Dr. Rick Bright to Lead Bold Pandemic Preparedness Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

[Music]
Female : Welcome to Conversations on Health Care with Mark Masselli
and Margaret Flinter, a show where we speak to the top
thought leaders in health innovation, health policy, care
delivery, and the great minds who are shaping the hea lthcare
of the future.

S peaking of that, this week Mark and Margaret are speaking
with Dr. Rick bright, renowned immunologist, vaccine scientist
newly appointed Senior Vice President of Pandemic
Prevention and Response at the Rockefeller Foundation. Dr.
Bright resigned l ast year from BARDA at the HHS after filing a
formal whistleblower complaint against the previous
administration for mis handling of the pandemic. He is
launching a bold initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation to
build out a national and global infrastruct ure to improve
pand emic preparedness and response.

Lori Robertson also checks in, Managing Editor of
FactCheck.org, looks at misstatements spoken about health
policy in the public domain, separating the fake from the facts.
We end with a bright idea that ’ s improving health and well -
being in everyday lives.

If you have comments, pleas e email us at [email protected]
or find us on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever you listen to
podcast. Now stay tuned for our interview wi th Dr. Rick Bright
from the Rockefeller Foundation here on Conversations on
Health Care.

[Music]

Mark Masselli: Speaking today with Dr. Rick Bright , renowned immunologist,
vaccine scientist and newly appointed Senior Vice President of
Pandemic Prevention a nd Response at the Rockefeller
Foundation. Dr. Bright recently served on President Biden's
COVID - 19 transition team. Prior to that , he was Deputy
Assistant Secretary of the Biomedical Advanced Research and
Development Authority at HHS. He resigned from the Trump
Administration after filing a whistleblower complaint over its
mishandling of the pandemic response.

Margaret Flinter: Dr. Bright has worked in numerous capacities at the
Department of Health and Human Services , at the CDC, an d
the World Health Orga nization. His global health research has
led to key advancements in vaccine and therapeutic
developments. Dr. Bright, we welcome you to Conversations
on Health Care today.

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

Dr. Rick Bright: Thank you both. It's a pleasure to be here.

Mark Masselli: Great. I t see ms like SARS - CoV - 2 caught the global public health
community, ill prepared for the magnitude of what was to
come . I know our listeners want to know more about the
pandemic prevention and response initiative that you're
spearheading at the Rockefeller Foundation that really is
focused on scaling up the capacity for surveillance and better
management. Share with us and tell us more about this
initiative and the impact that it's going to have on the current
pandemic as well as those to come.

Dr. Rick Brig ht: You know, first I wanted to say it's about a year ago today that
the World Health Organization made their formal pandemic
declaration f or what we now know as COVID - 19. S ince the
SARS - CoV - 2 virus and these variants of the virus have taken an
enormous to ll on lives, on economies and societies, and
they've actually changed normal into something we're still
striving to define.

D espite everything that we have lost, we are unfortunately still
in no better position today to be able to rapidly detect and
respon d to or stop one of these viruses or variants of a virus
from emerging because we still don't have a robust national or
global early warning detection system or surveillance system
to give the world that early warning that something new has
happened, it ca n cause a lot of da mage, and it's coming your
way.

It is critical that we establish this global system to collect
different types of data, data that are combined to provide a
more valuable insight or guidance to inform policymakers and
governments and publ ic health officials around the world that
a threat is coming their way . S ometimes even change the
course of action in the phase of rapidly spreading virus such as
the SARS - CoV - 2 virus that we're dealing with now.

T he Rockefeller Foundation, they have been making inroads
and analyzing data around the world , focused on equity and
access , improving health around the world . T his is a
culmination of many years of their thought that were
catalyzed by this pandemic to launch an initiative, a global
consortium that will collect a variety of data sets to better
understand when something new has emerged. The genomic
data, the epidemiological data to understand where the
viruses are coming from, how the viruses are different in
different parts of the world, the geograp hical mapping of
those viruses and how they're spreading , and of course, that
functional data is a virus, there's a mutation in the virus does it

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

mean anything ? D oes it change transmissibility ? A ll of those
multiple layers of data are what we plan to bring together into
one institute , one system that will be able to very rapidly
turnaround those insights to inform governments concentrate
resources and stop a pandemic within the first 100 days of it
appearing.

