The CommonHealth

In the second episode of the Prevention Intention mini-series, Katherine speaks with Wafaa El-Sadr, University Professor in Epidemiology at Columbia University and the director of ICAP. They discuss El-Sadr’s formative experience treating AIDS patients in New York City in the early 1980s, as the global HIV epidemic began to emerge; her decision to found ICAP in order to bring HIV treatments to patients worldwide; and ICAP’s contributions to HIV prevention research. They also cover the evolution of PEPFAR, the challenges and opportunities associated with current efforts to reform U.S. global health assistance, and El-Sadr’s emphasis on ensuring people and their communities are at the heart of all health research and service delivery endeavors.

In the first episode of the Prevention Intention mini-series, a series featuring conversations with leading female HIV clinical researchers, Katherine speaks with Linda-Gail Bekker, a medical doctor and director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town.  They discuss Bekker's decision to focus her work on HIV as well as her involvement in the PURPOSE 1 clinical trials, which demonstrated the efficacy of long-acting pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among adolescent girls and young women in South Africa and Uganda. They also cover why it’s important to approach research as a highly collaborative endeavor that both contributes to scientific understanding and improves people’s lives.

Erika Elvander served her country as a federal career health diplomat for 27 years, including as the U.S. Health Attache in Beijing from the spring 2021 until the end of 2024. Her Asia passion ignited while a student in Hong Kong and traveler to Beijing in the late 1980s. And carried forward for the following decades. As Health Attache in Beijing during COVID, she witnessed China “digging in,” pursuing its 18 months of the fierce controls imposed under “static management.” "Achievements with China are incremental.” She was able to maintain dialogues with Chinese health officials, despite the fraught US-China relationship. Today, the COVID origins quagmire does persist and impede the U.S.-China relationship, six years after the advent of Covid. But “there has to be a path forward,” built on many opportunities in health.

Marian Wentworth, President & CEO, Management Sciences for Health (MSH), at age 13 started working in a local factory. Attended the famous Latin School in Chicago. Studied math at Harvard. Then joined Merck as it was "growing ferociously fast." Stayed 27 years, grew and led the vaccine business to $6 billion. Was the "quant jock." Spearheaded the launch of Gardasil, the HPV vaccine. Then pivoted to MSH. It was important "not having a pharmaceutical company on my business card." Now as she reflects on the stunning year of 2025, a series of radical pivots for MSH, is there space for MSH in the America First Global Health Strategy? Yes. Excited by the Accra Reset? Yes. Where does this leave MSH? "I believe this time is a crucible."

Listen to the recent CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Health Security discussion with Congressman Adam Smith (WA-09), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, on his experience leading a Congressional delegation to China in late September 2025. Rep. Smith’s bipartisan delegation—the first House delegation to travel to China since 2019—pressed for high-level military-to-military dialogue between the world’s leading superpowers. What reception did they receive from their Chinese counterparts, what messages did they impart, and how has the dialogue with his colleagues evolved since his return to Washington? What did the trip reveal and how does he expect to see the bilateral relationship evolve—including on key issues such as the debate over fentanyl—into the new year?  Following welcoming remarks from John J. Hamre, CSIS CEO and Langone Chair in American Leadership, J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, moderates the discussion.

Dr. Rick Brennan, an acclaimed Australian humanitarian leader who led WHO and NGO crisis response in multiple conflicts over several decades, walks us through his personal story. He then unpacks the scale and gravity of what is now unfolding in Darfar—featuring the “F word” (famine), the “G word”( genocide, affirmed by the US Senate), and the “C word” (cholera). The crisis requires political action from the UAE—and President Trump’s attention. “There is an obligation to act.” And yet it occurs as global humanitarian needs have soared while humanitarian funding has dropped by half—the US by over 80%. It is a wake-up call, a rude awakening.

Listen to the recent CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security book launch of Fair Doses: An Insider’s Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for Vaccine Equity by Seth Berkley. As the gravity and magnitude of the Covid-19 pandemic became apparent in the first half of 2020, how did the vision for a mechanism to ensure equitable access to new vaccines come together and what role did organizations including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Center for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI); and the World Health Organization (WHO) play in enabling the COVAX Facility to distribute nearly two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to people in 146 countries, the majority of which were low-income countries, by the end of  2022? This event featured conversation between Katherine Bliss, Senior Fellow and Director of Immunizations and Health Systems Resilience, CSIS Global Health Policy Center, and Dr. Seth Berkley, author of Fair Doses and CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, from 2011 to 2023  regarding the challenges of vaccine equity and the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic that can inform preparations for inevitable future health crises.  This event is made possible through the generous support of the Gates Foundation. 

Keizo Takemi, recent Japan Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare (September 2023-October 2024), shares his personal story that took him to Taiwan, CNN/Japan, the Diet, Harvard, back to the Diet, and recently into the cabinet of then Prime Minister Kishida. Along the way he became a leading force in charting Japan's approach to global health. As Minister he put a spotlight on the thousands of single, isolated elderly who die alone in Japan, unnoticed for days. Though expensive, wearable digital technologies can help connect the elderly better to community health services. Covid-19 exposed the lack of digitalized data and the need for a national mechanism to integrate patient and hospital data. That became a priority for him as Minister, as well as the creation of the Japan Institute of Health Security, a merger that promises far greater capabilities in preparing for and responding to dangerous outbreaks. By 2035, Japan will have 10 million citizens above 85 years of age. "Speedy aging" is raising demands for different care, at considerable expense. Achieving a stable number of skilled caregivers requires better wages and work conditions, and the entry of far more migrants into the workforce. Japan's biopharmaceutical industry requires a wholistic industrial policy. That sector is hollowing out, as Takeda and Astellas locate their operations in the United States.

Dr. Debra Houry joined the podcast, following her resignation from CDC on August 25, upon the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, and shortly after her September 17 testimony before the Senate HELP Committee. What does she make of President Trump’s September 22 press conference on Tylenol, its alleged connection to autism, and the potential use of leucovorin? While serving as CDC’s senior most leader, how did she navigate the period from President Trump’s inauguration on January 20 until the arrival of Susan Monarez as the new CDC Director on July 31? How was the armed attack upon CDC on August 8 experienced? What are the downstream impacts? How did she plan and carry out her resignation in league with other CDC leaders? What did the September 17 Senate HELP Committee meeting accomplish? What is the state now of CDC? “I have grave concerns about what is coming out of that agency.” How to stabilize CDC? It needs permanent scientific leadership, a stable budget, more truth and oversight of advisory committees, better trust in CDC staff, and more voice by CDC staff and scientists in partnership with communities. 

The renowned global health leader, Peter Piot, LSHTM, opens this conversation with reflections on what drove the historic global health successes, including “a brilliant coalition” and U.S. bipartisan leadership grounded in statecraft and strategic thinking. That “twenty-five years of historical anomaly” has however now ended. In Europe, that shift has resulted from populism combined with intense migratory pressures, the costs of battling the threat of Russia, and the high costs of providing a social safety net for a rising elderly population. Global Health 2.0 will be built on health sovereignty in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The shock scarcities of the Covid pandemic had already awakened the need for greater self-reliance; the sudden and abrupt decline in donor funding for global health is the latest shock. We will see “sunset clauses” and “mergers and acquisitions” across many familiar international institutions. AI promises innovations in R&D and delivery, aided by philanthropies. Centers of excellence are now in place “everywhere.”  It is “no longer a one-way street.”