Pandemic Planet

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“It’s going to hit the most vulnerable hardest, like everything does.” Feb 04, 2022

Show notes

In this episode Katherine speaks with Daniela Ligiero, executive director and CEO of Together for Girls, a partnership focused on collecting data to raise awareness about the problem of violence towards children and adolescents, with a special focus on preventing sexual violence against girls. During the Covid-19 pandemic young children, particularly girls, have become especially vulnerable to violence, including sexual violence, spending long, unsupervised hours online or alone at home while adults in the household are away working. With health resources in many places diverted to outbreak response, Together for Girls has worked to sustain and improve services to prevent the abuse of children, support survivors of violence, and advocate for young people’s needs during the crisis. Daniela describes recent efforts such as the Brave Movement and Keep Kids Safe, which create networks of sexual violence survivors in the United States and around the world who share their experiences publicly to galvanize political will to develop policies to address these challenges during the pandemic and beyond it.

The Global Fund’s Peter Sands on Fighting Multiple Pandemics at the Same Time Dec 15, 2021

Show notes

In this episode Katherine speaks with Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, about the ways in which the Fund has expanded its grant-making activities to support lower and lower-middle income countries in responding to Covid-19. Noting the importance of ensuring continuity of HIV, TB, and malaria services while addressing the Covid-19 outbreak, he insists that health emergency preparedness cannot be funded at the expense of ongoing infectious disease programs. Rather, HIV, TB and malaria efforts must be viewed as essential elements of strong health systems and can serve as platforms for pandemic planning and activities designed to protect society from new infectious pathogens.

COP26 and the Health Impacts of Climate Change Dec 07, 2021

Show notes

In this episode Keith Martin, executive director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH), talks with Katherine about the outcomes of the recent UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland; why it’s important to integrate a focus on health into global discussions about climate; how people who carry out research on global health and climate issues can frame their findings for policymakers and audiences beyond academia for greater impact; and the reasons the climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity, and the pandemic should be seen not as competing priorities but rather as related challenges that can be managed together to improve the social determinants of health, protect ecosystems, and enhance global stability in the long run.

Seth Berkley on COVAX’s Past, Present and Future Dec 01, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, an edited version of a live event on November 15, Katherine talks with Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, about the first year and a half of COVAX, the global collaboration focused on ensuring globally equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines. One year after the first vaccines were made available, their distribution remains highly unequal, with an overwhelming majority of doses so far delivered to populations in high-income countries. Even as vaccine production has expanded, inequities have worsened, especially among lower-income countries. What difficult lessons have been learned over COVAX’s first year and a half? How likely is it that populations in lower-income countries will have access to Covid-19 vaccines in 2022? And how can countries that have surplus vaccines best support COVAX and the distribution of vaccines globally?

Ambassador Stephanie Williams on Australia’s health security diplomacy during Covid-19 Nov 19, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Dr. Stephanie Williams, Australia’s ambassador for regional health security, talks with Katherine E. Bliss about the Australian government’s efforts to strengthen countries’ capacities to deliver health care, including Covid-19 vaccines. She describes what it was like to assume the role of regional health ambassador just as the Covid-19 pandemic was getting underway and discusses the work of the Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security’s focus on health issues in the Indo-Pacific region. As Australia relaxes pandemic lockdown policies and travel requirements, she also considers the ways in which the current focus on Covid-19 offers opportunities to re-invest in primary health care and what countries should be doing now to plan for future pandemics.

The Case for Routine Immunizations within Health Emergency Response Oct 26, 2021

Show notes

During the Covid-19 pandemic, countries around the world have seen coverage levels for routine immunizations drop as resources and health workers have been diverted to pandemic response, including the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines. In this episode, Julia Spencer, Associate Vice President for Global Vaccines, Public Policy Partnerships, and Government Affairs at Merck & Company, and Margaret Cornelius, Deputy Director of Private Sector Programs at ThinkWell, join Katherine Bliss to discuss why it’s important to adequately fund routine immunization programs within pandemic preparedness initiatives, both to maintain continuity of services during health crises and to ensure a capacity to delivery pandemic vaccines as they become available. On the eve of the G20 meetings on health and finance in Rome, they share arguments for making the case to finance ministers that sustainably funding routine immunization programs is worth the investment in the long term.

Building a Resilient Health System: Costa Rica’s 80 Year Experiment Sep 28, 2021

Show notes

Román Macaya Hayes, executive president of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund, joined Katherine E. Bliss for a conversation on how Costa Rica has prioritized the equitable delivery of primary health care services to reduce infant and maternal mortality, achieve a high level of vaccine coverage, increase life expectancy, and build trust in the health system. He explained how the country’s network of locally-based health workers develop personal connections with the people and communities they serve, even as they use digital technologies to gather household data, assess trends, and allocate resources. He also described how ensuring the population’s access to affordable and high-quality care has helped Costa Rica weather the pandemic and effectively deliver Covid-19 vaccines and shared what he sees as opportunities for the Fund to grow and evolve its delivery of services to the Costa Rican people in the years ahead. You can watch the event here.

Trends in Societal Division and Popular Opinion During the Pandemic Sep 17, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, J. Stephen Morrison speaks with Jacob Poushter, an expert in international survey research at Pew Research Center, about Pew’s recent report “People in Advanced Economies Say Their Society Is More Divided Than Before Pandemic.” Jacob explains the main findings of the report and discusses how public perceptions of societal division within advanced economies have changed over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. How are publics in Japan, Sweden, the UK, and other countries perceiving and reacting to their governments’ responses to the pandemic? How do attitudes about the pandemic’s impact break down along generational and demographic lines? What does the new research show about global support for U.S. leadership in international affairs and engagement with the World Health Organization (WHO)?

Jacob Poushter is Associate Director of Global Attitudes Research at Pew Research Center. You can also find a follow on live conversation hosted by GHPC’s Katherine E. Bliss with Jacob here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz4pkn9lcWU

Insuring Quality Vaccines During a Global Pandemic Aug 19, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Katherine E. Bliss is joined by Ben Hubbard, co-founder, and CEO of Parsyl Inc. As the global race to access Covid-19 vaccines heats up, keeping products cold and ensuring their safe delivery to populations that need them becomes ever more important. Assessing the risks to vaccines during critical periods of transit, storage, and distribution, particularly in lower and middle-income countries that may have limited refrigeration infrastructure, involves real-time data analysis and the use of sensors to detect and transmit information about vaccine temperatures. Ben describes the insurance market for vaccines, the public-private partnerships that are forming around Covid-19 vaccine distribution, and the work Parsyl is doing to solve the quality challenges of moving billions of dollars of life-saving products to every corner of the globe.

Ben is the co-founder and CEO of Parsyl Inc. and formerly served as Chief of Staff at USAID and as the director of USAID’s credit financing division, the Development Credit Authority.

Covid-19 in Fragile & Conflict-Affected Areas: A Dynamic Problem Jul 28, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Katherine E. Bliss is joined by two CSIS colleagues, Jacob Kurtzer, director and senior fellow with the Humanitarian Agenda, and Erol Yayboke, senior fellow with the International Security Program and director of the Project on Fragility and Mobility. They talk about how Covid-19 has impacted migrant, displaced, and refugee communities worldwide and the enormous challenge of reaching these vulnerable populations with health and other services. How has the humanitarian sector pivoted to manage the pandemic? How have migration patterns changed as borders close? How can we deliver novel Covid-19 vaccines to populations already outside of regular health services? And what are Erol and Jake watching as the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines scales up?

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