Take as Directed

By CSIS Global Health Policy Center | Center for Strategic and International Studies

News & Politics Health Government & Organizations Non-Profit

What's Take as Directed about?

Take as Directed is the podcast series of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center. It highlights important news, events, issues, and perspectives in global health policy, particularly in infectious disease, health security, and maternal, newborn, and child health. The podcast brings you commentary and perspectives from some of the leading voices in global health and CSIS Global Health Policy Center in-house experts

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Take as Directed episodes:

05.23.2024
Dr. Raj Panjabi: we need “biological humility”
Dr. Raj Panjabi, former NSC Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense, shares his personal story, his deep ties to Liberia, the genesis of Last Mile Health, the profound lessons that emerged from Ebola in Liberia. In his time...
05.20.2024
Dr. Angela Apeagyei & Dr. Chris Murray, IHME: “Real risks on the horizon” for global health
This episode is the lively conversation J. Stephen Morrison had the pleasure to hold with Dr. Angela Apeagyei and Dr. Chris Murray, IHME at CSIS on May 14. It begins with the compelling findings of the 15th IHME annual report Financing...
04.11.2024
French Ambassador for Global Health Anne-Claire Amprou: A Big Historical Moment
France’s dynamic Ambassador for Global Health, Anne-Claire Amprou, visited CSIS for an extended conversation on the topline historical challenges that her office addresses: elevating climate’s health impacts, the pandemic treaty negotiations and reform of the IHR, anti-microbial resistance (AMR) in...
04.04.2024
Jennifer Kates, KFF: “Not a great time to be asking for lots of money… everything has changed.”
The inimitable Jennifer Kates, KFF, joins us to make sense of the multiple, convergent, competitive replenishments of the most significant instruments in global health – the Global Fund, Gavi, the Pandemic Fund, WHO at historic moment of intense geopolitical tensions...
03.22.2024
CommonHealth Live! with Dr. Sandro Galea
In the fifth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, J. Stephen Morrison speaks with Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor, Boston University School of Public Health on the public health workforce pipeline. How to position public health...
03.18.2024
Noam Unger, CSIS: The urgency of health adaptation? “It’s self-evident but requires massive changes.”
In our ongoing series on climate and health, we had the great fortune to enlist a friend and colleague, Noam Unger, Director of the CSIS Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative, to discuss PREPARE, the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience. Why...
03.14.2024
Dr. Andrés G. (Willy) Lescano, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia: "A Perfect Storm Scenario"
Since the start of 2024, several countries in South America have experienced a rapid increase in cases of dengue, a viral disease transmitted by the aedes aegypti mosquito. According to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), this year alone at least 18 countries...
03.01.2024
The CommonHealth Live! with Dr. Vanessa Kerry and Minister Austin Demby
In the fourth episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, Vanessa Kerry, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health and Austin Demby, Minister of Health and Sanitation for Sierra Leone join Julie Gerberding, CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security Co-chair...
02.15.2024
Donald G. McNeil, The Wisdom of Plagues
Donald G. McNeil, the prize-winning science and health reporter—45 years with the New York Times—unpacks his newly published memoir, The Wisdom of Plagues. It covers his remarkable personal and professional story, his reflections on the travails facing PEPFAR, the stark...
02.13.2024
The CommonHealth Live! WHO Senior Advisor Dr. Scott Dowell on the Global Health Emergency Corps
In the third episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, World Health Organization (WHO) Senior Advisor Dr. Scott Dowell joins J. Stephen Morrison for a discussion about the Global Health Emergency Corps (GHEC) concept, development thus far, and plans for 2024....
02.01.2024
Dr. Sandro Galea, Boston University SPH, ‘Within Reason’
Dr. Sandro Galea, Dean of the BU School of Public Health, discusses his incisive, provocative new book, ‘Within Reason.’ Its central proposition: public health slipped into illiberalism during Covid-19, a “closing of the mind.” Over the course of the book,...
01.23.2024
Dr. Joseph Majkut, Director, CSIS Energy Security and Climate Change: COP28 is “a punctuation mark.”
