Challenges in COVID Vaccine Allocation & Distribution

Consortium Webinar Series
2020-22
January 8, 2021 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm

The COVID-19 pandemic poses profound ethical, legal, and social challenges to researchers, clinicians, public health authorities, legal professionals, and communities. This webinar will focus on challenges in COVID-19 vaccine allocation and distribution. Expert panelists will address how to identify priority groups for vaccine allocation, advance population health and equity, meet the real-world challenges of vaccine distribution, and address vaccine hesitancy.

Panelists will respond to audience questions and will analyze the criteria used when setting priorities for vaccine allocation, issues likely to arise in national and global deployment, and how to address those issues effectively.

Helene D. Gayle, MD, MPH

Helene D Gayle
President & CEO The Chicago Community Trust

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Bio

Helene D. Gayle has been president and CEO of The Chicago Community Trust, one of the nation’s oldest and largest community foundations, since October 2017. An expert on global development, humanitarian and health issues, Dr. Gayle spent 20 years with the Centers for Disease Control, working primarily on HIV/AIDS. She worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, directing programs on HIV/AIDS and other global health issues. She also launched the McKinsey Social Initiative (now McKinsey.org), a nonprofit that builds partnerships for social impact. Dr. Gayle co-chaired the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine working group that produced the Framework for Equitable Allocation of Vaccine for the Novel Coronavirus.

Helen Branswell

Helen Branswell
Senior Writer, Infectious Disease
STAT

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Bio

Helen Branswell is STAT’s infectious diseases and global health reporter. She came to STAT in 2015 with 15 years of experience covering health, with a focus on infectious diseases. Ms. Branswell was introduced to epidemic reporting during Toronto’s SARS outbreak in 2003; in the years since she has written about bird flu, the H1N1 flu pandemic, Ebola, Zika, and now leads STAT’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. She spent the summer of 2004 embedded at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a CDC Knight Fellow. In 2010-11 she was a Nieman Global Health Fellow at Harvard, where she focused on polio eradication.

Kristen Ehresmann, RN, MPH

Kristen Ehresmann
Director, Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention and Control Division Minnesota Department of Health

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Bio

Kristen Ehresmann is an epidemiologist and director of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention and Control Division at the Minnesota Department of Health. Ms. Ehresmann has led numerous outbreak investigations, published in peer review journals, and been an invited speaker at national meetings. She currently oversees the epidemiologic response for COVID-19.

Moderated by:

Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH

Michael T. Osterholm
Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP)
Regents Professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health
Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health
Professor in the Technological Leadership Institute, College of Science and Engineering
University of Minnesota

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Bio

Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, is Regents Professor; McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health; the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP); and Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. He is also a Professor in the Technological Leadership Institute, College of Science and Engineering, and an Adjunct Professor in the Medical School. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served as a high-level advisor on issues related to bioterrorism, public health preparedness, and infectious diseases.

Susan M. Wolf, JD

Susan Wolf
Chair, Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences
Regents Professor
McKnight Presidential Professor of Law, Medicine & Public Policy
Faegre Drinker Professor of Law
Professor of Medicine
University of Minnesota

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Bio

Professor Susan M. Wolf is a Regents Professor; McKnight Presidential Professor of Law, Medicine & Public Policy; Faegre Drinker Professor of Law; and Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. She is Chair of the University’s Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 

01/08/21