Pandemic Center

When Stephanie Psaki, a senior fellow in public health, joined the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2021, she was tasked with helping coordinate the government’s response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

She then joined the National Security Council at the White House in the Biden-Harris administration where she worked for two and a half years. A scientist and an academic by training, she told The Herald she didn’t expect to move to this policy-focused role.

“I didn’t think that I was going to do this job when I was in undergrad or in grad school,” she said. “It never occurred to me.”

But now, Psaki has returned to academia, bringing her policy experience to Brown.

Masking up. Distance learning. Social distancing. No one could have predicted the profound changes that followed the World Health Organization’s declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic five years ago Tuesday.

Dozens of essential care workers and advocates gathered outside the State House to remember Rhode Island’s nearly 4,500 victims of the pandemic and address the ongoing challenges their field still faces.
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There are moments where life is divided into a before and an after. Something so significant occurs that it permanently alters the way you perceive the world and yourself in it.

For many of us, 11 March 2020 is one of those moments. That’s the day that the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

The stock market plunged, U.S. President Donald Trump banned travel from Europe, and the National Basketball Association (NBA) suspended its season until further notice.

At the same time, security practitioners were working around the clock to put in place measures to protect their employees and organizations. Ahead of the fifth anniversary of the pandemic declaration, Security Management spoke with a range of security and health professionals to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic experience shaped them and what it means for the future of risk management and emergency preparedness.

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Sixty days into 2025, the U.S. had the highest number of measles cases this early into the year in three decades.

Measles has been reported in eight states, with the largest outbreak in Texas, where there have been at least 159 cases and one unvaccinated child has died. The last previous deaths from measles in the U.S. were in 2015 and 2003.

Because of the highly contagious nature of this virus, spotty and falling vaccination rates and the arrival of spring break and recreational travel to areas with measles, there is great potential for measles to spread across the country without aggressive action now to bridge gulfs in preparedness.

Measles is a vaccine-preventable illness that predominantly affects children and adolescents, with a recent hospitalization rate of about 25 to 40 percent. Ten percent of children with measles may have long-term hearing loss, and one in 1,000 will have severe brain inflammation.

A non-vaccinated individual has a 90 percent chance of contracting measles if they are exposed to a contagious individual. Measles is contagious for four days before the rash appears and then for another four days.

For more than 50 years, we have prevented measles and contained viral spread through vaccination and isolation. If an unvaccinated individual is exposed to measles, vaccination within 72 hours can prevent illness and allow the person to go on with their life. Otherwise, the individual needs to isolate for the 21-day incubation period.

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