Margaret Flinter: Well, Dr. Bright, I think, on this anniversary, and I think it is an
anniversary, we will long remember one of the bright spots, I
think has been the way there was some collaboration and
coming together, I think, particularly in the way that the
scientist and biologist and epidemiologi st came together
around developing the vaccine. But maybe just tell us a little
more about this consortium, w hen you think of the worldwide
engagement that's needed in order to tackle something that
you described, what is that built upon ? Is built upon
gov ernment , t he World Health Organization ? Tell us a little
more about how you envisio n that consortium working.

Dr. Rick Bright: Well, as you mentioned, it's going to take everyone around the
world working with the same data sets , the same types of
standards , equitable access to the information all at once. I
think it was really a surprise to most of the world that the
United States would find ourselves in such a challenging
position to respond quickly and effectively to this pandemic, or
any pandemic. I thin k that ties back to a lack of a nationally
coordinated strategic plan , I think we see that in many parts of
the world .

W e want to lay out a blueprint , and that's what we're doing in
the United States and that's what we're also in conversation
with the Unit ed Kingdom, and how they've brought together a
consortium within the UK that bring s together these various
facets. Aligned within our country , the ability to detect these
various multi - dimensional characteristics of a rapid -- rapidly
emerging threat and s preading threat and characterize it
quickly and understand it and inform politicians and public
health advisors . But then also work with our international
partners in an philanthropic organizations such as the Gates
Foundation, Skoll and Wellcome Trust and Institute Past eur,
working with WHO to not each of us build our own system
with our own language in our own processes , our own
computer systems , our own databases, but to align with those
organizations into one coordinate system .

Imagine the weather syste m, how does the weather system
work around the world ? In the United States, we have NOAA
and it collect lots of information that affects the weather in

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

the United States , and we h ave a National Weather Service. I
think over 195 countries feed into a consor tium, the World
Meteorological Organization, and share those weather sensors
and data and reports and they're all different, but they're able
to bring it together , and you can have this really powerful
mapping where weather threats are emerging around the
world . I can go to that site right now and give a forewarning
that the tsunami is coming our way.

We need to think about viruses in the same way as we ’re
thinking a bout weather , and that is a globally coordinated
system understanding tracking and warning i n an equitable,
real time manner that threats are coming your way , and here
are actions that you can consider to help mitigate the damage.

Mark Masselli: Well, I really love that analogy. I think that makes it clear for
people and the sort of tearing the g eographic mapping the
multiple data streams all coming into one place. Today, this
morning, people are picking up the paper and they're seeing
the vaccine companies have to respond to these various
variants, mutation strains whatever that are coming . I’m j ust
wondered what your thoughts are on currently sort of
mapping that out in sort of understanding whether or not
science can keep up with the changing mutations , i t's coming .
What do you say to people now who are saying I love what
you just said and I'm k ind of lost because I'm reading all these
activities that are going on to deal with what's happening, the
mutations o f the variants ?

Dr. Rick Bright: Well, actually, we're living in remarkable times. I also like to
think of it moving forward to a new norma l, and the
convergence of a variety of technologies that are now going to
enable us to respond more rapidly to these emerging threats
as we face them in the future. It does take this early warning
system, and then it also takes the investment , the decades of
investments into new vaccine technologies.

When I was the director of BARDA, we invested in a number of
new purpose built vaccine technologies messenger RNA or
mRNA. This technology was meant to respond rapidly for a
rapidly emerging virus or pathogen t hat get in front of a
pandemic and halted as quickly as possible , decades of
investment were put in into t hat technology . However , we
didn't really see live fire test , except in 2020 .

2020 we were given an opportunity to test how rapidly these
new technolo gies . W hat we saw was remarkable, and how
quickly they can respond and make a vaccine tailored to the
emerging threat as quickly as possible. In less than a year , we

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

had information, enough information to be able to start
vaccinating people that we’re seei ng it roll out now. T he
variants right now are the biggest threat to the vaccines, but
they're more threat to the vaccination process.

As we've invested in early warning, and we can use technology
to identify variants, so we need to get much , much faster ,
because right now we're identifying a variant about four
months after it emerges. But already, we're seeing that we can
take information about those variants, we can send that
information or share that information with these
manufacturers with these techno logies.

Moderna is already starting a new clinical trial that contains
the variant , and not only contains the variant th e B351 that
was first identified in South Africa , but it also has another arm
of that trial where they're testing multi valent approach. Some
of the new variant vaccine composition along with the existing
virus composition, and I think that only took them about 10
weeks or 6 to 10 weeks to make that new composition and
test it.