Joseph Majkut, Director of the CSIS Energy Security and Climate Change Program, unpacks the big picture of COP28 (Dubai, Nov. 30-Dec 13, 2023), both the formal negotiations and the “trade show.” Is the commitment to “transition away” from fossil fuels...
01.11.2024
The CommonHealth Live! IRC President David Miliband: A New Crisis Landscape
In the second episode of the CommonHealth Live! series, J. Stephen Morrison speaks with International Rescue Committee (IRC) President and CEO David Miliband about the recently released IRC 2024 Emergency Watchlist. The onset of 2024 has brought with it record...
12.14.2023
Dr. Yanzhong Huang: the need for a US-China détente on global health
Dr. Yanzhong Huang, Council on Foreign Relations and Seton Hall University, argues in the CFR report Negotiating Global Health Security (co-authored with Georgetown Professor Rebecca Katz) that the US-China clash over Covid-19 origins in Wuhan has had a catastrophic impact on US-China...
12.07.2023
Senator Thomas Daschle: the decline of U.S. vaccination levels is a national security threat
On the occasion of National Influenza Vaccination Week, former Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, chair of the Coalition to Stop Flu, joins us to discuss the Coalition’s mission and composition, its recent compelling report, ‘The 2022-2023 Influenza Season: Outcomes and Policy...
11.30.2023
The CommonHealth Live! Ambassador John Nkengasong: World AIDS Day 2023: A Journey of Hope
In this episode recorded in advance of World AIDS Day 2023, Katherine speaks with Ambassador John Nkengasong, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Senior Bureau Official with the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy at the U.S. Department of State....
11.27.2023
Heidi Larson, Chair and Co-Founder of the Global Listening Project: “The people part of the Covid experience was our Achilles heel”
In this episode, Heidi Larson, Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, speaks with Katherine about the goals of the Global Listening Project, which is focused on “driving real understanding and positive...
11.16.2023
Jenelle Krishnamoorthy, Vice President and Head of Global Public Policy, Corporate Affairs, Merck & Co.: “Driving Meaningful and Sustained Progress on AMR
In this episode Merck’s Jenelle Krishnamoorthy, a member of the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security, joins Katherine to discuss the growing challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR); the importance of incentivizing research and development of new amicrobials, even as...
11.07.2023
Dr. Dylan George, Director, CDC Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA): “We are really looking at the past, when we look up at the sky.”
Dr. Dylan George, Director of the CDC Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA), walks us through the CFA’s status, almost two years after its launch. Though still a startup, CFA has modeled multiple outbreaks, including Omicron, Mpox, and now...
11.02.2023
Dr. Suerie Moon, Geneva Graduate Institute: “Treaties will not solve every problem.”
Dr. Suerie Moon, Co-Director of the Global Health Center and Professor of Practice, International Relations and Political Science, walks us through the status of the pandemic accord negotiations (underway for two years), the recently released new draft, what lies ahead...
10.12.2023
Leonard Rubenstein, JHU: recent conversations in Kyiv
Len Rubenstein shares his trenchant, mixed reflections from a September visit to Ukraine, specifically the multiple burdens that the war imposes on Ukrainian society. Ukrainian morale and resolve remain strong, though gaps persist in medical rehabilitation services, including prostheses for...
10.05.2023
Dr. Eric Goosby: The M72 vaccine could be a breakthrough. “It is a moment.”
Dr. Eric Goosby walks us through the Lancet Commission report on tuberculosis—which he chaired—that was issued immediately prior to the September 22 UN High Level Meeting on TB. The environment for progress remains very tough—shortfalls in political will, prioritization, finances,...
09.28.2023
Kate Dodson, UN Foundation and Nellie Bristol, CSIS Senior Associate: “Process got in the way of ambition in New York.”
Kate Dodson, UN Foundation and Nellie Bristol, CSIS Senior Associate, survey the outcomes of the UN General Assembly during the third week of September, with a special focus on SDGs and the health High Level Meetings (HLMs on pandemic preparedness...
09.15.2023
What do we make of 2023’s summer of climate shocks?
In this episode of The CommonHealth, we share the audio of a September 11 conversation among several different CSIS scholars on the question of whether the climate shocks of this summer were simply a continuation of underlying trends – an...
08.31.2023
Dr. Scott Dowell, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: “I am optimistic.”
