The Four Pillars of Outbreak Preparedness (and How to Rebuild Them)

04/01/20 • 21 min

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Adam Levine is the director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies at Watson and associate professor of emergency medicine at Brown. Much of his work has grown out of an essential fact about epidemics that many of us are just now learning: as Adam explains on this episode, “our global public health system for detecting outbreaks is only as good as the remote nurse working in a rural village in Africa or Indonesia or anywhere else in the world.” To address this interconnectedness, Adam and health care professionals at Brown have partnered with the healthcare NGO Project HOPE to remotely train health care workers on how to safely identify and combat COVID-19 and the coronavirus.

On this episode Adam talks with Sarah about this partnership and the role high-quality training plays at all levels in stopping the spread of a pandemic. They also discuss what Adam’s learned from treating Ebola in active war zones, and why this likely won’t be the last pandemic we see.

You can learn more about Watson's Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies here.

You can learn more about Project HOPE here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

You can learn more about Watson's Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies here.

You can learn more about Project HOPE here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

Previous Episode

Humanitarian Aid in a Changing World

Peter Maurer is the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In early March he came to Watson, and Sarah talked with him about the challenges of humanitarian aid in the 21st century. Shortly after they spoke, Coronavirus travelled the globe, and everything seemed to change. But surprisingly, for all that's different now, so much of what Peter had to say still resonates -- maybe now more than ever.

It's not a light conversation, but but Peter's wisdom, kindness, and clarity of purpose might actually leave you feeling a little more hopeful about this scary, uncertain time.

You can learn more about Maurer's recent talk at Watson here.

You can learn more about Watson’s other podcasts here.

Next Episode

Behind the Curtain on US-China Relations

What role do photo ops play in diplomatic negotiations? How much do changing US Presidential administrations affect US-China relations? What’s it like to have dinner with Yao Ming? On this episode, Watson’s Director Ed Steinfeld talks about all this and more with James Green, former official at the US Embassy in China and senior research fellow with the Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University. James and Ed go from the big picture to the nuts and bolts of China-US diplomacy, and explore what lifelong diplomats learn that political leaders too often miss. There’s never been a more important time to understand the relationship between these two governments, and this discussion will help you do just that.

(Note: this interview was recorded in February of 2020.)

You can subscribe to James’s podcast ‘US-China Dialogue Podcast’ on your favorite listening app. You can also find all the episodes here.

You can read a transcript of this episode here.

Trending Globally: Politics and Policy - The Four Pillars of Outbreak Preparedness (and How to Rebuild Them)

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] ADAM LEVINE: I like to say that our global public health system for detecting outbreaks is only as good as the remote nurse working in a rural village in Africa or Indonesia or anywhere else in the world. If that remote nurse is not well trained and able to identify the first case of that epidemic, then our whole system is at risk.

SARAH BALDWIN: From the Watson Institute at Brown University, this is Trending Globally. I'm Sarah Baldwin. According to Johns Hopkins Univer