PODCAST · health
Take as Directed
by CSIS Global Health Policy Center | Center for Strategic and International Studies
The CommonHealth is the podcast of the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security. On The CommonHealth, hosts J. Stephen Morrison and Katherine Bliss delve deeply into the puzzle that connects pandemic preparedness and response, HIV/AIDS, routine immunization, and primary care, areas of huge import to human and national security. The CommonHealth replaces under a single podcast the Coronavirus Crisis Update, Pandemic Planet and AIDS Existential Moment. Produced by Marla Hiller.
Episodes
-
25 Years Since the Anthrax Attacks: Where Are We Now?
It has been 25 years since a series of letters containing anthrax powder were distributed through the U.S. postal system in an act of bioterrorism. The 25th anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect on how the United States responded to these anthrax attacks and to explore U.S. efforts to...
-
Drs. Armand Sprecher and Adi Nadimpalli, MSF: on-the-ground in the eastern DRC Ebola crisis
Drs. Armand Sprecher and Adi Nadimpalli, MSF, directed on-the-ground operations in Ituri and North Kivu provinces in recent months. They unpack why no one should feel comfortable with a runaway Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC that continues to outstrip the response. Reassuring statements from other...
-
Dr. Megan Ranney, Dean, Yale School of Public Health: On 9/11: "That time set the foundation for where we are today."
Megan Ranney, Dean of the Yale School of Public Health for the past three years plus, reflects on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. And what she has learned and the innovations she has spearheaded leading Yale in an uncertain, highly volatile moment. "The slow destruction of trust is perhaps the...
-
Using Drones to Expand Healthcare Delivery
Zipline has drawn attention for its record of success delivering life-saving medical products by drone through its expanding network across key African partner countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Rwanda. Its on-demand supply chain approach has expanded access to vaccines,...
-
Monisha Ashok, Director of Health Investments, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC): DFC's "strategy refresh" elevates health as a priority.
Monisha Ashok, Director of Health Investments, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) lays out how health now figures in DFC's strategy following the late 2025 Congressional reauthorization that increased its investment cap by more than threefold to $205 billion with much…
more -
Hayley Severance, NTI: The newly released Africa Health Security Index
Hayley Severance, Deputy Vice President, Global Biological Policy and Programs, Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), walks us through the newly launched Africa Health Security Index (AHSI): its origin and purpose; its key African and other partners; what it reveals about significant progress in…
more -
Aurélia Nguyen, CEPI: "Vaccines will be part of the solution" to the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak
Aurélia Nguyen, Dep. CEO of CEPI (Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) shares her unusual personal and career story, including working with Andrew Witty at GSK, and with Seth Berkley at GAVI during Ebola in West Africa 2014-2015 and later during the COVID-19 pandemic when she managed…
more -
Ken Isaacs, Samaritan’s Purse: "What they need are Ebola fighters."
Samaritan’s Purse (SP) has a well-established hospital and deep community ties in DRC's Ituri province. Vice President Ken Isaacs describes how SP pivoted during the unfolding Ebola outbreak, launching Ebola treatment centers. Humanitarian assistance reaches close to 200,000. Health workers have...
-
Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme: Ebola outbreak in Ituri, Congo "a perfect storm."
Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, spent several weeks in the hot zone in eastern Congo, mobilizing the international response to the late-discovered Ebola outbreak. Establishing community trust and confidence is the single most urgent challenge across all...
-
CommonHealth Live! with Rep. Ami Bera
In this episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, J. Stephen Morrison sits down with Representative Ami Bera (CA-06) to discuss the future of U.S. global health security strategy in an era of redefined alliances, geopolitical competition, and the rise of transformative but disruptive technologies...
-
Dr. Gerald Parker: New World Screwworm arrives —"sometimes there is bureaucratic inertia."
Dr. Gerald Parker, an acclaimed biodefense/One Health expert and high-ranking official across several administrations, experienced New World screwworm (NWS) as a boy in Texas while assisting his veterinarian father treat pets invaded by the parasite. Michaela Simoneau, CSIS Fellow, joined the...
-
Jamie Bay Nishi, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH): “We can’t have the same three CDC epidemiologists managing the world’s crises.”
Jamie Bay Nishi, the dynamic CEO of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), is absorbed with the question: how do we navigate all the changes in government policy and programs and hold the global health community together? That includes philanthropies, universities, and...
-
Declan Walsh, NYT Africa Correspondent: "It all boils down to two factors, conflict and gold."
