Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world
Past Event
Seminar
What is endemicity? What are the shared goals of COVID-19 response?
RSVP RequiredTickets RequiredInvitation OnlyOpen to the Public
The Belfer Center and Boston University’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research (CEID) will co-host a seminar "What is endemicity? Can we reach it for COVID-19" with speakers Dr. William Hanage, Dr. Celine Gounder and Dr. Rodgers Ayebare. Opening remarks will be provided by Dr. Nahid Bhadelia and the seminar will be moderated by Dr. Syra Madad.
This public discussion will explore questions such as:
How do we differentiate between epidemic and endemic phases, and why does this matter?
What factors contribute or detract from COVID-19 becoming endemic? (variants, vaccines, treatments, population demographics, longevity of immunity)
Are there signs can we look for to herald this transition?
What would a world with endemic COVID-19 look like? How do we make sure such endemicity reflects better health equity in the long run?
Are there active roles that we each as average citizens can play in moving collectively towards this transition if it's possible?
What can we do to address societal hope for a ‘new normal’ amidst a great deal of pandemic fatigue that currently exists?
Date:Time:
-
Location:
Online
About the Speakers
Rodgers Ayebare, MB ChB, DTM&H, CIC, MSc
Infectious Diseases Scientist, Infectious Diseases Institute
Makerere University, Kampala
Dr. Ayebare is a sepsis clinician, infection preventionist, and infectious diseases scientist interested in outbreak surge capacity development and deployment at Ugandan hospitals and primary healthcare facilities. He received training in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is a board-certified infection preventionist. He serves as a technical advisor to the Ministry of Health Uganda on infection prevention and control during emerging infectious disease outbreaks, including Ebola virus disease and COVID-19. Currently he serves as project manager the Program for Research on Vaccine Effectiveness—a Continental effort to evaluate the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa.
Additionally, Dr. Ayebare works with CEID in carrying out the work of the ‘Advancing Field Research in East Africa’ known as the Joint Mobile Emerging Disease Intervention Clinical Capability (JMEDICC) project.
Dr. Bill Hanage
Associate Professor of Epidemiology
Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Bill Hanage is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. His research and teaching focus on the epidemiology of infectious disease and the evolution of infectious agents. He received his PhD from Imperial College London. Dr Hanage has made seminal contributions to the study of diverse pathogens, both bacteria and viruses, and has a special interest in evolution in response to interventions such as vaccination or antimicrobials. His research on the current pandemic has included modeling transmission in healthcare and the impact of vaccination in the context of variants, how fatality rates vary with age, and how the virus evolves in individual hosts. His awards include the Fleming Prize from the Microbiology Society and a young investigator award from the American Society for Microbiology. He has published more than 200 scientific articles and book chapters and is a regular contributor to popular media aiming to improve public understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
Dr. Celine Gounder
Senior Fellow and Editor-at-Large for Public Health, Kaiser Health News
Infectious Disease Specialist and Epidemiologist, NYU and Bellevue Hospital
Dr. Gounder is a Senior Fellow and Editor-at-Large for Public Health for Kaiser Health News at the Kaiser Family Foundation. She’s also the host and producer of American Diagnosis — a conversation about some of the biggest public health challenges across the United States, with insights on topics from teen mental health to opioids and gun violence highlighting the voices of experts and people on the ground working for the health of their communities — and Epidemic, a podcast about infectious disease epidemics and pandemics. Season 1 of Epidemic covered the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and Season 2 will go back in time to cover smallpox eradication in South Asia.
Dr. Gounder founded Just Human Productions, a non-profit multimedia organization, which has since been absorbed by KFF’s KHN.
She is a medical journalist and thought leader. She is a frequent expert guest on CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, HLN, BBC, Al Jazeera America, MTV, Dr. Oz, and Oprah Prime. She's written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian US, The Washington Post, Reuters, Quartz, Sports Illustrated, and Bloomberg View. She’s best known for her coverage of the Ebola, Zika, COVID-19, opioid overdose, and gun violence epidemics.
Dr. Gounder is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. She cares for patients on the wards at Bellevue Hospital Center.
From November 9, 2020 to January 20, 2021, Dr. Gounder served on the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.
Between 2017 and 2018, Dr. Gounder cared for patients part-time at Indian Health Service and tribal health facilities in the southwest and far northeast of the United States.
In early 2015, Dr. Gounder spent two months volunteering as an Ebola aid worker in Guinea. In her free time, she interviewed locals to understand how the crisis was affecting them. She is making Dying to Talk, a feature-length documentary about the Ebola epidemic in Guinea.
Between 1998 and 2012, she studied TB and HIV in South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Ethiopia, and Brazil. While on faculty at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Gounder was the Director for Delivery for the Gates Foundation-funded Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic. She later served as Assistant Commissioner and Director of the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
She received her BA in Molecular Biology from Princeton University, her Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and her MD from the University of Washington. Dr. Gounder was an intern and resident in Internal Medicine at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital, and a post-doctoral fellow in Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University. She was elected a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2016 and featured in the IDSA’s 2017 Annual Report. In 2017, People Magazine named her one of 25 Women Changing the World. In 2021, InStyle Magazine named her one of 50 Women Making the World a Better Place.
Dr. Gounder lives with her husband Grant Wahl in New York City.
Nahid Bhadelia, MD, MALD
Founding Director, Boston University Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research (CEID)
Associate Director, Boston University National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL)
Dr. Nahid Bhadelia is an infectious diseases physician, founding director of Boston University (BU) Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research (CEID) and an associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), a state-of-the-art maximum containment research facility at BU. She is an Associate Professor at BU School of Medicine. She has prior and ongoing experience in health system response to pathogens such as H1N1, Zika, Lassa fever, Marburg virus disease, and COVID-19 at the state, national, and global levels. Over the last decade, Dr. Bhadelia designed and served as the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit (SPU), a medical unit designed to care for patients with highly communicable diseases. She has experience with direct patient care, outbreak preparedness and response, healthcare worker training and medical countermeasures research during multiple Ebola virus disease outbreaks in West and East Africa. She has previously served as a clinical lead of a viral hemorrhagic clinical research facility in Uganda entitled Joint Mobile Emerging Disease Intervention Clinical Capability (JMEDICC) program and currently codirects the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center–funded research training program in Liberia, entitled Boston University and University of Liberia Emerging and Epidemic Virus Research (BULEEVR). Her research focuses on global health security, as well as identification of safe and effective clinical interventions and infection control measures related to viral hemorrhagic fevers and other emerging infectious diseases.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, her research has spanned clinical evaluation of therapeutics, understanding on pathophysiology of both acute and post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection and public health response (as a co-author of the international John Snow Memorandum). She previously led Boston Medical Center’s (BMC) COVID-19 biorepository study and is now the site PI for NIH’s national RECOVER study at BMC, examining post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2. She also serves as a co-PI of Massachusetts Coalition for Pathogen Readiness (MASSCPR)’s PASC research program.
