Event Description

The Pandemic Center welcomes global health pioneer John Nkengasong to the School of Public Health for a conversation and Q&A on November 11 at 12pm ET.

Ambassador (ret.) Nkengasong was the first Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. He served as the US Global AIDS Coordinator and Senior Bureau Official for Global Health Security and Diplomacy in the Biden administration, and has held positions at the World Health Organization and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This event is open to all and is designed particularly for students and the Brown SPH community to learn from an expert in the field with unmatched firsthand experience in confronting the world’s most prominent public health challenges.

The discussion will be moderated by members of the Pandemic Center team:

Senior Adviser Beth Cameron, a national and global leader in health security, biosecurity, and pandemic preparedness that has worked, over decades, both within the highest levels of government and outside of it to facilitate change.

Horizon Fellow Oluwatosin Wuraola Akande, who has served as a Technical Officer in the Health Emergencies Programme at the World Health Organization (WHO) and as an Assistant Director at the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC).

Lunch will be provided to attendees. Please register in advance to ensure an accurate headcount.

Register Here

Event Details

On November 20 at 10:00 AM EST, the Pandemic Center will host a webinar titled: Pandemic Preparedness & Response: A conversation with Jeremy Farrar. 

Event Description

In late 2021, following the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sir Jeremy Farrar authored a landmark memo outlining key lessons and recommendations for global pandemic preparedness. Five years later, under a vastly changed political and financial operating environment, how has the global response infrastructure evolved, and what work remains to be done? In this Pandemic Center webinar, the Pandemic Center will convene a discussion with Sir Jeremy Farrar to reflect on the progress made since 2021 — including the implementation of pathogen surveillance frameworks like the 100 Days Mission, the International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN), and the WHO Pandemic Hub Strategy — and discuss the key challenges for public health and biodefense moving forward.

Panel

Moderator: 
Wilmot James, Senior Adviser to the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health 

Speaker: 
Sir Jeremy Farrar, Chief of PATH’s Asia, Middle East, and Europe (AMEE) Region; former Assistant Director-General, Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and Care at the World Health Organization; former Director and CEO of the Wellcome Trust

This webinar is part of the Pandemics & Society series, which focuses on current pandemic threats and response systems as well as how to build preparedness for the future. 

Please contact pandemic_center@brown.edu with any questions.

Register Here

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.