Declan Walsh, the acclaimed New York Times Africa correspondent, visited the hot zone of the Ebola outbreak in Ituri Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from May 22 to June 12, the "perfect petri dish." How to explain the "enormous lag" in acknowledging the outbreak and...
-
Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, Chair, Africa CDC Emergency Consultative Group: "Congolese doctors know how to treat Ebola patients."
Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, the renowned South African epidemiologist, chairs the Africa CDC Emergency Consultative Group. In that role, he just completed a visit to Bunia, capital of Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, site of the dangerous Ebola outbreak. His focus included...
-
Strengthening Vaccine Production and Access to Routine Immunizations in Sub-Saharan Africa | The CommonHealth Live!
Two years since the launch of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Accelerator (AVMA), a financial mechanism that invests in commercially viable manufacturing efforts on the continent, what progress has been made in the effort to produce 800 million vaccines in Africa by 2035? Where are there...
-
Dr. Jeffrey Gold, President of the University of Nebraska: “Containing outbreaks is always in our national interest.”
Dr. Jeffrey Gold, President of the University of Nebraska, details the evolving experience of caring for the 16 Americans evacuated from the Dutch ship, the HV Hondius, following an outbreak on the ship of the Andes strain of the hantavirus. The American passengers were successfully settled May…
more -
Professor Rebecca Katz, Georgetown University: the Health Security Operations Center during the FIFA World Cup
Professor Rebecca Katz, Georgetown University, explains the Health Security Operations Center, the remarkable initiative she has spearheaded with others to enhance protection against dangerous outbreaks during the FIFA World Cup June 11-July 19 in the US, Mexico and Canada. She speaks to its...
-
Professor Paul Spiegel, Johns Hopkins University: the release of the Lancet Commission report on health, conflict and forced displacement
On May 20, Professor Paul Spiegel presents in Geneva the report of the Lancet Commission on health, conflict and forced displacement, conducted in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health (CHH.) The U.S. rollout will take place June 2 at the JHU Washington Center, 555 PA...
-
Priya Basu, the Pandemic Fund: "Countries are not sitting on the fence. They are lining up."
Priya Basu, head of the Pandemic Fund (est. 2022, based at the World Bank), reflects on the Fund's origin and evolution. "It exists to solve problems no one else was solving." Its $1.4 B invested over three years in pandemic preparedness and response has attracted seven times that much from…
more -
A Conversation with Dr. Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance | The Futures Summit
Gavi CEO Sania Nishtar sat down with Katherine E. Bliss, Director and Senior Fellow, Immunizations and Health Systems Resilience, to discuss the Alliance’s ambitious plan of work for the next five years; the ways in which Gavi is reforming to improve efficiencies, promote country ownership and...
-
The Lenacapavir Partnership and the Evolution of U.S. Foreign Assistance | The Futures Summit
In September 2025, the U.S. Department of State, Gilead Sciences, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced a novel partnership to procure and deliver lenacapavir—a groundbreaking twice-yearly injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention—to up to two...
-
Dr. Eli Cahan: “Human beings are wired for stories.”
Dr. Eli Cahan explains how he evolved into both a neonatologist and an accomplished, intrepid journalist, inspired by the likes of Atul Gawande and shaped by experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a balancing act, rushing between fixed medical facilities and airplanes. “We get to bear...
-
Dr. Benjamin Park, CDC: speed is of utmost importance
Dr. Benjamin Park is Director of the CDC Division of Global Health Protection that protects Americans against dangerous outbreaks by strengthening partner countries’ capabilities to detect and respond. A personal and early professional epiphany was Benjamin’s role in leading the investigation in...
-
Expanding Access to Immunizations in the Americas | The CommonHealth Live!
During this year’s Vaccination Week in the Americas, which runs from April 25 to May 2, countries across the hemisphere will celebrate the lives saved through immunization programs, carry out special campaigns to increase immunization coverage among vulnerable populations, and conduct educational...
-
Dan Diamond, Washington Post: “A big hole that no one knows how to fill.”
Dan Diamond, Washington Post reporter on the White House and health care, shares his reflections on President Trump’s swirling passions to reshape Washington’s built environment, with intense controversy surrounding the ballroom. What’s driving this, and where is it headed? On health, Dan…
more -
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times: Reflections on HHS Secretary RFK Jr’s tenure
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times, offers her reflections on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s tenure over the past fifteen months. His vaccine agenda has always been an “outlier”—“an unpopular agenda”—yet it remains at the core of his identity. He has now “hit a wall.” Casey Means’…
more -
The Resurgence of Measles in the United States | CommonHealth Live!