At the same time, though, we need to still invest in the
downst ream administration technology . We could make a lot
of vaccines , but we haven't invested into our public health
systems and vaccine administration systems and tracking and
tracing to understand who needs the first dose. We haven’t
invested yet in the techn ologies to remove the barriers to
rapidly vaccinating people . There are technologies on the
horizon that will allow us to put vaccines in a simple b and - a id
looking patch , and those patches could be distributed much
more easily . They can be put in the US ma il or distributed
around the world in courier services to make sure that peo ple
are vaccinated more easily. W e're living in remarkable times.

Technology is converging . A lot of the investments that we've
made over the last couple of decades, and are battle tested
now from this pandemic, they identify at work that we still
need to do. But I think before we see that next pandemic,
we're going to be a lot smarter, a lot faster , and these new
technologies can play a critical role in making sure we don't
find ou rselves in this situation again.

Margaret Flinter: Well , on this one year anniversary of the declaration of the
global pandemic, I think your words bring a lot of hope. But I
wonder as we talk about this unbelievable use of our
technology and advancement o f the technology to the place
where people in the streets actually understand what
messenger RNA is.

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

We also have been confronted in this pandemic year with just
the tragic inequities in the way different groups of people
were affected , and all of the tech nology will help enormously.
But at the same time, there's the science and the art of
changing the way we care for people and the way we bring
people into the fold to understand what is going on and
comment about the other partners that are really in the
b usiness of human behavior, and trying to make sure that we
attend to that side of things the next time .

Dr. Rick Bright: Well, it’s absolutely critical. I believe the consortium itself is
going to focus on the science and technology and data to
create that early warning system . Wi th this new knowledge
that is available to everyone around the planet at once, then
every country would have equal access to the information that
could guide them to contain either that virus or that pathogen
within their borders s o technology can only do so much . I
mean it is the human behavior. It is the transparency of the
knowledge and how it is communicated to everyone all at
once.

An example you just gave how to breakdown complex
technology language such as mRNA, or messenger RNA to
everyone so they can understand and not be afraid of the
technology. I'm from Kansas and I love my family in Kansas and
compared to science and technology world I immersed myself
in, they lea d a pretty normal life . I'm trying to communicate
sometime s to people everywhere across our country and
across the world. Science in my brain is complex for a scientist
and so that highlights the need to invest more in community
messengers to the trusted messengers in every community , in
every culture .

We can't r eally communicate the same way in large cities that
we do in small rural cities, we can't communicate across all
populations with the same language . It’s really incumbent
upon us to be sensitive to that to equity, reaching people and
communities that are r eally hard to reach.

There's been a really bad history in our country, inappropriate
experimentation, populations have been taken advantage of in
the name of advancing science . T hose issues are still ingrained
in our culture s , in our community , and we have to overcome
that we cannot dismiss them. To me, that means an extra
responsibility on myself, on scientist , on public health officials ,
on governments around the world to go the extra mile to
reach that last mile.

Just having me on television or our podca st isn't enough, I

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

have to make sure that I'm holding hands with the next
person, either in a consortium approach , in my community to
make sure the information is shared and understood at all
levels. That is the only way we're going to stop this pandemic ,
and the only way we're going to prevent future pandemics
t hat will be how we break those data down , that information
down so everyone can understand it, trust it, and respond to it
to stop a pandemic in his tracks.

Mark Masselli: We're speaking today with Dr. Rick Bright, vaccine scientists
newly appointed Senior Vice President of Pandemic
Prevention and Response at the Rockefeller Foundation. Dr.
Bright recently served on President Biden's COVID - 19
transition team.

I hate to take you backwards because I th ink you're a forward
looking optimistic person . Y ou said science is complex, but
ethics is very straightforward and you have them , and I think
our listeners need to know, you really in the Trump
Administration sounded a clarion call . Y ou filed a
whistleblo wer complaint about unproven drugs, you really
stood up and I think that's why people look to you, and you
just laid out for us the ethical foundation for whatever has to
happen in terms of communication is really about
transparency. It's honest communicat ion. Can you just walk
through a little for our listeners, just to remind them of what
you saw a n d the actions that you took during this last
administration?

Dr. Rick Bright: Well, I don't like to go back.

Mark Masselli: Yeah, I know.

Dr. Rick Bright: I me an, but it is a really important perspective to understand
how we got where we are today in the United States and
actually where we are in the United States and where we got
the United States did impact the rest of the world as well.
What I felt really unf ortunate at the time, one year ago, back
up a year ago today, there are so many global experts that
knew what was happening , could see the writing on the wall, a
novel virus had emerged and people in populations in China, it
was clearly causing disruption, it was clearly spreading person
to person and causing a lot of illness and death , and it was
clearly spreading out of that region .

