Dr. Jennifer Kates, KFF: “Congress is fed up with blank check forever.”
Dr. Jennifer Kates, SVP and Director, Global Health and HIV Policy Program, KFF, provides a tour d’horizon of how global health and health security look at day #98 of the Trump revolution. “The DOGE factor was not on my bingo card,” as it became the battering ram decimating institutions, programs, budgets and staff, far beyond what was environed in Project 2025. It went against what many Republicans favor—just look at the recent dismantling of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The desire to vanquish likely emanates from the White House OMB. As the budget process, including recissions, advances, the power dynamic may shift to Congress. It may become possible to think about new ways to do foreign assistance. There will be no restoration of the status quo ante. It requires fresh thinking and clear principles, and most importantly, new forms of leadership.
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Measles Outbreaks in 2025 with Dr. Adam Ratner and Dr. Ephrem T. Lemango | The CommonHealth Live!
In the twelfth episode of The CommonHealth Live! which falls during World Immunization Week, Katherine E. Bliss talks with Dr. Adam Ratner, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases and author of Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children's Health, and Dr. Ephrem T. Lemango, Associate Director of Immunization at UNICEF, about measles outbreaks in the United States and abroad; how to bolster measles vaccination coverage in a period of reduced financing for domestic and global programs; and why routine immunization programs are critical to global health security.
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CommonHealth Live! with Republic of Indonesia Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin
In the eleventh episode of The CommonHealth Live! Katherine E. Bliss talks with the Republic of Indonesia’s Minister of Health, H.E. Budi Gunadi Sadikin, about Indonesia’s experience expanding routine immunization coverage and prioritizing attention to non-communicable diseases, as well as how public-private sector collaboration can help ensure sustainable access to health services, including primary health care.
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Dr. Stephanie Psaki, former Assistant to the President and White House Global Health Security Coordinator: “We are wandering in the desert.”
Dr. Stephanie Psaki—a newly minted CSIS Senior Adviser—shares the story of her personal evolution as a scholar, NGO policy data expert, senior political appointee at the HHS Office of Global Affairs and the White House National Security Council, and now faculty at Brown University School of Public Health. She reflects on the lessons, good and bad, from her 900 days at the White House, and what the first 100 days of the Trump second term reveal, in particular how science has become politicized. We are seeing a “a huge departure from the role the United States has played for decades.” While the Mpox outbreak in both Europe and the United States (2022-2023) had a promising outcome, the ongoing outbreak in central Africa (which began in 2023) leave many uncomfortable, unanswered questions of why leadership, coordination, finance and speed remain so problematic. The surprise, recent completion of the Pandemic Treaty is encouraging, up to a point. As we turn inevitably to chart a vision for the future, we will have to think in fundamentally different ways about the different world we now occupy.
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Maj. Gen. Paul Friedrichs (ret.): “I cannot recall anything similar to this.”
Major General Paul Friedrichs (ret.), the inaugural director of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR), is now a Senior Adviser at CSIS. In this conversation, Paul reviews the multiple changes in health security now unfolding in the first 100 days of the second Trump term. In biodefense, there is a wide-ranging degradation across different departments and agencies. The assault on the scientific research enterprise is leading to a retrenchment of innovation and US leadership in generating new technologies. That will lower our ability to subdue deliberate biological threats, rising accidental lab leaks, and the continued proliferation of naturally occurring biothreats. Resilience in America’s health infrastructure remains an open question, with shortages of 20,000-30,000 physicians and 300,000 nurses. Where does this all leave us? “It is as if you took all the health security plans of the past administration and asked: what can we do to make this country more vulnerable?” And what are we likely to see as early manifestations? Shortages of pharmaceuticals, higher prices, higher external dependence, especially upon China. Give a listen to hear more, including on the state of the two dangerous outbreaks in America—measles and avian flu (H5N1).
The CommonHealth is the podcast of the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security. On The CommonHealth, hosts J. Stephen Morrison, Katherine Bliss, and Andrew Schwartz delve deeply into the puzzle that connects pandemic preparedness and response, HIV/AIDS, routine immunization, and primary care, areas of huge import to human and national security. The CommonHealth replaces under a single podcast the Coronavirus Crisis Update, Pandemic Planet and AIDS Existential Moment.
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