Events
In discussions about the international response to COVID-19, one organization has been front and center: the World Health Organization.
As the WHO has worked to contain the outbreak, it has also come under attack from many sides, from criticism by the Trump administration to cyber operations by hackers linked to Iran.
How has the WHO responded to COVID-19 in this tense environment? What tools are at its disposal to coordinate an international response? What does the future hold for international cooperation on global health?
Join us for this virtual event to answer these questions and more in a discussion of COVID-19 and the World Health Organization with Dr. David Heymann.
SPEAKERS
David Heymann is currently professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Head and Senior Fellow, Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, London; and chairman of Public Health England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Previously, he was the World Health Organization's (WHO) Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment, and Representative of the Director-General for polio eradication. From 1998 to 2003, he was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster, during which he headed the global response to SARS, and prior to that was Director for the WHO program on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases. Earlier experiences at WHO include chief of research activities in the WHO global program on AIDS. Before joining WHO he worked for 13 years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa, on assignment from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he participated in the first and second outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, and supported ministries of health in research aimed at better control of malaria, measles, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Prior to joining CDC he worked in India for two years as a medical epidemiologist in the WHO smallpox eradication program. He is an elected fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, United States of America, and the Academy of Medical Sciences, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and has been awarded several public health awards that have provided funding for the establishment of an on-going mentorship programme at the International Association of Public Health Institutes.
Michael C. Horowitz is Interim Director of Perry World House and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of the award-winning book, The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics. He has published in a wide array of peer reviewed journals, as well as more popular outlets such as The New York Times, Politico, and Foreign Policy. Professor Horowitz spent 2013 working for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Department of Defense as an International Affairs Fellow, funded by the Council on Foreign Relations. He is affiliated with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Center for a New American Security. He is also a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
