Global Health - Audio

Over the past twenty years, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has proven to be a high-impact and resilient global health partnership. Launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2000, Gavi has mobilized its network of government, private sector, and civil society partners to make vaccines affordable and available to millions of children in the world’s lowest-income countries. Yet after years of improvements, immunization coverage has now stagnated in some countries, and the challenges posed by demographic change, urbanization, and conflict all threaten to slow global progress. Gavi’s new strategy for 2021-2025 lays out a plan to confront these challenges and reach the most vulnerable children with vaccines, and the organization will seek funding to help it reach its goals at a pledging conference to be hosted by the United Kingdom in June of 2020. The United States has supported Gavi since 2000, and the Alliance’s contributions to health security and efforts to enable countries to move towards sustainable, self-financed immunization programs resonate with U.S. global health and development goals.   On Monday, February 24, from 2:30 to 4:00pm, the CSIS Global Health Policy Center will host a public event focusing on challenges and opportunities for advancing Gavi's work in this new 2021-2025 phase. Following introductory remarks by CSIS Senior Vice President and Global Health Policy Center Director J. Stephen Morrison, Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, will deliver a keynote presentation on Gavi’s plans for replenishment and beyond. He will then be joined by Irene Koek, Acting Assistant Administrator for the Global Health Bureau at USAID; Robin Nandy, Principal Advisor & Chief of Immunizations at UNICEF; and Katherine Bliss, Senior Fellow with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, for a panel discussion examining the role of U.S. support for Gavi as the organization enters its third decade.  Keynote Presentation  Seth Berkley Chief Executive Officer Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance  Introduced byJ. Stephen Morrison Senior Vice President and Director CSIS Global Health Policy Center  Panel Discussion  Seth Berkley Chief Executive Officer Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance  Katherine Bliss Senior Fellow CSIS Global Health Policy Center  Irene Koek Acting Assistant Administrator Global Health Bureau USAIDRobin Nandy Principal Advisor & Chief of Immunizations UNICEF  Moderated byJ. Stephen Morrison Senior Vice President and Director CSIS Global Health Policy Center  This event is made possible through the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 12 short months, the initial UNAIDS Fast Track milestones toward gaining control of the HIV pandemic come due. As we start HIV’s pivotal 2020 year, there is cause for both optimism that progress is being made in important areas and concern that critical obstacles remain. The world is not on track to reach the 2020 Fast Track milestones by the end of the year. The time is now to take stock of the state of the epidemic, understand how different countries and cities are making progress, and correct policy and program implementation issues hindering the HIV response. On Monday, February 3, 10:30am-12:15pm, the CSIS Global Health Policy Center will host a public event to explore the state of the HIV epidemic: where we are now, what we know works, and what can be accomplished in 2020. The event will include a panel discussion featuring Regan Hofmann, Director, a.i., U.S. Liaison Office, UNAIDS; Jennifer Kates, Senior Vice President and Director of Global Health & HIV Policy, Kaiser Family Foundation; and Greg Millett, Vice President and Director of Public Policy, amfAR. Sara M. Allinder, Executive Director and Senior Fellow of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, will moderate. Following the panel, we will screen a sneak peak of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center's upcoming documentary, The Pandemic Paradox: HIV on the Edge, which explores the long arc of the HIV pandemic against the backdrop of continued high levels of new infections and annual deaths.   The discussion will serve as a scene setter for CSIS’s planned April 2020 conference on what needs to be part of a plan to get back on the path toward ending HIV as a public health threat by 2030, which will include the official launch of The Pandemic Paradox: HIV on the Edge.   Panel Discussion Regan Hofmann Director, a.i., U.S. Liaison Office UNAIDS  Jennifer Kates Senior Vice President and Director of Global Health & HIV Policy Kaiser Family Foundation  Greg Millett Vice President and Director of Public Policy amfAR  Moderated by Sara M. Allinder Executive Director and Senior Fellow CSIS Global Health Policy Center Closing Preview of the upcoming documentary, The Pandemic Paradox: HIV on the Edge This event is made possible by the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This episode explores how China has responded to the deadly outbreak of a new coronavirus originating in the central city of Wuhan. Our guest, Dr. Yanzhong Huang, compares Beijing’s response to its handling of the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic, analyzing what key lessons the government appears to have learned and where it has fallen short. Dr. Huang also describes the varying local and global reactions to the Chinese government’s response efforts, and assesses how Beijing’s ability to control this outbreak will affect the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. Dr. Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directs the Global Health Governance roundtable series. He is also professor and director of global health studies at Seton Hall University's School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Dr. Huang has written extensively on global health governance, health diplomacy and health security, and public health in China and East Asia.