Dr. Scott Dowell, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, unpacks the foundation’s $2 billion in investments during the three-year acute phase of the pandemic. Some of the most impactful were in surveillance and modeling. The Seattle Flu Study, which predated...
08.28.2023
Dr. Celine Gounder, KFF Health News: “Most people do not believe the lies or the truth.”
Dr. Celine Gounder walks us through what to expect as the fall respiratory virus season unfolds—the ‘tripledemic’ of Covid, flu, and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). Promising new vaccines are becoming available amid confusion, disinformation, and burnout of the health workforce....
08.17.2023
Morrison & Simoneau, ‘The Worst is Over – Now What?'
In this episode of The CommonHealth, Andrew Schwartz engages Michaela Simoneau and co-host J. Stephen Morrison on their newly published analysis of the post-Covid moment, “The Worst is Over—Now What?” How do we define this moment we have entered, and...
08.03.2023
Sera Young, Northwestern University: “Accountability is probably the most powerful tool that we have”
According to the recent report from the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene, coverage of safely managed water and sanitation supplies has improved globally since 2000, but the world is not on track to meet the Sustainable Development...
07.31.2023
Anuradha Gupta, Sabin Vaccine Institute: ‘Whether a country is poor or has a large population, progress is possible’
In this episode, Anuradha Gupta, President of Global Immunizations at the Sabin Vaccine Institute, discusses key findings from the new World Health Organization-UNICEF Estimates of National Immunization Coverage (WUENIC). The latest report shows that countries are beginning to recover from...
07.20.2023
Gary Edson, Covid Collaborative: “PEPFAR is a pawn in the culture wars.”
Gary Edson, Covid Collaborative, reflects on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), now at its 20th anniversary. It originated with a Republican president, George W. Bush, who transformed development assistance. Bipartisanship was vital, and PEPFAR fulfilled moral and...
07.13.2023
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT: “Our attention has turned.”
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT national correspondent on health and politics, unpacks the post-Dobbs era: does it imperil or boost the right to contraception? Or both? Does it put the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) under new scrutiny? Calls...
07.06.2023
Dr. Mitch Wolfe: CDC regional offices are inextricably linked to security.
Dr. Mitch Wolfe, former CDC Chief Medical Officer, explains the genesis of CDC’s vision for six regional offices as a “long-term permanent overseas presence” that would expand coverage, deploy senior staff to develop regional strategies, and provide specialized technical expertise....
06.30.2023
Helen Branswell, STAT: “In the spring of 2022, I thought my head would explode.”
Helen Branswell, STAT, unpacks for us important complicated topics that can, frankly, be confusing. She explains why this is a big moment for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). She illuminates why GAVI is moving ahead with a hexavalent (6-in-1) vaccine that...
06.22.2023
Dan Diamond, Washington Post: “Easier to play offense than defense”
Dan Diamond, Washington Post, reflects on big emerging themes. The administration’s scientific, biomedical, and public health leadership has emptied. What should we make of Mandy Cohen’s appointment to be the next Director of CDC? With the turnover, who will be...
06.15.2023
David Kramer, George W. Bush Institute: “The most successful global health program in history”
Twenty years after President George W. Bush signed the U.S. Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003, establishing PEPFAR, David Kramer, the Executive Director of the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas, discusses the process of establishing...
06.08.2023
Jeremy Konyndyk, Refugees International: Opponents of public health are winning.
Jeremy Konyndyk, President of Refugees International, is a humanitarian leader, emergency operator, and policy innovator. He joins us to share his thoughts on diverse crises. During the Turkey/Syria earthquake, donors failed to surge resources to Syrian civil groups, something that...
06.02.2023
Matthew Goodman, CSIS: a dramatic G7 Hiroshima Summit
Matt Goodman, CSIS SVP and Simon Chair in Political Economy, unpacks the several striking developments at the recent G7 Summit in Hiroshima. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unified and energized the G7, with side benefits in economic security, nuclear disarmament,...
05.26.2023
Adam Havey, Emergent BioSolutions: “Lead with the facts.”
