Event Date

On June 2 at 12pm ET, the Pandemic Center will present a talk by Professor Michael Baker, titled: “Why exclusion/elimination should be the default response for future severe pandemics.”

Description

This presentation will discuss 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 will review the impact of this strategy, drawing on NZ experience, along with its advantages and disadvantages. It will summarize 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.

Register Now

Please contact pandemic_center@brown.edu with any questions.

Stay tuned for info on future events!

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

Check out our former events here