Australia is being ravaged by the worst bushfires seen in decades. Beginning in 2019, the fires have burnt through 25.5 million acres, the size of Denmark and Belgium combined. At least 27 people are dead, including three volunteer firefighters, and more are missing. Thousands of homes have been destroyed or damaged. Australia’s capital cities are experiencing record air pollution, and smoke has been seen as far away as South America. With the fire summer season extending for another few months, the disaster is expected to continue. The scale of these bushfires is unprecedented anywhere in the world. On Monday, January 27th, 5:00-6:30 pm, please join us for a conversation on the impact of these bushfires on regional politics, public opinion, the health of the population, and national economic growth. We will also discuss the cataclysmic scale of the fires and the climate change drivers that have driven the spread of the fires: are they a single natural disaster – a very bad year in a country accustomed to seasonal fires – or evidence of a long-term profound shift?This event is made possible through general support to CSIS.

Malnutrition has the potential to bankrupt countries and prevent children from reaching their full potential. Unlike other food groups, fruits and vegetables provide beneficial outcomes across all malnutrition forms. Yet, despite the nutritional punch of fruits and vegetables, current global consumption is far below the minimum daily requirements of five portions. Join the Global Food Security Project for the release of Seeds of Change: The Power of Fruits and Vegetables to Improve Nutrition in Tanzania, a new report focusing on how the United States and other donors are trying to boost fruit and vegetable consumption in Tanzania to improve nutrition through multisectoral and public–private approaches. The event will feature a keynote lecture by the former Tanzanian Prime Minister, the Honorable Mizengo Pinda, which will be followed by an armchair conversation. The subsequent panel discussion will explore the unique challenges to fruit and vegetable consumption and current efforts to change dietary behavior.This event is made possible by the generous support of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In this episode of AIDS 2020, Steve speaks with Tori Cooper at the eighth Annual Atlanta Summit on Global Health on advocacy. As the founder and Executive Director of Advocates for Better Care, and a black transwoman living with HIV, Tori is at the center of these issues. They discuss her life, career, leadership and the continued imperative of community advocacy in driving progress.

Two things need to happen to achieve greater success in the global fight against HIV: dramatically reduce new infections and achieve viral suppression in those already living with the virus. In order to meet these goals, new infections must come down from an annual rate of 1.7-2 million that has been stagnant for a decade, viral suppression must be sustained and ensured for the more than 23 million people living with HIV (PLHIV) on anti-retroviral treatment (ART), and treatment must be provided to the more than 14 million PLHIV not on ART.     New technology offers the potential to facilitate these efforts if they can be utilized effectively.  The July 2019 International AIDS Society science conference in Mexico City highlighted several important technological innovations either already on the market or that will be available in the coming years including long-acting injectable treatment, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), implants, and broadly neutralizing antibodies as a vaccine.  However, the ongoing experience of starting oral PrEP programs has demonstrated that taking new products to scale for impact is complex and that there are significant obstacles to ensuring access to those in need.   On Tuesday, October 22, 2:30-5:00 pm, the CSIS Global Health Policy Center will host a public event to explore recent developments in HIV prevention and treatment technology, examine successes and challenges in integrating those products into existing service delivery, and discuss how global programs, such as PEPFAR and the Global Fund, need to adapt to ensure access and uptake.  Fireside ChatDeborah Waterhouse CEO ViiV Healthcare  Moderated byJ. Stephen Morrison Senior Vice President and Director  CSIS Global Health Policy Center  Panel DiscussionAmbassador Deborah L. Birx Coordinator of the United States Government Activities to Combat HIV/AIDS and U.S. Special Representative for Global Health Diplomacy  PEPFAR  Charles Lyons President and CEO Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Mitchell Warren Executive Director AVAC Moderated bySara M. Allinder Executive Director and Senior Fellow CSIS Global Health Policy Center This event was made possible by the generous support of ViiV Healthcare.

In 2018, more than 200 million people contracted malaria around the world, and nearly half a million died of it. As countries continue to battle malaria within their borders, the international discussion turns to a loftier goal—complete global eradication of malaria. In this episode of Take as Directed, J. Stephen Morrison sits down with Sir Richard Feachem, Director of the Global Health Group at UCSF Global Health Sciences, and Professor of Global Health at both UC San Francisco and the UC Berkeley. They discuss the Lancet Commission on Malaria Eradication, and their new report that lays out a vision to achieve the eradication of malaria, “Malaria eradication within a generation: ambitious, achievable, and necessary.” Just how plausible is this vision?