Since January 2025, the United States has confirmed more than 3,000 cases of measles across multiple states - with South Carolina reporting nearly 1000 cases in just the first two months of 2026. The economic costs of these outbreaks pose a burden to local and state health agencies through...
-
Emily Gibbons, Gilead Sciences: the lenacapavir partnership
Gilead Sciences, the Trump administration, and the Global Fund have joined in partnership to bring lenacapavir, the new twice-yearly injectable prevention tool against HIV/AIDS, to two million persons at-risk in ten African countries in three years. Emily Gibbons, Gilead Sciences, explains the…
more -
Book Event: Deployed by Kevin De Cock
This episode of The CommonHealth features a discussion of the recently published book, Deployed: A Physician on the Front Lines of Global Health, by Kevin M. De Cock. In Deployed, De Cock details an insider’s perspective confronting infectious disease crises from the AIDS pandemic to Ebola to...
-
Andi L. Fristedt, Parkinson’s Foundation: “The data (on paraquat) is clear.”
Andi L. Fristedt, former senior official at CDC, FDA and the Senate HELP Committee, heads up a newly established Washington, D.C. office of the Parkinson’s Foundation. The Foundation acts in close allegiance with Michael J. Fox and his foundation; advocates; scientific and policy leaders such as...
-
Keith Poulsen, Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory: “Emergency response is hard.”
Keith Poulsen, professor at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, provides an update on the status of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1), as pertains to dairy cattle, poultry, wildlife—and humans. Are we making progress in biosecurity in...
-
Measles Outbreaks and Elimination in North America | The CommonHealth Live!
Over the past year, outbreaks of measles, a highly transmissible virus, have affected thousands of unvaccinated people across Canada, Mexico and the United States. With more than 5,000 cases and sustained transmission during 2025, Canada lost its measles elimination status in October. And the...
-
Jane Halton: the launch of CEPI 3.0
Jane Halton, chair of CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, walks us through CEPI's evolution since its founding in early 2017, and the launch on February 14, at the Munich Security Conference, of CEPI 3.0, fitted to the current era of heightened threat of dangerous…
more -
John-Arne Røttingen, CEO, Wellcome Trust: “The system has changed—and changed forever.”
John-Arne Røttingen, CEO of Wellcome Trust, is a Norwegian leader whose expertise has a remarkable span, encompassing medicine, science, research, clinical trials, negotiations, diplomacy, philanthropy, financing of global health, and governance of international institutions. He shares with us…
more -
Keith Humphreys, Stanford University: China’s supply shock of fentanyl and chemical precursors
Keith Humphreys, a leading expert on addiction psychiatry, based at Stanford University, unpacks his January article in Science examining the steep reduction in overdoses deaths—between May 2023 and the end of 2024—in the United States and Canada. It likely stemmed from a supply shock, linked to...
-
Amb. (ret) Karl Hofmann, Health X Partners: “Not everyone curtails their job in Paris.”
Amb. (ret) Karl Hofmann is CEO of the recently launched Health X Partners (HXP), a parent company under which Population Services International (PSI) and the Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AID Foundation (EGPAF) now operate. He explains his personal story—from a successful diplomatic path centered in...
-
Dr. Chris Murray, IHME: The “Commission of Commissions.”
Dr. Chris Murray, IHME, co-chairs the Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health, which will launch its report in February at the Munich Security Conference. It is the “Commission of Commissions,” a novel, highly ambitious three-year effort to forecast what are to be the biggest,...
-
Prevention Intention: Wafaa El-Sadr on People and Persistence in HIV Research
In the second episode of the Prevention Intention mini-series, Katherine speaks with Wafaa El-Sadr, University Professor in Epidemiology at Columbia University and the director of ICAP. They discuss El-Sadr’s formative experience treating AIDS patients in New York City in the early 1980s, as the...
-
Prevention Intention: Linda-Gail Bekker on HIV Prevention with Purpose
In the first episode of the Prevention Intention mini-series, a series featuring conversations with leading female HIV clinical researchers, Katherine speaks with Linda-Gail Bekker, a medical doctor and director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town. They discuss Bekker's...
-
Erika Elvander, former U.S. Health Attache in Beijing: “It behooves us to find the common ground.”
