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Katherine is joined by Doug Mercado, head of the area office with the World Food Program in Romania, which is managing the delivery and distribution of food supplies to vulnerable communities in neighboring Ukraine. The impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are felt internally, regionally, and globally, with agricultural production disrupted and access to food supplies limited because of damage to infrastructure and markets. At the same time, both Ukraine and Russia produce wheat and corn for the global market, but the conflict, along with sanctions on Russia, are limiting the distribution of grain globally and driving up prices. Doug's mission day to day? Bring food assistance to 6 million people inside Ukraine. This requires an expanding presence within Ukraine, establishing critical relationships with key institutions, ongoing support from donors, and negotiating with armed forces on the ground.   Douglas Mercado is the Head of the Area Office with the World Food Program in Romania, and a guest lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. 

Two years later, Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations rejoins Steve for the second iteration of our Live From Munich mini-series. Dr. Hatchett reminds us that having just had a pandemic does not prevent outbreak from another, and that pandemic preparedness needs to be “viewed as a security challenge, not as a health challenge, not as a development challenge”. He points to lessons in vaccine manufacturing and financing arrangements that incentivize disease surveillance that can better prepare us for the next pandemic. “Many of the high-income countries see the value from a geopolitical and security perspective in making these investments. The challenge for the long term, obviously, will be whether these facilities can be successful, sustainable and be sustained.”   Richard J. Hatchett, MD, is Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

Dr. Heidi Larson, founder of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Vaccine Confidence Project™ and co-chair of the CSIS-LSHTM High-Level Panel on Vaccine Confidence and Misinformation, joins Katherine for this episode. The national security threats associated with low confidence in vaccines have changed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and we’ve seen growing polarization on regarding vaccine mandates, increased aggression towards scientists, the circulation of rumors and disinformation about vaccines on social media, and social instability. Groups that oppose vaccination requirements invoke terms such as “freedom” and “liberty” to emphasize the importance of individual choice when it comes to being vaccinated. But what happens when one person’s freedom harms the larger community? Larson explains that trust in vaccines is tied to trust in government and that a low level of trust in government is one of the greatest obstacles to improving the uptake of Covid-19 vaccines worldwide. Dr. Heidi Larson is a Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and is the Founding Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is the author of STUCK: How Vaccine Rumors Start – and Why They Don’t Go Away.

In the fourth episode of our Live From Munich Mini-Series, Steve is joined by Tom Bollyky, the Senior Fellow for Global Health, Economics, and Development and Director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Bollyky attended the Munich Security Conference “to keep the conversation about the response to the COVID crisis still on the national security agenda”. National security and global health have been historically linked, as exemplified with the birth of PEPFAR. Could the war in Ukraine lead to a similar program for Covid-19? And what are the major obstacles in creating pandemic preparedness policy? Tom Bollyky is the Senior Fellow for Global Health, Economics, and Development and Director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.  

Two years ago, Dr. Jeremy Farrar joined Steve for the first iteration of Live From Munich, when the Covid-19 Pandemic was just emerging. Today, for the third installment of this Live From Munich mini-series, he returns to discuss this murky transition into the next stage of the pandemic. Dr. Farrar predicts that “political interest will wane from the pandemic because other events take over.” Politics are turning towards an exhausted, frustrated, even sometimes violent public. “We all feel fed up with this pandemic. But our emotional state doesn't determine the outcome of the pandemic.” We must be prepared for all scenarios, not just the ones we prefer. Dr. Farrar takes a lesson from the Munich Security Conference: “The truth is that the security community does this all the time. They think of a central scenario that is the most likely and they put most of their planning around it, but they do not ignore the other scenarios.” Dr. Jeremy Farrar is the Director of Wellcome Trust.

In episode #124, the second episode of our Live From Munich mini-series, Steve is joined by Seth Berkely, CEO of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, “the largest purchaser of vaccines in the world”. He speaks on strengthening health security: “Do we prepare for our hopeful future? Or do we prepare for reality?” “The right thing to do is to continue to prepare for worsening variants, worsening disease. And the best way to do that is to make sure high-risk people all over the world are as protected as they can be.” We are only as safe as our neighbors. Longterm, "it hurts the world if new variants appear, get the chance to circulate, and then jump out again, as we’ve seen.” Different vaccines have different advantages for various levels of infrastructure, and “we want to get countries to a place where they can say we have the right vaccine, in the right place, at the right time to meet the needs of our population.” “We’re fools if we don’t keep in mind that we have to protect everyone in the world.” Seth Berkely is the CEO of GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance.

Dr. Nkengasong, Director of the Africa CDC and soon to be head of PEPFAR joined us for this 123rd episode, and the first episode of our Live From Munich mini-series, a collection of episodes recorded at the Munich Security Conference. He is a leader in the initiative to incorporate global health in security discussions like the Munich Security Conference. “We have seen how an outbreak of a disease can truly be a health security matter, and also human security, as well as even going as far as a national security threat.” The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us “the need for us to look at the security from a human perspective”, that “we are more connected as humanity”, and “the inequalities that we thought existed are more profound within countries between countries and between region than we thought”. As North America and Europe begin this murky transition to the next stage of the pandemic, Dr. Nkengasong is concerned that we will “begin to refer to COVID as a disease that will soon be over in the US. And then of course, because of that, it becomes one of the neglected tropical diseases where we now have to rely on foundations or charity to take care of.” He recently called for a pause in vaccine donations: “we're saying that we have a lot of vaccines in the country. Now our problem is vaccination”. “I'm a big believer in that we should always pause to evaluate where we are in respond, and then make corrective actions”. How will Africa overcome its major challenge of vaccine hesitancy? “I think every good public health practice as you and I know is local. The concepts are global, but in practice is local, which means Africa must take his own socio-cultural context and deal with it and then find the touch points”   Dr. John Nkengasong is the Director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and has been nominated by President Biden to be the next head of the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator in charge of PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.  

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.

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.

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. 

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?

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.