In this episode of AIDS 2020, Stephen Morrison speaks with Mark Heywood on whether HIV advocacy and activism still matters. As a co-founder of SECTION 27 and the Treatment Action Campaign, Mark has been an activist at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS in South Africa for decades. They discuss what Mark sees as the biggest obstacles and opportunities for future HIV efforts.

Since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, countries have been committed to finding a path to universal health coverage – the vision of providing access to quality healthcare for all without risk of financial hardship. This ambitious goal raises myriad questions: What should be covered? Who should be covered? What are the roles of civil society and the private sector in helping governments to achieve universal health coverage (UHC)? How will we pay for it all? Each country will take a different path to UHC – dependent on its demography, disease burden, and resources – but what those paths will look like is not yet clear. These issues have dominated the global health agenda in recent years, culminating in the UN High-Level Meeting on UHC, to be held on Monday, September 23rd, when UN Member States are expected to adopt a political declaration spelling out the parameters for achieving UHC by 2030. On Thursday, October 3rd, 1:00-3:00 pm, please join us for what promises to be a lively roundtable conversation on the outcomes of the UN HLM. Dr. Ranieri Guerra, World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant-Director General leading WHO’s preparations for the UN HLM, will open with a ten-minute overview of the UN HLM.  A roundtable conversation will follow, featuring Dr. Guerra; Jeffrey L. Sturchio, CEO, Rabin Martin; Amanda Glassman, Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development, and CEO, CGD Europe; and a senior U.S. government representative. J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, will moderate. We will also use this occasion to reference the recent book, The Road to Universal Health Coverage: Innovation, Equity and the New Health Economy, edited by Jeffrey L. Sturchio, Ilona Kickbusch and Louis Galambos (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019). Sturchio, in his remarks, will draw on some of its content. Copies of the book will be distributed at the event. Featured SpeakersDr. Ranieri Guerra Assistant Director-General World Health Organization  Jeffrey L. Sturchio CEO Rabin Martin Amanda Glassman Executive Vice President, Senior Fellow, and CEO of CGD Europe Center for Global Development   ModeratorJ. Stephen Morrison Senior Vice President and Director CSIS Global Health Policy Center This event is made possible by general funding to CSIS.

In the last decade, Russia has increased its global engagement, while at the same time pursuing policies at home that are giving rise to HIV/AIDS and drug-resistant tuberculosis epidemics that are a risk for its own populations, as well as its neighbors. These developments have unfolded against a backdrop of highly malevolent Russian behavior across many fronts that has resulted in the imposition of extensive sanctions. In this special joint episode of Take as Directed and Russian Roulette, J. Stephen Morrison sits down with Jeff Mankoff, Acting Director of the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program; and Judyth Twigg, Professor of Political Science at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Senior Associate with the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program. The three discuss Steve and Judy's recent analysis, “Putin and Global Health: Friend or Foe?” which outlines an opportunity to expand U.S. engagement to promote health security and counter Russian influence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

While the world has seen tremendous improvement in the availability of life-saving vaccines, new, targeted approaches are needed to address remaining gaps in immunization coverage. Among pressing challenges are completing polio eradication; reaching the disenfranchised, including those in fragile and disordered settings; supporting governments as they develop their own sustainable immunization systems, and; addressing vaccine hesitancy. The World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the U.S. government, and other global immunization organizations are striving to meet these demands as they develop new strategies and programmatic enhancements for the next decade of global immunization. If successful, these advances have the potential to significantly enhance global stability and health security.   The CSIS Global Health Policy Center will host a major conference on September 27 that will examine the innovations that will shape this future. The conference will feature keynote presentations by Seth Berkley, Chief Executive Officer of Gavi; Kate O’Brien, Director of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals at the WHO; and Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of UNICEF. Registration will open at 8:30am. Light refreshments will be served in the morning and lunch will be served at 11:30am. J. Stephen Morrison Senior Vice President and Director, CSIS Global Health Policy Center   Kate O'Brien Director, Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals, World Health Organization Seth Berkley Chief Executive Officer, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance Moderated by:Nellie Bristol Senior Fellow, CSIS Global Health Policy Center   Edna Yolani Batres Presidential Adviser of  Health, Former Minister of Health, Republic of Honduras Muhammad Ali Pate Global Director, Health, Nutrition, and Population, World Bank, and Director of the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children, and Adolescents (GFF) Kerry Pelzman Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Global Health, U.S. Agency for International Development Anne Schuchat (RADM, USPHS, RET) Principal Deputy Director, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Moderated by:Amanda Glassman Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development Henrietta Fore Executive Director, UNICEF   Emilie Karafillakis Research Fellow, Vaccine Confidence Project, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Rina Dey Communication Director, CORE Group Polio Project, India David Broniatowski Associate Professor, George Washington University  with a video message from:Congressman Adam B. Schiff (D-CA-28) Moderated by:J. Stephen Morrison Senior Vice President and Director, CSIS Global Health Policy Center Nahid Bhadelia Medical Director, Special Pathogens Unit, Boston University School of Medicine Rebecca Martin Director, Center for Global Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Violaine Mitchell Interim Director, Vaccine Delivery, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with a video message from:Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) Moderated by:Katherine Bliss Senior Fellow, CSIS Global Health Policy Center Nellie Bristol Senior Fellow, CSIS Global Health Policy Center  This event is made possible through the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  