Erika Elvander served her country as a federal career health diplomat for 27 years, including as the U.S. Health Attache in Beijing from the spring 2021 until the end of 2024. Her Asia passion ignited while a student in Hong Kong and traveler to Beijing in the late 1980s. And carried forward for...
-
Marian Wentworth, MSH: "I have been working since I was 13."
Marian Wentworth, President & CEO, Management Sciences for Health (MSH), at age 13 started working in a local factory. Attended the famous Latin School in Chicago. Studied math at Harvard. Then joined Merck as it was "growing ferociously fast." Stayed 27 years, grew and led the vaccine business…
more -
Rep. Adam Smith on Engaging China
Listen to the recent CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Health Security discussion with Congressman Adam Smith (WA-09), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, on his experience leading a Congressional delegation to China in late September 2025. Rep. Smith’s bipartisan delegation—the…
more -
Dr. Rick Brennan: “This is not good for the American soul.”
Dr. Rick Brennan, an acclaimed Australian humanitarian leader who led WHO and NGO crisis response in multiple conflicts over several decades, walks us through his personal story. He then unpacks the scale and gravity of what is now unfolding in Darfar—featuring the “F word” (famine), the “G…
more -
Fair Doses: An Insider's Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for Vaccine Equity
Listen to the recent CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security book launch of Fair Doses: An Insider’s Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for Vaccine Equity by Seth Berkley. As the gravity and magnitude of the Covid-19 pandemic became apparent in the first half of 2020, how did...
-
Keizo Takemi, recent Japan Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare: "I am quite lucky."
Keizo Takemi, recent Japan Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare (September 2023-October 2024), shares his personal story that took him to Taiwan, CNN/Japan, the Diet, Harvard, back to the Diet, and recently into the cabinet of then Prime Minister Kishida. Along the way he became a leading force...
-
Dr. Debra Houry, former Chief Medical Officer and Dep. Director, CDC: “He’s becoming dangerous to the health of our nation.”
Dr. Debra Houry joined the podcast, following her resignation from CDC on August 25, upon the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, and shortly after her September 17 testimony before the Senate HELP Committee. What does she make of President Trump’s September 22 press conference on Tylenol, its...
-
Peter Piot, LSHTM: “A brilliant coalition” essential to success
The renowned global health leader, Peter Piot, LSHTM, opens this conversation with reflections on what drove the historic global health successes, including “a brilliant coalition” and U.S. bipartisan leadership grounded in statecraft and strategic thinking. That “twenty-five years of historical...
-
The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics
Listen to the recent CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Health Security book launch of The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics. As bad as Covid-19 was, the next pandemic could be worse. While the world learns to live with Covid-19 and continues to recover from its worst effects…
more -
Dr. Celine Gounder, KFF Health News: "Silence was paralysis"
Dr. Celine Gounder, Editor-at-Large, KFF Health News, explains how the U.S. vaccine enterprise could be damaged so swiftly by the Trump administration, with so little apparent resistance: it was a "shock and awe" blitz, while hesitation and fear dominated. "Silence was paralysis." It is too early...
-
CommonHealth Live! with PAHO’s Dr. Jarbas Barbosa
In the fifteenth episode of the Common Health Live!, Katherine E. Bliss talks with Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), about challenges related to health security in the Americas, the importance of regional cooperation in building resilient health systems...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
The CommonHealth is the podcast of the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security. On The CommonHealth, hosts J. Stephen Morrison and Katherine Bliss delve deeply into the puzzle that connects pandemic preparedness and response, HIV/AIDS, routine immunization, and primary care, areas of huge import to human and national security. The CommonHealth replaces under a single podcast the Coronavirus Crisis Update, Pandemic Planet and AIDS Existential Moment.
Produced by Marla Hiller.
HOSTED BY
CSIS Global Health Policy Center | Center for Strategic and International Studies
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Take as Directed have?
Take as Directed currently has 363 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Take as Directed about?
The CommonHealth is the podcast of the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security. On The CommonHealth, hosts J. Stephen Morrison and Katherine Bliss delve deeply into the puzzle that connects pandemic preparedness and response, HIV/AIDS, routine immunization, and primary care, areas of...
How often does Take as Directed release new episodes?
Take as Directed publishes regularly with 363 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Take as Directed?
You can listen to Take as Directed on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Take as Directed?
Take as Directed is created and hosted by CSIS Global Health Policy Center | Center for Strategic and International Studies.
URL copied to clipboard!