Adam Havey, Executive VP, Emergent BioSolutions, speaks to the “great unwinding” with the end of the Public Health Emergency, including the outstanding work to bring about adequate sustained funding for preparedness capabilities. To keep long-term bipartisan investment front and center,...
05.17.2023
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid Response Coordinator: Pandemic wartime is over, the “great unwinding” is fully on.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid Response Coordinator, speaks to the “great unwinding” of the $4.6 trillion pandemic wartime transformation of America into a temporary social democracy. As we rush to the exits, are we emerging stronger? We do see...
05.12.2023
Joe Grogan: “Worried about the war that we are waging against innovators who have the audacity to be successful.”
Joe Grogan, former Assistant to the President and Director, White House Domestic Policy Council in the Trump Administration, shares his insights on several outstanding policy challenges. How has the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) reshaped innovators’ investment patterns in new drugs,...
05.04.2023
Thomas Bollyky, CFR: The roots of the US Covid catastrophe—“a syndemic of politics and race.”
“Not all U.S. states struggled equally.” Thomas Bollyky, CFR, led an ambitious, nuanced effort to break down Covid outcomes across 50 states and Washington DC, published in the Lancet in April. There is a striking four-fold difference between the best...
04.27.2023
Professor Heidi Larson, co-founder of The Global Listening Project: "The only way you're going to be relevant is if you listen."
As World Immunization Week gets underway, Professor Heidi Larson, anthropologist, founder of the Vaccine Confidence Project, and co-founder of The Global Listening Project, discusses the importance of closing the gaps in routine immunization coverage that have widened during the Covid-19...
04.21.2023
Sachiko Imoto, SVP, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)—the alignment of Japan-U.S. health security priorities
Sachiko Imoto, SVP, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), is the lead on JICA’s human development work. In our conversation, she illuminates several key dimensions of Japan’s policy. What health gains will the Japanese Presidency of the G7 in 2023 generate? Both...
04.20.2023
Minister Dan Jørgensen of Denmark: “Imagine a Pandemic Where You’re Not Able to Treat the Disease Because of Resistance”
Dan Jørgensen, Denmark’s Minister for International Development and Global Climate Change Policy, reflects on a busy week of spring meetings at the World Bank, the importance of considering gender equality in supporting climate adaptation programs, the growing challenge of antimicrobial...
04.13.2023
Prof. Victor Cha: Unpacking North Korea’s isolation
We sit down again with Victor Cha, Professor at Georgetown University and Senior Vice President at CSIS, for an update on what we know, suspect, and do not know about a North Korea still in extreme isolation from the rest...
04.06.2023
Professor Jennifer Nuzzo: “I am glad we are having this conversation” on school closures.
Professor Jennifer Nuzzo, Brown University SPH Pandemic Center, reflects on the recent March 28 hearing that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic staged on school closures. The subject remains “a political football.” But “we now better understand the potential harms....
03.30.2023
Admiral Raquel Bono (ret.): At the pandemic’s front face in Washington State
Dr. Raquel Bono, a recently retired, highly accomplished 3-star Admiral as 2020 opened, unexpectedly found herself advising Washington State Governor Inslee at the very advent of the pandemic. What did she experience and learn over the next six and a...
03.24.2023
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT: “You cannot keep a raccoon dog as a pet.”
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, the iconic health policy/politics reporter at the New York Times, helps us inaugurate The CommonHealth podcast, companion to the newly launched CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security. Her recent prodigious output delves deeply into the evolving – and thoroughly...
03.23.2023
Goodbye, Coronavirus Crisis Update. Hello, The CommonHealth!
Welcome to The CommonHealth, the podcast of the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security. The CommonHealth replaces the Coronavirus Crisis Update. In it, we delve deeply into the puzzle, at home and abroad, that connects pandemic preparedness and response, HIV/AIDS, routine...
03.09.2023
Sam Radwan, Enhance International “Is this the calm before the storm?”
Sam Radwan, founder of Enhance International, has worked on health developments inside China for two decades. He shares his insights and raises some difficult questions. Over 80 year olds continue to be highly vulnerable; only 66% have been vaccinated. China’s...