In this episode, Steve Morrison, Sara Allinder, and Andrew Schwartz discuss the uncomfortable paradox surrounding South Africa’s HIV/AIDS epidemic. At the time of the interview, Steve had recently returned from a documentary filming trip to South Africa, while Sara was completing analysis based on a February 2019 visit noted in her analysis piece, The World’s Largest HIV Epidemic in Crisis: HIV in South Africa. The conversation includes a discussion of the September 2019 outbursts of xenophobic violence and targeted violence against women, and how those factor into the HIV epidemic.

The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) on July 17, has been ongoing for over a year. As of mid-August, there have been over 2,800 cases and 1,900 deaths. The outbreak is not expected to be contained in the near future. Some experts argue that Ebola is becoming endemic to the area and will spread regionally. Médecins Sans Frontières and other NGOs are retooling their approaches to win community trust, while WHO, the World Bank, the U.S. government, and others are putting in place plans for a renewed push in the next six months. Access by seasoned U.S. civilian public health experts to the hot zone remains highly problematic, owing to violent attacks on health providers, the limited capacity of the United States to deploy official civilian experts into austere environments, and a risk aversion born of the Benghazi tragedy. The U.S. response is further constrained by U.S. funding restrictions that limit the scope of assistance to the DRC national government.   This panel will examine how to navigate the formidable barriers to access — the chaos, insecurity, and rampant community resistance in eastern DRC – in this next phase. Panelists will include: Admiral Tim Ziemer, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, USAID; Ella Watson-Stryker, Humanitarian Representative, Médecins Sans Frontières; and Jeremy Konyndyk, Senior Policy Fellow, Center for Global Development   Moderator: J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director, Global Health Policy Center, CSIS   This event was made possible through the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

While the world has seen tremendous improvement in the availability of life-saving vaccines, coverage rates have stagnated over the last decade. The U.S. government, a leading player in global immunization, is working with international organizations as they develop new strategies to accelerate progress toward global goals. On Friday, September 27th, CSIS will host a conference on global immunization to explore these issues. As a primer to that event, we take you back to a conversation from last winter between Nellie Bristol and Dr. Orin Levine, Director of Global Delivery Programs and former Director of Vaccine Delivery for the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Levine joined us on this episode of Take as Directed to discuss new innovations in achieving equity, increasing demand for immunization, and reaching the unreached with vaccines to secure the health and stability of all populations.

In this episode, Steve Morrison, Sara Allinder, and Andrew Schwartz discuss UNAIDS and the selection of Winnie Byanyima as its new executive director. The AIDS 2020 hosts discuss what is at stake for her tenure from fixing an internal leadership crisis to redefining the organization’s role in the HIV/AIDS response amid shifts in global health priorities and calls for significant United Nations reform.

The population of Africa is expected to double over the next 20 years, which means that many countries are facing either a demographic dividend or potentially a disaster, with critical implications for global health and development. In this episode of Take as Directed, Janet Fleischman sits down with Amb. Mark Dybul, Director of the Center for Global Health and Quality, and Professor in the Department of Medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, and formerly head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. They discuss why these demographic trends matter and how U.S. programs can better engage young people, especially adolescent girls and young women, to address their needs and support local innovation.

In this episode, Sara Allinder sits down with Jen Kates, Senior Vice President and Director of Global Health and HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The two discuss the upcoming Global Fund replenishment, where Kates serves as an Alternate Board Member, and the AIDS 2020 conference, for which Kates is on the Governing Council.

