Pandemic Center

Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH

Director of the Pandemic Center, Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health
pandemic_center@brown.edu
Research Profile
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Biography

Jennifer Nuzzo is a nationally and globally recognized leader on global health security, public health preparedness and response, and health systems resilience. Together with colleagues from the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Economist Impact, she co-leads the development of the first-ever Global Health Security Index, which benchmarks 195 countries’ public health and healthcare capacities and capabilities, their commitment to international norms and global health security financing, and socioeconomic, political, and environmental risk environments.

In addition to her scholarly work, Nuzzo regularly advises national governments and for-profit and nonprofit organizations on pandemic preparedness and response, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a pandemic advisor for Impact Assets’ Stop the Spread Campaign. She is currently a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Standing Committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Center for Preparedness and Response.

Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Fox News, Politico, The Hill, and The Boston Globe. She was featured in Debunking Borat, a television series on Amazon Prime Video, and her work was featured on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. She served as COVID Advisor for the Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

 

Recent News

The Seattle Times

COVID arrived 5 years ago. How WA is looking back — and forward

The blue rubber gloves and N95 masks in a Seattle senior living community used to mark a time of isolation, fear, loss.

Yet on a recent afternoon at Merrill Gardens in Ballard, these medical supplies are more like ornaments of the past, strung across the ceiling as an almost whimsical ode to how far we’ve come.

It’s been five years since the mysterious respiratory virus responsible for an emerging pandemic was identified in Washington state and the U.S., and forced millions of us, including hundreds of Merrill Gardens residents in the Northwest, to shut in, avoid physical contact and distance from one another for months.

Not today. On this particular gray Friday, residents and staffers are celebrating. Along with the PPE garlands, a colorful banner is pinned up in the window: “Heroes Work Here.”

“We didn’t lose a single person during COVID,” general manager Lisa Palm said, speaking just of the Ballard living facility, to a room of cheering residents. All were unmasked.

She raised a glass of Champagne. “Cheers to all that being in the past.”

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KFF Health News

Trump’s Immigration Tactics Obstruct Efforts To Avert Bird Flu Pandemic, Researchers Say

Aggressive deportation tactics have terrorized farmworkers at the center of the nation’s bird flu strategy, public health workers say.

Dairy and poultry workers have accounted for most cases of the bird flu in the U.S. — and preventing and detecting cases among them is key to averting a pandemic. But public health specialists say they’re struggling to reach farmworkers because many are terrified to talk with strangers or to leave home.

“People are very scared to go out, even to get groceries,” said Rosa Yanez, an outreach worker at Strangers No Longer, a Detroit-based Catholic organization that supports immigrants and refugees in Michigan with legal and health problems, including the bird flu. “People are worried about losing their kids, or about their kids losing their parents.”

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NPR: All Things Considered

Texas' measles outbreak isn't slowing down. How can that change?

Slipping vaccination rates in West Texas have led to the state's largest measles outbreak in over 30 years, with more than 500 patients affected as of April 8 and cases spreading to New Mexico and Oklahoma. Last week, an unvaccinated Texas child died from measles, marking the third death tied to the outbreak.

Public health experts say there is a playbook for slowing outbreaks like this one: Identify cases. Isolate patients. Track where they've been and who they may have exposed. Most of all, drive up the vaccination rate.

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Macon Telegraph

Critics say CDC ‘secrecy’ will slow vital info; agency pledges transparency

Dr. David Fleming spent last week learning of the scope of the cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not through meetings with department officials or emails, but by text messages and news stories. As far as he knows, he said, there is still no official public list of the cuts. "This is unprecedented, both in the scale and scope of destruction of CDC, and unprecedented in the secret manner in which it's been being carried out," said Fleming, a public health professional in the state of Washington and chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the CDC.

Read more at: https://www.macon.com/news/article303598321.html#storylink=cpy
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New York Times

Why Measles Outbreaks May Be the New Normal

As the Trump administration moves to dismantle international public health safeguards, pull funding from local health departments and legitimize health misinformation, some experts now fear that the country is setting the stage for a long-term measles resurgence.

If federal health officials do not change course, large multistate outbreaks like the one that has torn through West Texas, jumping to neighboring states and killing two people, may become the norm.

“We have really opened the door for this virus to come back,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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CFR - Youtube

CFR 4/2 Global Affairs Expert Webinar: Complex Public Health Emergencies

Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University's School of Public Health, leads the conversation on complex public health emergencies.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
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Jennifer Nuzzo in the News

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CFR - Youtube

CFR 4/2 Global Affairs Expert Webinar: Complex Public Health Emergencies

Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University's School of Public Health, leads the conversation on complex public health emergencies.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
Brown Daily Herald

Pandemic Center director offers advice for future pandemic preparedness

On Monday, the Director of the Pandemic Center Jennifer Nuzzo presented a lecture titled “Pandemic-Proofing the Future” at a Presidential Faculty Award Lecture. Five years after a state of emergency was declared for COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, Nuzzo discussed ways we can better prepare for future pandemics.

President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 opened the event and Nuzzo was introduced by Francesca Beaudoin PhD’16, the academic dean of the School of Public Health.

Nuzzo, who is also a professor of epidemiology, opened her lecture by recognizing the devastating “failures” of the American health care system after nationwide shutdowns left cities, such as New York City, desolate.

“I don’t want to imply that New York was wrong to (shutdown),” Nuzzo told The Herald in an interview after the event. “The fact that it had to come to that was a failure.”
Cambridge Forum

Health ARE WE READY FOR THE NEXT PANDEMIC?

Cambridge Forum takes an incisive look at America’s public health system in the light of another potential pandemic, and the prospect of an incoming president who is set to dismantle our current public health care science regarded by many, as the best in the world. Alarm bells were sounded early last December when The Lancet, the world’s top medical journal, published an issue dedicated to U.S. public health lauding its remarkable global record and worrying for its future, under a second Trump administration.

Undoubtedly, America’s health achievements have changed world history in terms of the lives saved. Victories against polio and yellow fever, HIV-AIDS and malaria, infant mortality and TB are often taken for granted, along with the virtual eradication of smallpox. But all this may soon change dramatically, if Trump follows through on his disastrous choices for top government healthcare appointments.

According to an analysis by Canadian health and science writer, Crawford Kilian, the breakdown in America’s public health system is just getting started – The Tyee December 20, 2024. Future health care spending at home and abroad is slated for drastic cuts, says Killian, and “Trump’s impending return seems likely to collapse American health science with consequences as disastrous for the rest of the world, as for the 346 million Americans.”

Defense against dangerous epidemic outbreaks requires constant vigilance, and public support for public health safety measures, like vaccinations. No one can afford a repeat of Covid-19, the worst global pandemic in a century, which ended up costing the lives of over 1.2 M. Americans. Our speakers include Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, infectious disease specialist and global health physician, who advises the W.H.O on emerging diseases and Crawford Kilian, science and health reporter, who has blogged about H5N1 avian flu and other potential hazards to global health since 2005. Our discussion will address the looming public health crisis and discuss the best ways forward.

Also joining the Forum is Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and a nationally and globally recognized leader on global health security, public health preparedness and response, and health systems resilience.

In addition, Nuzzo regularly advises national governments and for-profit and non-profit organizations on pandemic preparedness and response, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a pandemic advisor for Impact Assets’ Stop the Spread Campaign and a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Standing Committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Center for Preparedness and Response. Her articles have appeared in NYT, The Washington Post, USA Today, Politico, The Hill, and The Boston Globe.

Audio from this event presented at the link provided