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Pandemic Center

Elizabeth (Beth) Cameron, Ph.D.

Senior Adviser to the Brown Pandemic Center, Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health
elizabeth_cameron@brown.edu
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Biography

Senior Adviser to the Brown Pandemic Center, Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice

A national and global leader in health security, biosecurity, pandemic preparedness, biodefense, and combating bioterrorism, Dr. Cameron has worked at the highest levels over decades within and outside of government to facilitate change. She spent two tours as a Special Assistant to the President on the White House National Security Council staff, twice helping establish and lead the Directorate on Global Health Security and Biodefense, a role in which she served under three Presidents. In this and other positions, she builds and leads robust teams focused, every day, on leaning forward to prevent, detect, and rapidly respond to biological crises. In addition to her role on the Pandemic Center senior leadership team, Beth is a non-resident senior advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Global Health Policy Center, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a practitioner senior fellow of the UVA Miller Center.

Dr. Cameron has held senior posts at the Departments of State and Defense, where she created and oversaw biological and chemical security efforts, as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development where she served as a global health security adviser. Outside of government, she served as a Vice President at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, where she was an architect of NTI | bio, a program aimed at countering biological catastrophes. She has been instrumental to developing, coordinating, launching, and implementing the U.S. global COVID-19 response, the Pandemic Fund, the U.S. National Biodefense Strategy, the Global Health Security Agenda, the Development Finance Institution Medical Countermeasures Surge Financing Initiative, the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction biosecurity effort, and many other initiatives focused on improving biosecurity and biosafety globally. Her work has helped address homeland and national security threats by enhancing pandemic preparedness, biosecurity and biosafety; improving emerging infectious disease surveillance, and countering the development and use of biological weapons. She got her start in government as an AAAS fellow at the State Department and in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Beth holds a Ph.D. in Biology from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Biology from the University of Virginia (UVA). 

Outside of government, she led and was an architect of NTI | bio, a program of the Nuclear Threat Initiative aimed at countering biological catastrophes, and she served at the American Cancer Society.  She got her start in government as an AAAS Fellow at the State Department and in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Beth holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the Human Genetics and Molecular Biology Program at the Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Biology from the University of Virginia. 

Recent News

VAccine (Journal)

A tale of two U.S. Global health security futures—withdraw or evolve?

June 19, 2025
Rapid detection and response to biological threats are critical to global health security. For decades, the United States has played a leading role in international outbreak response. However, recent U.S. policy shifts, including deep cuts to global health programs, reductions in personnel, and withdrawal from key institutions like the World Health Organization, are weakening disease detection and response systems worldwide. These actions threaten outbreak preparedness, data sharing, research collaboration, and frontline response capabilities, increasing the risk of uncontrolled epidemics with potentially catastrophic consequences.

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KFF Health News

In Axing mRNA Contract, Trump Delivers Another Blow to US Biosecurity, Former Officials Say

June 6, 2025
The Trump administration’s cancellation of $766 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic flu viruses is the latest blow to national defense, former health security officials said. They warned that the U.S. could be at the mercy of other countries in the next pandemic.

“The administration’s actions are gutting our deterrence from biological threats,” said Beth Cameron, a senior adviser to the Brown University Pandemic Center and a former director at the White House National Security Council. “Canceling this investment is a signal that we are changing our posture on pandemic preparedness,” she added, “and that is not good for the American people.”

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Buzzsprout

The Global Health Politics Podcast | The Dismantling of U.S. Foreign Aid and the Consequences for Global Health

April 30, 2025
In this episode, Joseph Harris explores the actions taken by the Trump administration to dismantle U.S. foreign aid and the consequences that these actions will have for global health. He sits down with Dr. Beth Cameron, a former Senior Adviser to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); Nidhi Bouri, former Deputy Assistant Administrator at USAID; Dr. Brooke Nichols, Associate Professor of Global Health at Boston University and creator of as U.S. aid freeze impact tracker; and Sheena Adams, Global Communications Director for The Accountability Lab, which launched its own Global Aid Freeze Tracker.
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CSIS

Beth Cameron and Stephanie Psaki Named Senior Advisers with CSIS Global Health Policy Center

April 22, 2025
WASHINGTON, April 22, 2025: The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) announced today that Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Cameron and Dr. Stephanie Psaki have been appointed as non-resident senior advisers with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center.

Cameron and Psaki are global leaders in health security and biodefense with experience across academia, nonprofit organizations, and in government, including establishing global health security missions at the White House. Dr. Cameron is a professor of the practice and senior advisor to the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. Dr. Psaki recently joined the Brown School of Public Health as a distinguished senior fellow and formerly served as special assistant to the president and the inaugural U.S. coordinator for global health security at the White House.
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Just Security

Dropping U.S. Biodefenses: Why Cuts to Federal Health Agencies Make Americans Less Safe

April 3, 2025
On April 1, the Trump administration began making sweeping changes to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by firing thousands of staff, some of whom learned of this decision when they arrived at work on Tuesday morning and were not allowed to enter the building. According to HHS, the administration plans to reduce the HHS workforce from 82,000 full-time employees to 62,000. It is also consolidating the current 28 divisions into 15 divisions, and eliminating five of the 10 regional offices in the United States, among other changes.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. framed these changes as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, citing recent declines in life expectancy, while neglecting to mention that those declines were largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration’s stated goals are to streamline HHS, save taxpayer money, focus more on chronic illness, and make HHS more responsive and efficient. It claims it can make these reforms without impacting critical services. In practice, however, the administration has cut essential funding that was helping states and cities prepare for outbreaks; reassigned leaders who were stopping biological threats in other countries from spreading; undermined the United States’ ability to quickly review and approve treatments and vaccines during an emergency; and disrupted essential work to create vaccines, tests, and treatments for dangerous diseases. These approaches do not make America healthy. They make America less safe.

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CSIS

Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Cameron: “It has been a blizzard... It’s a staggering reality”

March 6, 2025
Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Cameron, Professor, Brown University, and former senior official in global health security and biodefense at the White House and USAID, kindly shares her thoughts on the radical changes unfolding inside the U.S. government surrounding biothreats. Two internal factions within the Trump administration vie with one another. “It’s a bleak picture” in the accumulating damage to the federal workforce, programs, and the protective shield inside and outside our borders. Elon Musk alleges USAID is producing bioweapons, a patent lie. “It’s preposterous” and “dangerous.” More responsibilities will now fall to governors. What to make of the Trump administration’s recent $1B announcement on H5N1 to assist the poultry industry, and its decision to revisit the $590m contract with Moderna for a mRNA human vaccine for H5N1? We don’t know much on what is going to happen in Congress and DOD. And when emergency crises will strike next. Where to find hope? Our civil servants.
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Elizabeth (Beth) Cameron, PhD