Council on Foreign Relations Press
Improving Pandemic Preparedness: Lessons From COVID-19
Key Metrics
- Thomas J Bollyky
- Council on Foreign Relations Press
- Paperback
- 9780876092644
- 9 X 6 X 0.33 inches
- 0.47 pounds
- Political Science > International Relations - General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
The United States and the world were unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, despite decades of warnings highlighting the inevitability of global pandemics and the need for international coordination. The failure to prioritize and adequately fund preparedness and effectively implement response plans has exacted a heavy human and economic price, and the crisis is not yet over. Emerging and reemerging infectious diseases are a threat to global and national security that neither the United States nor the world can afford to ignore. This Task Force proposes a comprehensive strategy that includes institutional reforms and policy innovations to help the United States and the multilateral system perform better in this crisis and when the next one emerges. Without increased U.S. leadership on and adequate investment in pandemic preparedness and response, the United States and the world will remain unnecessarily vulnerable to epidemic threats.
The Council on Foreign Relations sponsors Independent Task Forces to assess issues of current and critical importance to U.S. foreign policy and provide policymakers with concrete judgments and recommendations. Diverse in backgrounds and perspectives, Task Force members aim to reach a meaningful consensus on policy through private deliberations. Once launched, Task Forces are independent of CFR and are solely responsible for the content of their reports. Task Force members are asked to join a consensus signifying that they endorse the general policy thrust and judgments reached by the group, though not necessarily every finding and recommendation. Each Task Force member also has the option of putting forward an additional or a dissenting view.
Author Bio
Thomas J. Bollyky is director of the global health program and senior fellow for global health, economics, and development at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University. Bollyky is the author of the book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways and the founder and managing editor of Think Global Health, an online magazine that examines the ways health shapes economies, societies, and everyday lives around the world.
Bollyky’s work has appeared in general interest publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Atlantic as well as scholarly journals such as Foreign Affairs, Science, the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Bollyky has testified multiple times before the U.S. Senate and served on three expert committees at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and as the co-chair of its workshop on globalization and international regulatory harmonization. He directed the first two CFR-sponsored Independent Task Forces devoted to global health: Improving Pandemic Preparedness: Lessons from COVID-19 (2020) and The Emerging Global Health Crisis: Noncommunicable Diseases in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (2014). Bollyky has been a consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a temporary legal advisor to the World Health Organization. In 2013, the World Economic Forum named Bollyky as one of its global leaders under forty. Library Journal listed his book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress as one of the top ten selling health and medicine books in 2018.
Prior to coming to CFR, Bollyky served in a variety of positions in the U.S. government, most recently at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). He led the negotiations on medical technology regulation in the U.S.-Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement and represented USTR in the negotiations with China on the safety of food and drug imports. Bollyky was a Fulbright scholar to South Africa, where he worked as a staff attorney at the AIDS Law Project, and an attorney at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where he represented clients before the International Court of Justice and the U.S. Supreme Court. Bollyky is a former law clerk to Chief Judge Edward R. Korman and was a health policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Bollyky received his BA in biology and history at Columbia University and his JD at Stanford Law School, where he was the president of the Stanford Law & Policy Review. He is a member of the New York and U.S. Supreme Court bars.
Source: Council on Foreign Relations
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