At the end of June, the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, approved their new “5.0” strategy for 2021-2025, with an ambitious set of priorities for this new phase. In this episode of Take as Directed, Nellie Bristol sits down with Amanda Glassman, Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow of the Center for Global Development, and Katherine Bliss, Senior Fellow with the Global Health Policy Center, to discuss these changes and their implications for the broader immunization landscape beyond 2020.

In this episode, Sara Allinder speaks with Gunilla Carlsson, the acting Executive Director for Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS). The two discuss the process of finding a new Executive Director for UNAIDS, the fast track goals coming due on World AIDS Day 2020, and the state of the global HIV pandemic.

Since its inception in 2017, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, has come to be seen as among the most promising innovations in global health security. It works to accelerate the development and introduction of new vaccines against known, dangerous pathogens, and to build common platforms for future development of vaccines. In this episode of Take as Directed, J. Stephen Morrison sits down with Richard Hatchett, Chief Executive Officer at CEPI, to discuss the organization’s origins following the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014-15, and its further evolution two years into its mandate.

In this episode, Steve Morrison and Sara Allinder talk to Helga Ying, the Head of Local Office for the AIDS 2020 Conference. Ying discusses her career in HIV/AIDS, the bipartisanship support for HIV/AIDS, and her hopes for the conference.

In this episode, Steve Morrison and Andrew Schwartz speak with Dr. Eric Goosby, UN Special Envoy on Tuberculosis. They discuss the turbulent 1990 International AIDS Society conference in San Francisco, and the upcoming conference in San Francisco and Oakland in July 2020, thirty years later. Dr. Goosby also talks about his personal experiences as a young physician caring for patients with HIV in San Francisco during the early 1980s crisis, the lessons learned over the decades from battling infectious diseases, and the ongoing search for a cure. 

In this episode of Take as Directed, J. Stephen Morrison sits down with Jason Stearns, Director of the Congo Research Group at the Center for International Cooperation at New York University. Jason is among America’s premier experts on Congolese politics and economics. In this episode, he shares his astute insights into the opaque networks in eastern Congo which are deliberately and violently targeting health providers, paralyzing the international and local response to the Ebola outbreak. This is the second of a pair of episodes that examines what steps are now essential to end violence and win community trust and confidence in eastern Congo.

In this episode, Steve Morrison and Andrew Schwartz speak with Kenneth Cole, the iconic fashion designer and HIV/AIDS activist. They discuss the unprecedented campaign launched in the mid-1980s which used advertising platforms in bold and provocative ways to confront the stigma and silence surrounding HIV/AIDS in New York City. Cole shares what motivated him to become an HIV activist, the continued imperative of educating younger generations about the risk of HIV, and the continued need for bipartisan leadership.

In this episode of Take as Directed, J. Stephen Morrison sits down with David Gressly, the UN Emergency Ebola Response Coordinator in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Gressly was appointed in May by the UN Secretary General to lead a more strategic, coordinated, and better funded effort to arrest the dangerously escalating Ebola outbreak. This is the first of a pair of episodes that examines the root causes of targeted violence against health providers and active community resistance, and what steps are now essential to end violence and win community trust and confidence.

In this episode, Steve Morrison speaks to Cynthia Carey-Grant, Oakland co-chair for the AIDS 2020 conference. The two discuss Carey-Grant’s beginning in health activism, her role as the Oakland co-chair for the upcoming global conference on HIV/AIDS, and the impact of Trump’s initiative to end HIV by 2030. She delves into what a successful AIDS 2020 conference would look like and HIV as an issue of reproductive justice.

In this episode of Take as Directed, J. Stephen Morrison speaks with Dr. Trevor Mundel, President of the Global Health Division at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They discuss the arc of Dr. Mundel’s personal career and his remarkable tenure at the Gates Foundation, including the creation of the Medical Research Institute; the launch of CHAMPS, the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Service; and the establishment of CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. In closing, they discuss the issues that give him the greatest concern, and the reasons he is hopeful looking to the future.

In this episode of Take as Directed, host Janet Fleischman sits down with Geeta Rao Gupta, executive director of the 3D Program for Girls and Women, former president of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), and former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF. They discuss the new series of The Lancet, of which Geeta was a principal author, that outlines the impact of gender norms and inequalities on health, describes persistent barriers to progress, and provides an agenda for action. They also discuss the recent Women Deliver conference in Vancouver and how to maintain optimism for the future.

In this episode, Andrew Schwartz interviews Congresswoman Barbara Lee. She represents California’s 13th district, which includes the city of Oakland, and is the co-founder and co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus. Rep. Lee tells Andrew how critically important it is that the International AIDS Conference is returning to the Bay Area after 30 years.