It was very frustrating for me as a scientist who spent my
career thinking about a pandemic response and thinking about
the coordination and transparency and communication
needed to get in front of a pandemic and contain it as quickly

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

as possible. Having work in the previous administration, the
Obama Administration , with a team of dedicated experts to
put together a playbook fo r the United States, and our role in
global communications in partnership with the WHO and other
global entities whose role and mission was to inform the world
of a crisis and to stop it as quickly as possible . Then to find
myself in a situation where peop le weren't listening, the red
flags couldn't be any reder , the fire couldn't be any larger , and
yet, I encountered politicians and political leadership that just
seemed completely unwilling to recognize the true threat and
take appropriate action to get in front of the virus to see the
delay in the United States , better testing capability.

It was frustrating to know that there was virus among us. Yet
politicians were telling the public that there was no threat or
the threat was low because we didn't have it , all based on our
lack of testing . There was information that we knew about on
the inside, it was not allowing Americans to prepare for this
psychologically, physically, emotionally, f or what was coming
their way to see step by step, our position in the w orld of
being dismantled. T hen all of a sudden finding America
isolated, trying to figure out things on our own.

In the academic world , academic group standing up trackers,
for example, because the US government wasn't tracking or
wasn't sharing informatio n, private sector organizations trying
to fill in the gaps for the public health organization . I was
encouraged to see that happening, very frustrated to see
there was no national leadership, there was no national
strategy. A ll of these private efforts and academic efforts
didn't have a place to go to, they didn't have a central
coordinating effort, synergistic impact to try to stop the
pandemic, and then to see the rest of the world struggling on
their own without America's leadership , without America's
se at at the tab le. I don't think it could have gone worse in
many ways .

W hat encouraged me , so here's the optimist in me, is that
groups continued onward, scientists continued on put in the
government . T hey kept their eye on the ball, in terms of
pushing for ward development of tests and vaccines and
therapeutics and getting that information, and supporting
those companies to accelerate data so we can get those
vaccines and the test available as quickly as possible. Scientist
in the companies worked hand in ha nd with scientists in the
government, hand in hand with scientists at the FDA and
BARDA , NIH and CDC on their own to push forward all of the
efforts.

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

I had confidence every day in the integrity of the scientist in
the public and private sectors and academi c groups doing their
work without compromise. I knew that once we had those
tools, they would have high quality. T hen of course, you saw
CEPI the ACT A ccelerator, the W HO , GAVI, the COVAX group
on vaccines, the Bi ll and Melinda Gates Foundation, FINE [PH]
and the Global Fund. I call those out particularly because they
stood up this international organization called the ACT
A c c elerator focus on drugs and diagnostics and vaccines to
make those available with a focus on the rest of the world,
particularly the heart of the reach those without access and
capabilities . Those groups went on.

Fortunately, I'll say that proudly, fortunately, we have an
administration change , but I believe is impactful in managing
through this pandemic and prepare us for the next one . The
Biden Administration and the people going into that Biden
Ad ministration have their eye on the ball, we have already
seen tremendous impact from their effort , from their focus,
from their transparency, from their communication , from their
efforts to r each every person in the community recognizing
how hard it is , pulling the chair back up to the global table,
investing in this act accelerated and COVAX Institute re -
affirming their partnership with a WHO , that is the type of
leadership that the world nee ds to see from the United States
to get us through this pandemic .

I'm confident of the things that they're doing because I had
the privilege of serving on an advisory panel for the COVID
response during the transition. I know the blueprint that
they've put in place to get us through this pandemic and then
make sure that this never happens again. I'm so grateful for
their efforts and their leadership.

Margaret Flinter: We have been speaking today with Dr. Rick Bright . He's the
newly appointed Senior Vice Pre sident of Pandemic
Prevention and Response at the Rockefeller Foundation , and
you can learn more about his incredible and important work
by going to the www.rockefellerfoundation.org or follow him
on twi tter @ Rick A . Bright.

Dr. Bright, we want to thank you certainly for your tenacity
and your scientific rigor, but also for your honesty and your
clear eyed look at how things unfolded, what went wrong and
your optimism about how we get it right in the futu re. Thank
you so much for joining us today on Conversations on Health
Care .

