Can Dr. Tom Frieden Save 100 Million Lives?

Dr. Tom Frieden lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 to 2017. He now has a new role: President and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies.   And in this role he has an audacious goal: to save 100 million lives.  In our conversation, Dr. Frieden explains why he believes that he can achieve that goal by focusing on two health issues: cardiovascular disease in the developing work and shoring up our global defenses against pandemics.   To those ends, he has some major backers including the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.   In this episode, Dr. Frieden discusses these two issues in depth and some strategies his organization is using to confront them. He also explains why, of all the issues in global health, he chose to focus on these two.