In this episode of Take as Directed, Sara Allinder is joined by special guest host Haim Malka, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow of the CSIS Middle East Program, to discuss the future of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The two interview Dr. Akihiro Seita, Director of Health and WHO Special Representative for UNRWA, and Elizabeth Campbell, Director of UNRWA’s Washington D.C. office, about their concerns for Palestinian refugees’ health as humanitarian aid declines amid continuing political uncertainty in the region.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has had a distinguished career in public service, serving as Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health under six successive presidents. Working at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS over the past 40 years, he has gained an unparalleled perspective on the breathtaking progress that has been made in treatment and prevention. Dr. Fauci believes that we have all we need to end this epidemic, if we couple our scientific tools with active community engagement. He joins Steve and Andrew on this episode of AIDS 2020 to share his thoughts as an architect of the new 10-year plan to end HIV in the United States, and the biggest obstacles and opportunities for its implementation.

Download the EVENT SUMMARY The CSIS Global Food Security Project invites you to join a discussion with a world-renowned expert and advocate on the opportunity for U.S. foreign policy and business to improve global nutrition. Dr. Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), was awarded the 2018 World Food Prize for his exemplary leadership in maternal and child nutrition and efforts to significantly reduce childhood stunting. Please join us to learn Dr. Haddad’s views on why and how the U.S. government should strengthen public-private engagement in its foreign policy to provide optimal nutrition for all. The current state of all three forms of malnutrition—underweight, overweight or obese, and micronutrient deficiency—is unacceptable. With one in three people experiencing malnutrition, every country faces the damaging effects malnutrition has on country-level prosperity and security. Although the current food system faces many challenges today, the private sector must be part of the solution to decrease malnutrition. Industry can play a more integral role in making nutrient-dense food more affordable and available to all populations; this means maximizing profits and prioritizing food and nutrition security and health. U.S. policymakers should build an environment that fosters public-private engagement, fortifies accountability, and shares decision-making.This event is made possible by the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

On February 5, 2019, President Trump announced in his State of the Union address the launch of an ambitious campaign, “Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for the United States”, which will aim to end the HIV epidemic in the United States by 2030.  Plans are actively in development to accelerate diagnosis, treatment, and prevention—including a dramatic increase in the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PreP) —in 48 counties, rural communities in 7 states that have a disproportionate occurrence of HIV, Washington, D.C., and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Together, these areas account for more than half of all new HIV diagnoses in 2016 and 2017.  A budget request for year 1 in the amount of $291 million has gone forward to Congress, and the operational kick-off for programs is set for early 2020. Please join the CSIS Global Health Policy Center for a discussion with the two main architects of this strategy—Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Dr. Fauci and Dr. Redfield will describe how this strategy first came to fruition and share the details of this 10-year plan, including expectations around financing and coordination, outreach to marginalized communities, and addressing a variety of implementation challenges.    This event will feature opening remarks by Sara M. Allinder, CSIS Global Health Policy Center Executive Director and Senior Fellow, and presentations from Dr. Fauci and Dr. Redfield, followed by a conversation moderated by J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center.This event is made possible by the general support to CSIS.

In this inaugural episode of AIDS 2020, CSIS’s Steve Morrison and Andrew Schwartz speak with Dr. Monica Gandhi, a physician and the San Francisco co-chair of the AIDS 2020 conference. They discuss preparations for next year’s conference and the meaning of the AIDS 2020 conference theme: “Resilience.”

People living with HIV. Public health experts. Activists, politicians, and pop culture icons. The largest conference on HIV/AIDS is returning to the Bay Area—to San Francisco and Oakland—in July 2020. AIDS 2020 is a podcast that follows the stories of key players connected to the conference as the epidemic approaches a critical inflection point. Hosted by H. Andrew Schwartz, J. Stephen Morrison, and Sara M. Allinder at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In this episode of Take as Directed, J. Stephen Morrison speaks with Dr. Heidi Larson, Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. They discuss why vaccine confidence is currently in crisis, and how this has fueled outbreaks such as measles and the persistence of polio in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Plus, Dr. Larson walks through her work with the Vaccine Confidence Project, including monitoring public confidence in immunization programs and building an information surveillance system for early detection of public concerns around vaccines.

In this episode of Take as Directed, Steve Morrison speaks with Dr. Christopher Murray, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) of the University of Washington. Dr. Murray walks through IHME’s ongoing Global Burden of Disease analysis, as he and his team have been evaluating eating habits and food systems for people in 195 countries. Dr. Murray shares the study’s most important—and surprising—findings about global diet-related issues.

