Katherine is joined by Jeffrey L. Sturchio, Senior Associate (Non-Resident) with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center and co-author of the new report, The Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. Initiative: An Interim Assessment and Policy Recommendations. The EHE initiative began in 2019 with a goal of reducing new HIV infections by 75% by 2025 and 90% by 2030. However, thanks to limited funding and the diversion of resources during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is not currently on track to meet...

Dr. Heidi Larson, co-founder of the Global Listening Project and founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, joins Katherine to discuss the impacts of Covid-19 on global vaccine confidence and the importance of listening closely to people’s stories to better understand how individuals experience and navigate global health threats. Prior to the pandemic, nationally representative surveys suggested that many people accepted routine...

In this episode, Katherine is joined by Dr. Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, to discuss the ways in which a changing climate affects health outcomes, as well as the ways in which health professionals can work with those in other sectors to advocate for greater focus on the climate-health nexus. Arguing that a shared interest in health and well-being can unite groups that might otherwise hold opposing views on how to address climate change, Jeni points...

In this crossover episode with AIDS' Existential Moment, recorded during the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada, on July 30th, Jeff Sturchio speaks with Dr. Mark Feinberg, president and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). In this interview, Dr. Feinberg addresses the continued progress in HIV prevention and treatment seen in recent years and outlines the challenges still faced in translating this progress into meaningful impact on the lives of people...

In this crossover episode with AIDS' Existential Moment, recorded during the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada, on July 30th, Jeff Sturchio speaks with Solange Baptiste, Executive Director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC). This is one in a series of podcasts in which we explore what needs to be done to end the AIDS pandemic, both globally and domestically.     In this wide-ranging interview, Ms. Baptiste addresses the issues that are still creating...

In this crossover episode with AIDS’ Existential Moment, recorded during the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Katherine speaks with Phelister Abdalla, of KESWA, the Kenya Sex Work Association, and Ruth Morgan Thomas, of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSPW), about the intersection of sex work, HIV/AIDS, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Phelister and Ruth argue that sex workers’ livelihoods have been uniquely disrupted by recurring curfews and lockdowns, noting that this...

In this crossover episode with AIDS' Existential Moment, recorded during the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada, on July 31st, Jeff Sturchio speaks with Professor Alan Whiteside, Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair emeritus in Global Health Policy at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.     Professor Whiteside begins with a discussion of new treatments and prevention tools for HIV/AIDS that offer the opportunity for those who have access to enjoy...

In this crossover episode with AIDS’ Existential Moment, recorded during the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Katherine speaks with Dr. Adeeba Kamarulzaman, immediate past president of IAS and the International Co-Chair of AIDS 2022, about the themes of this year’s conference, “Re-engage and follow the science.” Four years since the last International AIDS Conference took place in Amsterdam, Adeeba discusses the importance of bringing the HIV research, advocacy, and policy...

In this crossover episode with AIDS' Existential Moment, recorded during the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada, on July 31st, Jeff Sturchio speaks with Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, Professor of Medicine at the Universite Rene Descartes in Paris, Special Advisor to UNAIDS for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and a Senior Fellow with the Global Health Centre of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Professor Kazatachkine reviews the interactions...

In this crossover episode with AIDS Existential Moment, recorded during the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Katherine Bliss speaks with Eamonn Murphy, Deputy Executive Director of Programmes at UNAIDS, the Joint UN Program on HIV and AIDS, about the agency’s latest report, “In Danger.” Sounding the alarm regarding faltering progress in HIV prevention and treatment over the course of the pandemic, the report calls for greater attention to implementing legal protections for...

Katherine is joined by Ann Keeling, Senior Fellow with Women in Global Health and lead author of WGH’s new policy brief, Subsidizing Global Health: Women’s Unpaid Work in Health Systems. Neglecting to pay women appropriately for their contributions to the global health workforce is not new. In 2015, the Lancet Commission on Women and Health estimated that women contribute $3 trillion to global health activities every year but that at least half of that labor is unpaid, with negative...

Ted Chaiban, Global Lead Coordinator for UNICEF’s Covid-19 Vaccine Delivery Partnership (CoVDP), joins Katherine to discuss the state of Covid-19 vaccine coverage across the world; why some countries continue to struggle with low coverage, even as vaccine supplies have improved; and what steps need to be taken to ensure vaccines reach the most vulnerable. Out of the 34 countries that in January 2022 had Covid-19 vaccination coverage of below 10%, 23 have now surpassed 10% and 8 now have...

