Canary In The Coal Mine: H1N1 And Global Threat Preparedness In The 21st Century
Friday, April 16, 2010
Session Description
Pandemics pose an inarguably daunting global threat: they are hard to predict, spread globally at rapid speed, impact people directly, and have the potential to stop commerce. The H1N1 virus presented us with the first pandemic of the 21st century, but how well did the world respond? This crosssector conversation engages academics, policy-makers, social entrepreneurs, and audience members around what worked, what didn’t, and what can be learned about the roles of government, industry, the social sector, and media when it comes to tackling a global threat.
Time & Location
Time:
11:00 - 12:30, Friday, April 16, 2010
BST
Speakers
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Speaker
President and CEO, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative
Seth Berkley is President & CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a nonprofit organisation working to ensure the development of preventive HIV vaccines for use throughout the world. Prior to founding IAVI, Berkley held positions at The Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Carter Center. Berkley, a widely recognised leader in global health, was named by TIME magazine as “one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
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Speaker
President, Ending Pandemics
Mark Smolinski, MD, MPH, brings 25 years of experience in applying innovative solutions to improve disease prevention, response, and control across the globe. Mark is leading a well-knit team—bringing together technologists; human, animal, and environmental health experts; and key community stakeholders to co-create tools for early detection, advanced warning, and prevention of pandemic threats. Community health workers, village volunteers, farmers, and interested public citizens in Albania, Brazil, Cambodia, Europe, Laos, Myanmar, Tanzania, Thailand, and the United States are among those using their own solutions to address pressing local needs. Since 2009, Mark has served as the Chief Medical Officer and Director of Global Health at the Skoll Global Threats Fund (SGTF), where he developed the Ending Pandemics in Our Lifetime Initiative in 2012. His work at SGTF created a solid foundation for the work of Ending Pandemics, which branched out as an independent entity on January 1, 2018.
Prior to SGTF, Mark developed the Predict and Prevent Initiative at Google.org, as part of the starting team at Google’s philanthropic arm. Working with a team of engineers, Google Flu Trends (a project that had tremendous impact on the use of big data for disease surveillance) was created in partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Mark has served as Vice President for Biological Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a public charity directed by CNN founder Ted Turner and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. Before NTI, he led an 18-member expert committee of the National Academy of Medicine on the 2003 landmark report “Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response.” Mark served as the sixth Luther Terry Fellow in Washington, D.C., in the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General and as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Speaker
Chairman, Health Protection Agency, UK
Dr. David Heymann is the Chairman of the Health Protection Agency. Previously, he was Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment at WHO. Dr Heymann worked for 13 years in sub-Saharan Africa for US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is a recipient of the American Public Health Association Award for Excellence and was named to the United States Institute of Medicine. Currently he is also the Director of the Global Health Security Centre at Chatham House.
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Speaker
Dr. Larry Brilliant is a physician and epidemiologist, CEO of Pandefense Advisory, senior advisor at the Skoll Foundation and a CNN Medical Analyst. Previously on the boards of the Skoll Foundation and the NGO Ending Pandemics; president and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund; vice president of Google, and founding executive director of Google.org. He co-founded the Seva Foundation. Earlier, he co-founded The Well, a progenitor of today's social media platforms. He was an associate professor of epidemiology and international health planning at the University of Michigan. He lived in India for nearly a decade where he was a key member of the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme for SE Asia as well as the WHO Polio Eradication Programme. He was the founding chairman of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee (NBAS); member of the World Economic Forum's Agenda Council on Catastrophic Risk; and a "First Responder" for CDC's bio-terrorism response effort. He is also an author.
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Speaker
Professor of Mathematical Biology, All Souls College, University of Oxford
Angela McLean studied Mathematics at Oxford and received her PhD in Biomathematics from Imperial College. She held a Royal Society URF in Oxford’s Zoology Department and in Immunology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. She is now a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Professor of Mathematical Biology in the Department of Zoology and Director of the Institute for Emerging Infections in the James Martin 21st Century School. Angela was elected to the Royal Society in 2009.