Rapid changes in warfare pose stark, complex challenges for international humanitarian law (IHL). Indeed, they raise fundamental questions about the relevance, normative power, and impact of IHL in today’s dangerous world. Proliferating conflicts are increasingly intractable, lasting for years or decades, causing protracted human suffering on a mass scale. Battles waged in densely populated cities suddenly put huge numbers of vulnerable civilians at-risk. Non-state armed groups – ISIS, Al Qaeda, and others – wage asymmetric war. Security partnerships and proxy wars, often embedded in a new Cold War of intensified Great Power confrontation, magnify the scale of wars and have obscure chains of command. New technologies – “killer robots,” A.I., cyber weapons –  are no less opaque and problematic. Meanwhile, the surge of deliberate, targeted violence against aid workers, health facilities and schools, often with utter impunity, disrupts humanitarian access, destroys critical infrastructure, and propels mass migration.    As the 70 anniversary of the Geneva Conventions approaches in August, how does this vitally important body of law relate to today’s – and tomorrow’s – realities, a world in which the liberal international order of the past seven decades seems to be fading?   Please join us for a keynote address and armchair conversation with Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Formerly serving as the Swiss Ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs for the Swiss Foreign Ministry, Mr. Maurer has a wealth of diplomatic experience with humanitarian crises. He will speak to the continued relevance of IHL, including the centrality of humanitarian principles to gain access to vulnerable populations. He will also address a question of considerable import and timeliness: how are we to achieve a global reaffirmation of the Geneva Conventions, including the enlistment of powerful new advocates, in the face of populist nationalism, historic migration flows, and increasing state fragility?     

As the decade of vaccines comes to a close, public health experts are busy developing new strategies for the next era of global immunization. Among those efforts is a second version of the Global Vaccine Action Plan — or GVAP — which will cover the period 2021 to 2030. In this episode of Take as Directed, GHPC Senior Fellow Nellie Bristol sits down with Kate Dodson, Vice President of Global Health at the United Nations Foundation; Carmen Tull, Chief of the Child Health and Immunizations Division at USAID; and Craig Burgess, Senior Technical Officer at John Snow Training and Research Institute, to discuss the GVAP 2.0 process and explain why global goals are important to US efforts in improving immunization coverage.

Investing in nutrition is one of the most cost effective health and development programs, yet is often underprioritized in the larger global development agenda. In this episode of Take as Directed, Sara Allinder speaks with Shawn Baker, Director of the Nutrition team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to discuss how the arc of Vitamin A supplementation fits into the larger story of global health, the need to reinvigorate programs that have stalled, and Shawn’s hopes for long-term, systems-based interventions that can sustain progress.

At the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong last fall, Professor He Jiankui made a controversial announcement that he had made heritable genetic changes in human embryos, which resulted in the birth of twin girls. This action has been universally condemned and has sparked intense international debate over whether human germline genome editing should be permitted, and what regulatory or governance framework is needed. In this episode of Take as Directed, host Steve Morrison sits down with Dr. Victor Dzau, President of the National Academy of Medicine, which was one of the conveners of the summit in Hong Kong. Dr. Dzau is a prominent leader in the current conversation as the scientific community seeks the best way forward.

The event will explore how the U.S. government can address the critical gaps and opportunities outlined in our nutrition policy primer, which will be launched at the event. The primer provides a global nutrition 101 for policymakers with key terms, interventions, and target cohorts and a landscape overview of the priority issues in global nutrition, important players, and the U.S. government’s investments. The primer also identifies critical gaps including a $70 billion global funding gap toward the World Health Assembly’s stunting, anemia, exclusive breastfeeding, and wasting goals; data gaps in how best to reach adolescents during a critical growth period; and the lack of transparency of U.S. government nutrition investments and impact. The primer sets forth a proposal to increase the annual U.S. investment with specific ideas for how those additional resources can have impact programmatically and operationally, as well as in filling knowledge gaps.   A diverse group of panelists will share their perspectives on how the U.S. government can better utilize its global nutrition investments as a powerful U.S. foreign policy tool that can maximize its other health and development portfolios, drive economic growth, and mitigate conflict and political instability. Welcoming Remarks: Sara M. Allinder Executive Director and Senior Fellow, CSIS Global Health Policy Center Primer Introduction: Amy R. Beaudreault Research Fellow, CSIS Global Health Policy Center and Global Food Security Project Panel Discussion: Shawn Baker Director, Nutrition Team, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Beth Dunford Assistant to the Administrator, Bureau for Food Security and Deputy Coordinator for Development for Feed the Future, U.S. Agency for International Development Asma Lateef Director, Bread for the World InstituteModerated by: Sara M. Allinder Executive Director and Senior Fellow, CSIS Global Health Policy Center This event is made possible by the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