In this episode, Katherine speaks with John-Arne Røttingen, Ambassador for Global Health at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway. Whether it’s continuing to fight against Covid-19 through increasing equitable access to vaccines and therapies; understanding how the Financial Intermediary Fund fits into the global health funding framework; what the global response to Monkeypox tells us about the state of international cooperation on health; or addressing the threat of AMR,...

Katherine is joined by Doug Mercado, head of the area office with the World Food Program in Romania, which is managing the delivery and distribution of food supplies to vulnerable communities in neighboring Ukraine. The impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are felt internally, regionally, and globally, with agricultural production disrupted and access to food supplies limited because of damage to infrastructure and markets. At the same time, both Ukraine and Russia produce wheat and corn...

Two years later, Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations rejoins Steve for the second iteration of our Live From Munich mini-series. Dr. Hatchett reminds us that having just had a pandemic does not prevent outbreak from another, and that pandemic preparedness needs to be “viewed as a security challenge, not as a health challenge, not as a development challenge”. He points to lessons in vaccine manufacturing and financing arrangements that incentivize...

Dr. Heidi Larson, founder of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Vaccine Confidence Project™ and co-chair of the CSIS-LSHTM High-Level Panel on Vaccine Confidence and Misinformation, joins Katherine for this episode. The national security threats associated with low confidence in vaccines have changed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and we’ve seen growing polarization on regarding vaccine mandates, increased aggression towards scientists, the circulation of rumors and...

In the fourth episode of our Live From Munich Mini-Series, Steve is joined by Tom Bollyky, the Senior Fellow for Global Health, Economics, and Development and Director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Bollyky attended the Munich Security Conference “to keep the conversation about the response to the COVID crisis still on the national security agenda”. National security and global health have been historically linked, as exemplified with the birth of...

Two years ago, Dr. Jeremy Farrar joined Steve for the first iteration of Live From Munich, when the Covid-19 Pandemic was just emerging. Today, for the third installment of this Live From Munich mini-series, he returns to discuss this murky transition into the next stage of the pandemic. Dr. Farrar predicts that “political interest will wane from the pandemic because other events take over.” Politics are turning towards an exhausted, frustrated, even sometimes violent public. “We all feel fed...

In episode #124, the second episode of our Live From Munich mini-series, Steve is joined by Seth Berkely, CEO of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, “the largest purchaser of vaccines in the world”. He speaks on strengthening health security: “Do we prepare for our hopeful future? Or do we prepare for reality?” “The right thing to do is to continue to prepare for worsening variants, worsening disease. And the best way to do that is to make sure high-risk people all over the world are as protected as...

Dr. Nkengasong, Director of the Africa CDC and soon to be head of PEPFAR joined us for this 123rd episode, and the first episode of our Live From Munich mini-series, a collection of episodes recorded at the Munich Security Conference. He is a leader in the initiative to incorporate global health in security discussions like the Munich Security Conference. “We have seen how an outbreak of a disease can truly be a health security matter, and also human security, as well as even going as far as...

In this episode Katherine speaks with Daniela Ligiero, executive director and CEO of Together for Girls, a partnership focused on collecting data to raise awareness about the problem of violence towards children and adolescents, with a special focus on preventing sexual violence against girls. During the Covid-19 pandemic young children, particularly girls, have become especially vulnerable to violence, including sexual violence, spending long, unsupervised hours online or alone at home while...

In this episode Katherine speaks with Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, about the ways in which the Fund has expanded its grant-making activities to support lower and lower-middle income countries in responding to Covid-19. Noting the importance of ensuring continuity of HIV, TB, and malaria services while addressing the Covid-19 outbreak, he insists that health emergency preparedness cannot be funded at the expense of ongoing...

In this episode Keith Martin, executive director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH), talks with Katherine about the outcomes of the recent UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland; why it’s important to integrate a focus on health into global discussions about climate; how people who carry out research on global health and climate issues can frame their findings for policymakers and audiences beyond academia for greater impact; and the...

In this episode, an edited version of a live event on November 15, Katherine talks with Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, about the first year and a half of COVAX, the global collaboration focused on ensuring globally equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines. One year after the first vaccines were made available, their distribution remains highly unequal, with an overwhelming majority of doses so far delivered to populations in high-income countries. Even as vaccine production has...