisibly spreading throughout the UK, they returned to Vermont, just prior to President Trump imposing flight bans on Europe...

In this episode, we are joined by a very special guest: Julien, a wonderfully insightful 13-year-old seventh-grader from Berkeley, California. We talk about his experience of over two months of shelter-in-place: how disruptive has this been to friendships, school, sports? What has he done to get greater control over his life? Are we going to get out from under this pandemic? And what’s a young per...

In this episode, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland joins us to talk about what Congress can do to respond to Covid-19 right now, including ensuring access and affordability for new treatments and a vaccine, and building stimulus packages for every level of government. Senator Van Hollen shares his thoughts on how expanding national service could help to ramp up testing and contact tracing...

In this crossover episode with CSIS's The Truth of the Matter podcast, Tulane University professor and historian John Barry, author of the New York Times bestseller The Great Influenza, joins the podcast from his home in New Orleans’ French Quarter to discuss the lessons gleaned from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that speak to today’s coronavirus pandemic sweeping America and the world.

In this episode, we are joined by Director of the Africa CDC Dr. John Nkengasong and U.S. Ambassador to the African Union Jessica Lapenn. Africa CDC is advancing a continental plan to address the dire, burgeoning threat Covid-19 poses to Africa, where testing has been woeful, where the continent stands at the back of the line in access to test kits, protective gear, oxygen, and financing; and wher...

In this episode, we bring in Alisha Kramer, a star who cut her teeth right after college working with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center. Now a freshly-minted resident doctor, practicing obstetrics and gynecology in Atlanta hospitals, she assists young pregnant women in navigating the new realities of Covid-19. She shares with us reflections on the risks and fears of health providers, the racial...

In this episode, the conversation takes off from a recent piece published by Steve and Anna Carroll, Global Health Policy Center’s Associate Fellow, that examines President Trump’s decision to suspend U.S. assistance to the World Health Organization. What drives that decision? And with what consequences, at this historic moment in the pandemic? Is there any possibility of a diplomatic solution tha...

In this episode, the hosts are joined by Scott Dowell, coronavirus response leader at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They discuss how successful the global response has been in saving so many lives, as well as get Dr. Dowell's thoughts on which response strategy is best when considering herd immunity, lockdowns, intense digital contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. While we wait for a v...

This week marks World Immunization Week, an annual celebration of vaccines that raise awareness and increase rates of immunization against vaccine-preventable diseases around the world. To mark World Immunization Week, Take as Directed launches a conversation recorded earlier in the year to place immunization within the debate around Universal Health Coverage (UHC). In a world faced by not only a...