March 24th was World TB Day, a World Health Organization-designated day of advocacy to raise awareness about the devastating health, social, and economic consequences of tuberculosis. In this episode of Take as Directed, host Steve Morrison is joined by Dr. Eric Goosby, the UN Special Envoy on Tuberculosis. Dr. Goosby recently led a Lancet Commission on tuberculosis, a two-year effort that has culminated in a longform report titled “Building a tuberculosis-free world”, and spoke about some of the main findings of the report and what the next steps are in creating a world free of TB.

Women’s health services, including maternal health and family planning, are critical to enable women and girls to access economic empowerment opportunities. In this episode of Take as Directed, GHPC Senior Associate Janet Fleischman speaks with Margaret Schuler, Senior Vice President of the International Programs Group at World Vision, and David Ray, Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at CARE. The three discuss how the current bipartisan momentum around economic empowerment for women provides an opportunity to strengthen linkages with U.S. investments in women’s global health.

The anti-vaccination movement has recently come into the spotlight after the resurgence of measles, a vaccine-preventable respiratory illness, has emerged across the United States in the past year. In this episode of Take as Directed, Steve Morrison speaks with Lena Sun, award-winning national health reporter for The Washington Post to discuss how the anti-vaxxer movement has evolved into what it is today—a small but vocal, social media-savvy, activist group of Americans. Over the course of her career, Lena has written widely on a number of issues related to public health and infectious disease, and her most recent work is on the topic of the anti-vaxxer movement in the U.S., its implications on public health, and state and federal responses to the anti-vaxxer movement.

Improving nutrition is among the most transformative and cost-effective interventions in global health and food security. In this episode of Take as Directed, Sara Allinder speaks with Dr. Robert Mwadime, Chief of Party of the USAID Integrated Community Agriculture and Nutrition Activity in Uganda, a program administered by Abt Associates. Dr. Mwadime has spent his career working with local governments and donors to administer nutrition and agriculture programs, and shares his thoughts on the future of U.S. investments in nutrition and the importance of multisectoral approaches in improving health outcomes. To learn more about U.S. government nutrition investments in Uganda, visit the CSIS Global Health Policy Center program page for our report titled “Improving Nutrition in East Africa’s Bread Basket”.

At this year’s Munich Security Conference, the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was highlighted as top health security threat of international concern. As of February 17th, there have been 840 cases and 537 deaths in the outbreak, and the response effort continues to encounter insecurity on the ground. In this episode of Take as Directed, Steve Morrison speaks with Dr. Mitch Wolfe, Acting Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Washington, D.C. office and the CDC’s Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Wolfe discusses the role and methods of the CDC in the current Ebola response, as well as what to expect from this outbreak as we look ahead.

In this episode, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff joins us to discuss the story of his son Jonathan, who died from a fentanyl overdose last year. Admiral James "Sandy" Winnefeld is a retired four-star Navy admiral, and has become a vocal advocate for opioid death prevention. He heads Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic, or S.A.F.E. Project U.S., a national nonprofit organization dedicated to ending the opioid epidemic in the United States. Admiral Winnefeld describes how difficult it was to find treatment for Jonathan and recounts the challenges of recognizing signs of recovery--and signs of relapse.

Please join the CSIS Global Food Security Project for the launch of our newest report, Risk and Resilience: Advancing Food and Nutrition Security in Nigeria through Feed the Future, by Julie Howard and Emmy Simmons. The report examines what the new Feed the Future strategy's emphasis on resilience means in Nigeria, one of the newly-designated target countries. Nigeria, with the continent’s largest economy, is arguably the most important partner for the United States in Africa and is on the verge of a critical presidential election. Through the lens of Nigeria, especially the northeast, the report examines the risks and opportunities related to extending the highly-regarded U.S. global hunger and food security initiative to more fragile countries.    The event will feature a dialogue on why the United States’ leadership on global food security, particularly in fragile, climate, and conflict-affected regions, is critical to U.S. national security and reducing global poverty and malnutrition. How can the U.S. adapt its successful experience with facilitating inclusive, private sector driven agricultural development to more fragile environments? Can boosting resilient systems, jobs, incomes, and nutrition in the agricultural sector – where most people live and work – help address the root causes of fragility and conflict in Nigeria and other regions? This event is made possible through the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.