What's Take as Directed about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Take as Directed episodes:

Dr. Raj Panjabi: we need “biological humility”

Dr. Angela Apeagyei & Dr. Chris Murray, IHME: “Real risks on the horizon” for global health

French Ambassador for Global Health Anne-Claire Amprou: A Big Historical Moment

Jennifer Kates, KFF: “Not a great time to be asking for lots of money… everything has changed.”

CommonHealth Live! with Dr. Sandro Galea

Noam Unger, CSIS: The urgency of health adaptation? “It’s self-evident but requires massive changes.”

Dr. Andrés G. (Willy) Lescano, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia: "A Perfect Storm Scenario"

The CommonHealth Live! with Dr. Vanessa Kerry and Minister Austin Demby

Donald G. McNeil, The Wisdom of Plagues

The CommonHealth Live! WHO Senior Advisor Dr. Scott Dowell on the Global Health Emergency Corps

Dr. Sandro Galea, Boston University SPH, ‘Within Reason’

Dr. Joseph Majkut, Director, CSIS Energy Security and Climate Change: COP28 is “a punctuation mark.”

The CommonHealth Live! IRC President David Miliband: A New Crisis Landscape

Dr. Yanzhong Huang: the need for a US-China détente on global health

Senator Thomas Daschle: the decline of U.S. vaccination levels is a national security threat

The CommonHealth Live! Ambassador John Nkengasong: World AIDS Day 2023: A Journey of Hope

Heidi Larson, Chair and Co-Founder of the Global Listening Project: “The people part of the Covid experience was our Achilles heel”

Jenelle Krishnamoorthy, Vice President and Head of Global Public Policy, Corporate Affairs, Merck & Co.: “Driving Meaningful and Sustained Progress on AMR

Dr. Dylan George, Director, CDC Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA): “We are really looking at the past, when we look up at the sky.”

Dr. Suerie Moon, Geneva Graduate Institute: “Treaties will not solve every problem.”

Leonard Rubenstein, JHU: recent conversations in Kyiv

Dr. Eric Goosby: The M72 vaccine could be a breakthrough. “It is a moment.”

Kate Dodson, UN Foundation and Nellie Bristol, CSIS Senior Associate: “Process got in the way of ambition in New York.”

What do we make of 2023’s summer of climate shocks?

Dr. Scott Dowell, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: “I am optimistic.”

Dr. Celine Gounder, KFF Health News: “Most people do not believe the lies or the truth.”

Morrison & Simoneau, ‘The Worst is Over – Now What?'

Sera Young, Northwestern University: “Accountability is probably the most powerful tool that we have”

Anuradha Gupta, Sabin Vaccine Institute: ‘Whether a country is poor or has a large population, progress is possible’

Gary Edson, Covid Collaborative: “PEPFAR is a pawn in the culture wars.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT: “Our attention has turned.”

Dr. Mitch Wolfe: CDC regional offices are inextricably linked to security.

Helen Branswell, STAT: “In the spring of 2022, I thought my head would explode.”

Dan Diamond, Washington Post: “Easier to play offense than defense”

David Kramer, George W. Bush Institute: “The most successful global health program in history”

Jeremy Konyndyk, Refugees International: Opponents of public health are winning.

Matthew Goodman, CSIS: a dramatic G7 Hiroshima Summit

Adam Havey, Emergent BioSolutions: “Lead with the facts.”

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid Response Coordinator: Pandemic wartime is over, the “great unwinding” is fully on.

Joe Grogan: “Worried about the war that we are waging against innovators who have the audacity to be successful.”

Thomas Bollyky, CFR: The roots of the US Covid catastrophe—“a syndemic of politics and race.”

Professor Heidi Larson, co-founder of The Global Listening Project: "The only way you're going to be relevant is if you listen."

Sachiko Imoto, SVP, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)—the alignment of Japan-U.S. health security priorities

Minister Dan Jørgensen of Denmark: “Imagine a Pandemic Where You’re Not Able to Treat the Disease Because of Resistance”

Prof. Victor Cha: Unpacking North Korea’s isolation

Professor Jennifer Nuzzo: “I am glad we are having this conversation” on school closures.

Admiral Raquel Bono (ret.): At the pandemic’s front face in Washington State

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT: “You cannot keep a raccoon dog as a pet.”

Goodbye, Coronavirus Crisis Update. Hello, The CommonHealth!

Sam Radwan, Enhance International “Is this the calm before the storm?”