Dr. Rick Bright: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

[Music]

Mark Masselli: At Conversations on Health Care , we want our audience to be
truly in the know when it comes to the facts about healthcare
reform and policy. Lori Robertson is an award winning
journalist and Managing Editor of FactCheck.org, a
nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate for voters that aim
to reduce the level of deception in US politics. Lori, what have
you got for us this week?

Lori Robertson: Despite claims circulating on social media, there's no evidence
that approved COVID - 19 vaccines cause fertility loss. Although
clinical trials did not study the issue of loss of fertility has not
been reported among thousands of trial participants, nor
confirmed as an adverse event among millions who have been
vaccinated. In fact, some of the vaccine trial participants got
pregnant.

In early February, reproductive medicine groups released a
statement assuring patients that there' s no evidence that the
approved COVID - 19 vaccines can impact the capacity to
conceive children. “ Loss of fertility is scientifically unlikely . ”
T he reproductive health expert s concluded in their statement.
A nother document prepared by the American Society for
Reproductive Medicine in December said there was no reason
to delay pregnancy attempts because of being vaccinated
since the vaccine is not a live virus.

Multiple false claims tying the Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna
vaccines with infertility have been in circulation both in English
and Spanish for months. Scientist have already debunked a
false rumor that baselessly claimed the vaccines could train
the body to attack a protein vital for the formation of the
placenta.

Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vac cine expert at the
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said p eople shouldn't be
worried about COVID - 19 vaccines causing infertility. He said i t
is very hard for a vaccine to do something that natural
infection doesn't do , and fertility loss has not been re ported
even after roughly 67 million people in the US have been
infected with SARS - CoV - 2 according to antibody surveillance
studies . That’s my FactCheck for this week. I’m Lori Robertson ,
Managing Editor of FactCheck .org.

Margaret Flinter: FactCheck .org is committed to factual accuracy from the
country’s major political players and is a project of the
Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of
Pennsylvania. If you have a fact that you’ d like check, email us

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM

at www.chcradio.com , w e’ll have FactCheck .org’s Lori
Robertson check it out for you here on Conversations on
Health Care.

[Music]

Mark Masselli: Each week Conversation highlights a bright idea about how to
make wellness a part of our communities and everyd ay lives.
Pregnancy is normally an exciting time for most women. But
according to the research an estimated 10% of prenatal
women experience some kind of depression during their
pregnancy, and many are reluctant to treat their depression
with medication fo r fear of harming the fetus.

Dr. Cynthia Battel : In fact, a higher percentage are experiencing lower grade
depressive symptoms so they might not meet full criteria for
major depressive episode , and left untreated those mild to
moderate symptoms can progres s in some cases lead to a
more serious postpartum depression.

Mark Masselli: Dr. Cynthia Battel is a psychologist at Brown University with a
practice at Women's and Infants Hospital in Providence . She
and her colleagues decided to test a cohort of pregnant
women to see if a targeted prenatal yoga class might have a
positive impact on women dealing with prenatal depression.

Dr. Cynthia Battel: It was a typical kind of Hatha Yoga, breathing exercises,
meditation exercises, and we enrolled 34 women who are
pre gnant who had clinical levels of depressions, and we
measured their change in depressive sy mptoms over that
period of time.

Mark Masselli: Not only were women able to manage their depressive
incidents, they also bonded with other pregnant women
during the program and found additional support from their
group.

Dr. Cynthia Battel: The initial signs from this research are really encouraging. W e
found that women on average were reporting much less .
Women who are depressed during pregnancy, unfortunately,
do oft en have less ideal birth outcomes. One thing we're
interested in seeing i s when we provide prenatal yoga
program, can it improve mood and then can we even see
some positive effects in terms of the birth outcomes .

Mark Masselli: A guided non - medical yoga ex ercise program designed to
assist pregnant women through depression symptoms, helping
them successfully navigate those symptoms without
medication, ensuring a safer pregnancy . Now that's a bright
idea.

Dr. Rick Bright - 20210308BrightXM
[Music]
Mark Masselli: You've been listening to Conver sations on Health Care. I'm
Mark Masselli.
Margaret Flinter: And I'm Margaret Flinter.
Mark Masselli: Peace and Health .
[Music]
Female : Conversations on Health Care is recorded at WESU at
Wesleyan University, streaming live at www.chcradio.com ,
iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you have
comments, please email us at [email protected] or
find us on Facebook or Twitter. We love hearing from you. This
show is brought to you by the Community Health Center .