Pandemic Planet CSIS

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 those ambitious targets. Jeff explains the various factors that could prevent EHE from achieving the 2025 and 2030 goals and shares examples of innovative, person-centered programs in San Francisco, CA and East Baton Rouge, LA that “meet people where they are” and create incentives for people to seek testing and stay on treatment. Jeff and Katherine discuss the importance of adapting lessons from global HIV programs, including PEPFAR, to the domestic epidemic and the opportunity to educate a new cohort of elected officials about EHE as the new Congress takes office in 2023.
 
Jeffrey L. Sturchio a Senior Associate (Non-Resident) with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, leading the work on the HIV portfolio. He is chairman and former CEO at Rabin Martin, a global health strategy consulting firm, and former president and CEO of the Global Health Council. Before joining the council in 2009, Dr. Sturchio was vice president of corporate responsibility at Merck & Co. Inc. and president of the Merck Company Foundation. He received a BA in history from Princeton University and a PhD in the history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania. 

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 immunizations, but the explosion of information and misinformation about new Covid-19 vaccines has led more people to question the value of immunization programs, and coverage has gone down. Social cohesion has also been negatively affected by the pandemic, with the World Economic Forum 2022 Risk Report showing a nearly 30% decline since early 2020. Noting that we have all experienced a kind of trauma over the past three years, Heidi argues that it’s essential to enable people to tell their own stories of survival if we want to prepare, as a society, for future shocks and crises. The Global Listening Project aims to capture people’s experiences and develop an index of public readiness that is informed by the public so that future interventions will be more relevant to people’s lives.
Dr. Heidi Larson is a Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and is the Founding Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is the author of STUCK: How Vaccine Rumors Start – and Why They Don’t Go Away.

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 to progress in raising attention to health within global climate discussions and explains what she expects to see at the upcoming Climate Change Conference (COP27) scheduled to take place in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, in November.
 
Dr. Jeni Miller is Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, where she coordinates the joint efforts of national, regional and international health organizations addressing climate change. On behalf of the Alliance, Dr. Miller co-chairs the WHO-Civil Society Working Group on Climate and Health. In addition to her work at GCHA, Dr. Miller currently serves as Immediate-Past-Chair of the Environment Section of the American Public Health Association.

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 affected by HIV/AIDs. Turning the tide against HIV will require a decline in new infections, which highlights the need for an effective HIV vaccine. Dr. Feinberg discusses the exciting and fascinating progress being made in research on broadly neutralizing antibodies and how the lessons learned from failed vaccine efficacy trials have informed new approaches that have considerable promise for enhancing understanding of how to design effective HIV vaccines. He also explains clearly and compellingly some of the basic biology that makes HIV such a wily and difficult adversary due to its genetic diversity compared to such other pathogens as Ebola and SARS-COV-2. New tools in such areas as mRNA delivery and computational biology are being brought to bear in the search for an HIV vaccine. Dr. Feinberg concludes by expressing his hope that the scientific challenges of HIV will continue to attract the next generation of creative young scientists.

Mark Feinberg leads a global team at IAVI working to advance the development of vaccines and other biomedical innovations to protect against infection with HIV, TB, and other infectious diseases that have a disproportionate impact on low-income countries. Prior to joining IAVI in late 2015, Feinberg served as chief public health and science officer with Merck Vaccines. Dr. Feinberg holds an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, and a B.A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

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 barriers to equitable access to HIV treatment around the world. She contrasts the excitement at new developments like long-acting prevention tools with the persistent challenge of inequities in HIV care and treatment, especially in middle-income countries. She speaks eloquently of access as a human right and the importance of educating and empowering affected communities to take the lead in creating new solutions. Ms. Baptiste makes a strong case that the world won’t achieve access for all unless we tackle structural barriers and power imbalances – and redesign systems to address the needs of people living with or at risk of HIV infection.   
 
Solange Baptiste assumed her current role as Executive Director of ITPC in 2016. She leads community activists and allies across the globe to deliver ITPC’s mission to enable people in need to gain access to optimal and affordable HIV treatment through treatment education, demand creation, community-based monitoring, and interventions to make medicines more affordable. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Tuskegee University and her Master of Science in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Solange is committed to ensuring that the voice of affected communities contributes to and influences the decisions and policies that affect their lives.

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 often-stigmatized community has not benefitted from the social protection programs many countries established to support workers in the formal sector from loss of jobs or income during the early phases of the pandemic. They highlight how sex workers have instead been at the forefront of community-led initiatives that deliver antiretroviral medications, food, and other essential health commodities to each other, and consider how the integration of HIV/AIDS response into pandemic preparedness and response may affect sex workers and the community people living with HIV. Over the years and across many international AIDS conferences, sex workers have fought for their experiences to be taken into account and for their voices to be heard within the meetings’ focus on policy and research agendas.

Phelister Abdalla is the National Coordinator of the Kenya Sex Workers Alliance (KESWA) and the President of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSPW), based in Nairobi. She is a single mother of three, and an active sex worker living with HIV for the last 11 years. Ruth Morgan Thomas is the Global Coordinator, Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSPW). She has been involved in the sex industry for more than 30 years, including as a sex worker, an academic researcher at Edinburgh University, and a sex workers’ rights advocate.