Date

Jul 29, 2026 08:30 AM Join NTI, the Brown University Pandemic Center, Economist Enterprise, and the Science for Africa Foundation for a discussion of the findings and recommendations of the 2026 Africa Health Security (AHS) Index, an independent assessment of health security capacities in Africa.

Event Details

The world is shifting from a period of urgent health actions to one of vast growing neglect, even as biological threats continue to rise. Against this backdrop, the 2026 Africa Health Security Index shows great progress has been made across the continent – but substantial gaps remain.

Join NTI, the Brown University Pandemic Center, Economist Enterprise, and the Science for Africa Foundation for a discussion of the findings and recommendations of the 2026 Africa Health Security (AHS) Index, an independent assessment of health security capacities in Africa.

This webinar will convene global experts and policymakers to discuss how the AHS Index can shape policy decision-making and drive meaningful action to strengthen health security capacities and improve preparedness for future epidemics and pandemics.

The AHS Index

The AHS Index is independent assessment of epidemic and pandemic preparedness, with a focus on African priorities. It assesses the 54 countries of Africa using publicly available data and a standardized analytical framework. This new Index will enable African leaders to measure, finance, and advance improvements in health security and create an evidence-based accountability framework to track progress toward better epidemic and pandemic preparedness and response.

Panel

• H.E. Dr. Jean Kaseya
  Director General, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC)
• Dr. Judith Omumbo
  Head of Partnerships & Resource Mobilisation, Science for Africa Foundation
• Christine E. Wormuth
  President and CEO of NTI
• Dr. Wilmot James
  Senior Advisor, Brown University Pandemic Center

Please contact pandemic_center@brown.edu with any questions.

Register for this event now

Date

On July 31 at 12:00PM ET the Pandemic Center will host a webinar titled: Rising Temps, Rising Risks: Infectious Disease in the 2026 El Niño Year.

Event Details

Climate variability, including El Niño-driven shifts in temperature and rainfall, are reshaping infectious disease risks by altering the environments where pathogens and vectors thrive. These changes can expand the geographic and seasonal patterns of outbreaks, challenging traditional approaches to surveillance and prevention.

This year is progressing towards a historically severe El Niño event — a naturally occurring climate pattern characterized by the warming of surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. These shifting oceanic temperatures trigger global weather disruptions that directly alter the trajectory of infectious disease risks. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently reported an 81% chance of a "very strong" El Niño by late autumn, with a 97% chance of it persisting into early spring 2027.

What impact will this compounding climate event have on disease prevalence, and which regions are most vulnerable? In this Pandemic Center webinar, we will convene an expert panel to discuss these questions and more.

Panel

This event will be moderated by Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH, Director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. The panel will include top experts in the field, including:

• Natasha Bagdasarian MD, MPH, FIDSA, Chief Medical Executive for the State of Michigan
• Lauren E. Charles, MS, DVM, PhD, Chief Data Scientist of the AI-Driven One Health Security Program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Research Professor at Washington State University Paul G. Allen School for Global Health.

Please contact pandemic_center@brown.edu with any questions.

Register for this event now

Stay tuned for info on future events!

Check out our former events here

Event Date

This event was held on June 2, the Pandemic Center presented a talk by Professor Michael Baker, titled: “Why exclusion/elimination should be the default response for future severe pandemics.”

Description

This presentation discussed the range of potential strategic choices available in response to severe pandemic threats. It will focus on ‘elimination’, which became the dominant initial response to Covid-19 across much of the Asia-Pacific region, including New Zealand (NZ) and Australia. The presentation reviewed the impact of this strategy, drawing on NZ experience, along with its advantages and disadvantages. It summarized how this response strategy - and “exclusion,” which is its more proactive form - can be built into future preparedness to improve global health security.

Presenter

Professor Michael Baker, University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand; and Visiting Fulbright Scholar, Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Professor Michael Baker is a public health physician, epidemiologist, and active researcher in the Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington, NZ. He is visiting the United States as a Fulbright Scholar from April to September 2026. In NZ, he leads the Health Protection Aotearoa Research Centre which investigates ways of improving prevention and control of infectious diseases and environmental health hazards. Michael took a leading role in shaping NZ’s Covid-19 pandemic response, particularly the elimination strategy. He has a strong interest in science communication and directs the national Public Health Communications Centre.

Student Event

On April 21 at 12pm ET, the Pandemic Center hosted a workshop for students led by Jason Gale, Senior Editor and Biosecurity Correspondent at Bloomberg News, titled: Designing the First 60 Days of the Next Pandemic: Early decisions, hidden trade-offs, and the long tail of a pandemic.

About this workshop

This workshop challenged students to think beyond transmission and mortality, and to consider how early decisions shape a pandemic’s long-term health and societal consequences.

Drawing on lessons from Covid-19, the workshop explored how surges affect care delivery, the lasting burden of conditions like Long Covid, and how crisis-driven changes can create harms that persist well beyond the acute phase. The focus was on trade-offs — what gets prioritized, what gets missed, and how a broader view of risk might change decisions early on.

This workshop was designed for Brown University students.

On November 18, 2025, Craig Spencer, MD, MPH hosted Gabriella Stern for an event in the Public Health in Practice Seminar Series titled Health Communication as Essential Infrastructure for Global Health.

Stern’s career has spanned top-tier international journalism, philanthropy and public service. She led communications for the World Health Organization (WHO) throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, developing high-stakes, high-profile strategies at the most consequential time in public health communications in living memory.

This Pandemic Center event, was part of Dr. Spencer’s Public Health in Practice Seminar Series, looked at the case that the period of 2020-2025 has made for a belated recognition of health communications as a global public good, one benefiting from proper financial investments, an enhanced research agenda to strengthen quality and impact, and strategic positioning at the heart of relevant sub national, national, regional and global institutions.

Highlights from this event are covered in an article from the School of Public Health.
Read here

The Pandemic Center partnered with the Private Sector Roundtable on Global Health Security, convening 20 senior business executives and leaders from across the country to discuss lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and pragmatic, replicable models to safeguard employees and boost state and local response to major health emergencies.

Businesses are essential partners in protecting public health and economic stability during crises, as demonstrated by a national initiative that united U.S. business leaders to share lessons from COVID-19 and develop practical models for future emergency response. 

More info here