Skip to Main Content
Brown University
School of Public Health Brown University

Pandemic Center

Search Menu

Site Navigation

  • Pandemic Center
  • About
    • Team
    • Connect
    • Annual Reports
  • Our Work
    • American Democracy and Health Security Initiative
    • AWARE
    • Biosecurity Game Changers Initiative
    • Africa Health Security Index
    • Wastewater Surveillance
    • Clean Indoor Air
    • Exemplars in Global Health - COVID-19 Response
    • Our Storied Health Film and Media Series
    • Testing Playbook for Biological Emergencies
  • News
    • In the News
    • Tracking Report Archive
  • Publications
  • Events
    • Upcoming and Past Events
Search
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
Twitter

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

TIME

What We’ve Learned from the Texas Measles Outbreak

August 25, 2025
Texas health officials on Aug. 18 declared the end of a measles outbreak that had sickened more than 760 people across the state and killed two children. Doctors and public-health officials involved in the outbreak, most of whom had previously never encountered a measles patient, are now taking stock of what they’ve learned about the virus and the best ways to prevent and control outbreaks of the disease.

Measles, they say, is as contagious as feared, and unvaccinated people are the most vulnerable. But while vaccination remains the best way to prevent measles, Texas public-health officials say they could have adopted a more inclusive approach when engaging with vaccine-hesitant communities about the virus and its risks. More investment is also needed, they say, into building trust between rural communities and health officials.

---
Read Article
KFF Health News

As Measles Exploded, Officials in Texas Looked to CDC Scientists. Under Trump, No One Answered.

August 25, 2025
As measles surged in Texas early this year, the Trump administration’s actions sowed fear and confusion among CDC scientists that kept them from performing the agency’s most critical function — emergency response — when it mattered most, an investigation from KFF Health News shows.

The outbreak soon became the worst the United States has endured in over three decades.

In the month after Donald Trump took office, his administration interfered with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention communications, stalled the agency’s reports, censored its data, and abruptly laid off staff. In the chaos, CDC experts felt restrained from talking openly with local public health workers, according to interviews with seven CDC officials with direct knowledge of events, as well as local health department emails obtained by KFF Health News through public records requests.

---
Read Article
The National News Desk

Who should parents trust? American Academy of Pediatrics, CDC offer different shot advice

August 20, 2025
(TNND) — The American Academy of Pediatrics issued vaccine recommendations that differ from the government's guidance on the hot-button issue of COVID-19 shots.

And several vaccine experts said Wednesday that they expect pediatricians will listen to the AAP on this one, not the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I expect nearly all pediatricians are going to follow the science-based guidelines, which is what the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of Brown University's Pandemic Center.

---
Read Article
Barron's

Covid-19 Vaccine Guidelines Are Changing. What We Know About Who Can Get a Shot.

August 20, 2025
t’s late August, there’s a hurricane coming up the East Coast, schools are starting to open, and no one has any idea who can get an updated Covid-19 shot.

The Covid-19 pandemic is over, but the virus persists. It has killed up to 56,000 people in the U.S. since last October, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and sickened up to 18 million. Pfizer

PFE +1.67% , Moderna MRNA -2.38% , and Novavax NVAX -10.41% all plan to launch new versions of their Covid-19 vaccines this fall, updated to target a family of Covid-19 viruses called JN.1.

---
Read Article
SCRIPPS News

‘This could adversely affect cancer vaccine research’: Experts worry about Kennedy’s mRNA vaccine cuts

August 13, 2025
Dr. Elias Sayour is working on groundbreaking research toward a universal cancer vaccine, and he’s concerned that a recent decision from the Department of Health and Human Services could impede his team's work and the research of others hoping to develop new vaccines for diseases.

Sayour, a pediatric oncologist and professor at the University of Florida,is leading a team that’s using mRNA technology to help create a vaccine that fights cancer.

---
Read Article
The Atlantic

Why RFK Jr.’s Anti-Vaccine Campaign Is Working

August 13, 2025
Four and a half years ago, fresh off the success of Operation Warp Speed, mRNA vaccines were widely considered—as President Donald Trump said in December 2020—a “medical miracle.” Last week, the United States government decidedly reversed that stance when Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of grants and contracts for mRNA-vaccine research.

With Kennedy leading HHS, this about-face is easy to parse as yet another anti-vaccine move. But the assault on mRNA is also proof of another kind of animus: the COVID-revenge campaign that top officials in this administration have been pursuing for months, attacking the policies, technologies, and people that defined the U.S.’s pandemic response. As the immediacy of the COVID crisis receded, public anger about the American response to it took deeper root—perhaps most prominently among some critics who are now Trump appointees. That acrimony has become an essential tool in Kennedy’s efforts to undermine vaccines. “It is leverage,” Dorit Reiss, a vaccine-law expert at UC Law San Francisco, told me. “It is a way to justify doing things that he wouldn’t be able to get away with otherwise.”
Read Article

Jennifer Nuzzo in the News

See all Pandemic Center news
June 10, 2025 The National News Desk

RFK Jr. overhauls vaccine advisory panel; doctor calls it 'dark day for public health'

(TNND) — Health officials are sounding alarms over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to overhaul a vaccine advisory board with his appointees.

The Health and Human Services secretary announced Monday in a Wall Street Journal opinion article that he was replacing all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

The ACIP is an expert scientific panel that develops vaccine recommendations for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The immunization schedule, or list of recommended shots, for kids is based on the panel’s advice to the CDC.

The ACIP recommendations have consequences for which vaccines insurers are willing to cover and which vaccines doctors recommend to their patients.

---
May 7, 2025 News from SPH

Are we ready?

Five years after the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, School of Public Health experts look to Washington as they weigh in on where our biosurveillance tools and preparedness systems stand now: What’s changed, what hasn’t and what must be built to make us ready for the next pandemic?
April 2, 2025 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 University School of Public Health
Providence RI 02903 401-863-3375 public_health@brown.edu

Quick Navigation

  • Newsletter
  • Visit Brown
  • Campus Map

Footer Navigation

  • Accessibility
  • Careers at Brown
Give To Brown

© Brown University

School of Public Health Brown University
For You
Search Menu

Mobile Site Navigation

    Mobile Site Navigation

    • Pandemic Center
    • About
      • Team
      • Connect
      • Annual Reports
    • Our Work
      • American Democracy and Health Security Initiative
      • AWARE
      • Biosecurity Game Changers Initiative
      • Africa Health Security Index
      • Wastewater Surveillance
      • Clean Indoor Air
      • Exemplars in Global Health - COVID-19 Response
      • Our Storied Health Film and Media Series
      • Testing Playbook for Biological Emergencies
    • News
      • In the News
      • Tracking Report Archive
    • Publications
    • Events
      • Upcoming and Past Events
All of Brown.edu People
Close Search

Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH