“The richest country in the world, we spend more money on health than anyone else, but we consistently rank in the bottom for all of the population health metrics.”
Michelle Williams is Dean of the Faculty for the Harvard Chan School of Public Health as well as the Angelopoulos Professor in Public Health and International Development, which is a joint faculty appointment at the Harvard Chan School as well as the Harvard Kennedy School. Dean Williams is an internationally renowned epidemiologist and public health scientist, an award-winning educator and a widely recognized academic leader. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2016.
The failures of the United States’ COVID response can be connected to a distinct lack of leadership and institutional distrust of science, but that’s only part of the problem. Long-term problems existed before the pandemic, due to chronic underinvestment, that have been exposed by the pandemic. While it’s highlighted the problems, it also presents an opportunity to renew the call for impactful and long-term public health investment. “Public health for far too long has been sort of unseen and undervalued and underinvested.”
Private sector CEOs now recognize that they are in the public health industry because we see the effects on business when public health institutions are not supported. Organizations across industries and fields are starting to de-silo and come together to promote the core fundamental principles of disease prevention, health promotion, protection and preservation of health.
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Michelle Williams
Dean
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:07)
Hello everyone and welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the managing director of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum at the intersection of finance, technology, and public policy. SALT Talks are a digital interview series that we launched during this work from home period, with leading investors, creators, and thinkers. What were trying to do on these SALT Talks, is replicate the experience that we provide at our global conferences, the SALT Conference, and that's really to provide our audience a window into the mind of subject matter experts as well as provide a platform for what we think are big ideas that are shaping the future. We're very excited today to welcome Dean Michelle Williams to Salt Talks.
John Darsie: (00:47)
Dean Williams is the dean of Faculty for the Harvard Chan School of Public Health as well as the Angelopoulos Professor in Public Health and International Development, which is a joint faculty appointment at the Harvard Chan School as well as the Harvard Kennedy School. Dean Williams is an internationally renown epidemiologist and public health scientist, an award winning educator and a widely recognized academic leader. Prior to becoming dean, she was a professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard Chan and program leader of the population health and health disparities research programs at Harvard's Clinical and Translational Sciences Center. Dean Williams previous had a distinguished career at the University of Washington School of Public Health. Her scientific work places special emphasis in the areas of reproductive, perinatal, pediatric, and molecular epidemiology. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2016.
John Darsie: (01:45)
A reminder, if you have any questions for Dean Williams during today, you can enter them in the Q & A box on the bottom of your video screen on Zoom, and hosting today's talk is Anthony Scaramucci, who's the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital. He's also the chairman of SALT. And with that, I'll turn it over to Anthony for the interview.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:02)
John, thank you. Dean Williams it's just a great honor to have you on. The rumor has it, I've learned from mutual friends that you're from Queens, is that true?
Michelle A. Williams: (02:12)
That's right. I'm from Queens Village.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:14)
All right, so are we a Met or a Yankee fan?
Michelle A. Williams: (02:17)
I am a Met fan.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:18)
Okay, so this could be easy interview-
Michelle A. Williams: (02:20)
I grew up a Met fan.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:22)
... for you then. I had two separate sets of questions. If you said, "Yankee fan," we were going with the really rough stuff. Now, I'm putting the rough stuff down, we're going with the layup questions. Okay?
Michelle A. Williams: (02:31)
All right.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:32)
Because you've suffered enough Dean, you've suffered enough, let's face it. We've lived in a house of pain for four decades. All right, well, terrific. Thank you for being on. How did you start this amazing career? Let's go from Queens Village to where you are today, and what were you thinking about as a kid? And how did you end up where you are?
Michelle A. Williams: (02:51)
Thanks for asking that question. I'm an immigrant kid. My parents immigrated to the United States when I was seven, and my father did that because he understood that education was really the social driver that lifts all boats, and while he wasn't afforded that opportunity, he wanted his kids, three girls, to have that. We ended up in Queens. Queens, New York, Cambria Heights Queens Village in public schools. I got noticed by really good teachers, who recognized my talent and always worked to get me in the right classrooms at the right time. This is a great country where a immigrant kid can go to public schools in New York and end up at Ivy League education. I know, Anthony, that's no so dissimilar from your own background.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:46)
My mother thought it was Hartford Law School, Dean. When I was packing the car up for Labor Day weekend, 1986, my mother had the map out. She was heading for Hartford. I said, "Ma, no, it's by Tufts, it's up in..." "Why would they call it Hartford Law School if it's not in Hartford?" That has been a standing joke in our family for the last 34 years. No, I get it, but it's a real tribute to you, tribute to your family, and obviously, we both have a great fondness for the university.
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:16)
The United States is in a pretty difficult time. We're in the middle of, I would probably say it's the worse pandemic since... Some people are comparing it the Hong Kong Flu in the mid to late '60s, but I think it's more like Spanish Flu [inaudible 00:04:31]. Feels that way to me, but you're the epidemiologist. Tell me what we're doing wrong. What would you suggest that we would do to have better mortality rates, get them more consistent with places like south Korea, curb the spread of the virus like Germany? What would you like to see done if you could wave the magic wand and you could be the epidemiological czar the COVID-19 crisis?
Michelle A. Williams: (04:58)
That's a great question, and I'm going to try to approach it from a core fundamental place. Because, Anthony, this problem stems... our lack of capacity to respond, stems from some acute issues around lack of leadership and lack of trust and appropriated appreciation for science and scientist's voices. But there are also some long-term problems that lead us to this place, and that is a chronic underinvestment in public health.
Michelle A. Williams: (05:31)
Public health for far too long has been sort of unseen and undervalued and underinvested. We, for too long, have not had the appropriate investment in the public health workforce, the public health infrastructure, and the public tools. The riches country in the world, we spend more money on health than anyone else, but we consistently rank in the bottom for all of the population health metrics. We've got to do better. I think, what we've learned from COVID is public health is a primary factor in our civic life. It's a primary player that undergirds our economic security and our national security.
Michelle A. Williams: (06:18)
One of the things that went wrong, we can correct right now, and I think we have an opportunity to do that, because there is an acute awareness now of the primacy of public health in society, in our business, and in our life and in our national security. Rather than dwell on what we have gotten wrong, we need to seize this moment and turn it into a movement, where the mission is to invest in public health, in the tools, the people, and the partnerships. One of the things that I've seen happen, and we hope will continue to happen, is de-siloing the systems that we have. Academics should be working closely with government, should be working with philanthropists, should be working with the private sector, because we're all in this together.
Michelle A. Williams: (07:11)
The private sector are now really fully realizing that they're in the public health business, and so it's one of the reasons we've created a program that brings CEO leaders of the biggest and smallest companies, a full range of them, into the public health space, where we can start to work together on infusing decisions around sustainable workforce, sustainable environment, building that trust with consumers by educating them with the core fundamental principles of disease prevention, health promotion, protection and preservation of health. And that happens through using data wisely to prepare for disasters, natural and manmade, and to have a response system that's robust.
Anthony Scaramucci: (08:06)
Well, all that's right, and I want to get into the course, the C-suites, course in a second, but I want to ask you two follow-up questions. The first one is related to this safety net in United States, because I think we both grew up in certain areas of the country and have empathy for people that may not have done as well, frankly, as you and I have done, from those areas of the country, and now a pandemic upon us, we realize our health system maybe as weak as the weakest link in our health system.
Anthony Scaramucci: (08:39)
So I could be sitting here with a Cadillac health insurance policy, but now, I've got people in my neighborhood that may not be doing as well, which would lead to sickness in my family. It's sort of pervasive thing, and I'm wondering if this is going to create the awareness necessary to have something that is more sturdy at the bottom than even Obamacare, frankly. Again, I'm not calling for single healthcare paying, I believe that we should have a hybrid, more or less as the vice president as expressed, but what are your thoughts on that? Do you think that this is a breakthrough moment for us politically on the healthcare and public healthcare side? Or do you think it's going to be status quo going forward?
Michelle A. Williams: (09:24)
It can't be status quo going forward. I'm going to be a strategic optimist and I'm going to say that more of us across all sectors are learning that there is a huge cost that we are all paying, whether we are aware of it or not, by not having a good solid safety net. Citi just release a report that put dollars to that problem of indifference around a social safety net, and that is driven in large part by our 401 years of inequality passed on race and racism. Citi basically reported, just a week or two ago, that our GDP has been hammered at the order of $16 billion, by our inattentiveness to inequality, which is a very bog factor around the issues of inequity and really poor health disparity outcomes that we see in the neighborhoods that we're familiar with and that you started to allude to.
Michelle A. Williams: (10:28)
I think that there is an increasing awareness that there is a cost to our indifference about the most vulnerable in our society, and it's not sustainable nor is it wise economically for us to have a blind eye to this problem. I am seeing many different people across sectors step up and take on responsibility in building capacity in communities that have been historically deprived, investing in schools, creating opportunities for meaningful jobs, and economic employment for people who have been left behind. I hope we can be really strategic in capturing the best lessons learned from these kinds of investments, and bring them forward so that they can be brought to scale in communities that really need help.
Anthony Scaramucci: (11:27)
I think it's very well said. You're also combating... Again, this is my opinion, I'm editorializing a little, and if you disagree, please chime in, but I think we're also battling some level of information crisis, it's a misinformation crisis almost. We've got conflicting ideas about wearing masks versus not wearing masks. We have doctors inside the White House that say, "It's okay not to wear one." We have someone like Anthony Fauci insisting that it's important too or Dr. Birx insisting that it's important too. How do you, at your level, combat that misinformation? What would you recommend to the average citizen to get more educated? What would you recommend to [inaudible 00:12:07]? We seemed have politicized, now, science, which has me very, very concerned.
Michelle A. Williams: (12:12)
Yeah. Now, Anthony, that's a very important question, and I think the first thing we have to recognize is this is not new. That misinformation has been a challenge and a threat to public health for a very long time, but I think because we have had, now, several institutions be challenged because of the politicization of global health and public health, it does begin to feel like an existential threat, and indeed it is.
Michelle A. Williams: (12:42)
I think the first thing that people have to recognize is if it sounds too good to be true, get your information from trusted sources. Academics are still regarded as a trusted source for information, and one of the things that we have to do in the academy is to make sure that we are as deeply engaged in the national conversations and global conversations as we can be, and we should bring that information down to the level where people are at. I think it's going to take whole society and all of our sectors to be very mindful, strategic, and proactive about seeking out those sources of misinformation and breaking the chain of dissemination of this information. And we're going to have to do some science, Anthony, because like all useful tools, sometimes they're going to be used for good and sometimes they're going to be used for bad, and we're going to have to develop appropriate policies that protect rights and freedom of speech, but also protect the public from harmful, misleading information.
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:55)
How can businesses help in this area? How can they help prepare us better?
Michelle A. Williams: (14:02)
That's a great question. I don't have an immediate answer, but I will tell you what's really important, because I've seen business and leaders stand up and take a pro public health position. Just speaking about how masks... Masks, very basic, very important instrument, public health instrument for breaking the chain of COVID-19 transmission, and for me, as an academic my entire professional life, to see C-suite executives for some of the biggest companies across different sectors stand up and make a clear statement to promote the use of masks, was powerful.
Michelle A. Williams: (14:47)
And I think ever student of public health, every person in our nation and in the world, should begin to recognize that it is an unfortunate, past perception that business bad, not business good. That false dichotomy has in a way robbed us of the opportunity to work together collectively to have leaders in business be part of the narrative of a public health forward way of thinking and doing. I think if we breakdown silos and continue to engage in a conversation in the narrative about what is good for public health is also good in the overall conceptualization of society, we'll be a healthier place. Because we are in this together, and if COVID did anything for us, it made that so clear to all of us that one should not get caught up in the false dichotomy of trading business or wealth for health. They are intimately intertwined and they have to work together in order to bring forward an equitable society. CEOs play a big role in that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:05)
Well, and I appreciate you sharing that with us. This is more of a meta-question, actually, this is something I've been thinking about, David Quammen, in 2012, wrote a book called Spillover and in the book he basically is saying that we are now spilling over into the animal kingdom, because the size and the scale of the human population, a result of which, and you'll have to forgive me because I never pronounce things right, but I think it's called zoonotic or zootropic [crosstalk 00:16:33], zoonotic transfers of diseases. You can get a virus in a bat, a horseshoe bat, or get a virus in a pangolin or something like that, and all of a sudden, it jumps into the human species, and we're not biologically prepared for it, from an immunological perspective, is that going to happen more and more?
Anthony Scaramucci: (16:52)
His contention, and he wrote the book in 2012, what that it would happen more, and he more or less predicted what unfolded in 2020. Is this something we need to be worried about?
Michelle A. Williams: (17:05)
That's a very important question, and I'll say that this is something from the perspective of understanding how climate change impacts human health. This is a very big question, and it is one of the primary pressing challenges to human health going forward, and it's why, at the Harvard Chan School, we are focused very much on understanding how climate change, the many different ways climate change impacts human health. And this incrosion of zoonotic infections into the lives and livelihood of populations is in part a downstream consequence of changes in our physical environment. Changes brought about largely by how we live, work, and interact with our environment.
Michelle A. Williams: (17:58)
How those changes contribute to alterations in our ecosystem that puts animals and pathogens more in line of our path, and this is where emerging and reemerging infections as a result of climate change, is one of our big challenges. Lime disease is an example, as our environment changes and as vectors that carry these pathogens commingle in spaces where we are, we well end up with a higher likelihood of exposure and risk. One of the things about public health, Anthony, is it's about connecting dots, and it's about understanding how how we live and work and operate in our environment, changes the environment in ways that either mitigate or amplify environmental risks to human health, and that's what he's getting at in the book.
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:00)
Yeah, and it's a very interesting point. Fareed Zakaria, who were going to be interviewing on Monday, just wrote a book about the 10 lessons in the post pandemic world, and in the book, he writes something that I wanted to ask you about, which is the butterfly effect. Something is happening on one side of the world, it seems like a minor thing, but it's having a deep impact on the rest of the world. And one thing that is happening as our societies are getting more western in terms of their consumption-based style of capitalism, they're eating more meat, more meat products, the result of which, we're raising more animals to slaughter to create the consumption of meat, the introduction of antibiotics and other things to, excuse me, help this process, is it affecting the ecosystem in the way that it's also contributing to the situation we're living in now, like COVID-19?
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:56)
Or will other situations sprout up from this? Or is this something not to worry about? If you talk to the farmers, they're dead set against it, but they are self-interested, they tell you not to worry about it. But if we talk to some biologists, they say, "Boy we should really be worried about this disruption." What's your opinion?
Michelle A. Williams: (20:13)
Anthony, this is really important. I got to tell you, because it touches on very many key topics. Let's just talk about-
Anthony Scaramucci: (20:22)
If you said you were a Yankee fan, I wouldn't be asking these questions, but since you said you were a Met fan, I went in this direction.
Michelle A. Williams: (20:28)
It's all right, it's all right. I have to say, I went to Bayside High School, and our colors were Mets colors-
Anthony Scaramucci: (20:33)
I bet.
Michelle A. Williams: (20:34)
... and the Mets played right outside of... they were right there. It's where I went to high school.
Anthony Scaramucci: (20:40)
You got me at hello Dean. You got me at hello. I'm sending you the virtual hug, the one that doesn't give you disease.
Michelle A. Williams: (20:48)
So you know [crosstalk 00:20:49] the orange and blue, I'm an orange and blue girl.
Anthony Scaramucci: (20:52)
What do you think about that question? Where do you think we are?
Michelle A. Williams: (20:54)
I think it's really an important question, and I wish and I hope that more people get into this conversation, because just think about, we're in this together, we've got one planet, and the health of that planet is important to all of us. The fires that are happening out West right now, we on the East coast, we're like, "Whoa, is they. Whoa, are they because they're dealing with these fires and the smokes." But just think about on any given day, the jet stream can bring that smoke right here on the East coast, and it has already, and impact the respiratory function of all us, those who are close as well as those who are distant.
Michelle A. Williams: (21:41)
Anti-microbial resistance, this is where some of public health and medicine's best tools for lifesaving against infectious disease, we're running out of medications to help protect us from emerging and reemerging infections, because of overuse of antibiotics, and we can't say it's their problem because they're over there overusing antibiotics. If there is a problem in part of the world, it's everybody's problem, and I think it's really fundamentally important for us to use this moment to educate people that this everybody's problem. When we were watching COVID shut down the East coast cities, cities where we grew up and where we still live, I knew that our friends in the southeast, in the rural communities, were going to get hammered.
Michelle A. Williams: (22:44)
And the idea was, "Let's communicate to them now that we're all in this together. It's an infectious disease, it is a contagion, and it's only a matter of time before it hits your communities, so let's work collectively, collaboratively in preventing the spread of this disease." We have to get to a place, where people understand that we are all part of a social contract to each other for our own sustainability and for the sustainability for the planet that we want to live on and we want our children and their children to thrive. It's fundamental that we have more people understand that we have a collective responsibility to protect our physical environment and do so in a way that is sustainable and equitable.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:38)
I have a few more questions. John, has obviously got a ton of questions that are queuing up from our audience participation Dean, and I think it's well said, but I want to get the central idea for public health and public safety. Let's go across the spectrum. Everybody needs healthcare, in a rich country like ours, yes or no?
Michelle A. Williams: (24:05)
Yes, but can I just say, it's not just about healthcare. 80 to 90% of what we call health and wellness, happens up stream and outside of the healthcare delivery system. Health and wellness is driven by factors that are not in hospitals, they're driven by equitable educational opportunities, living wage, secure housing, healthy foods, a place to live, learn, work, and play that supports the enable of our mental health and wellness as well as our physical health. We have to get society to understand that health doesn't begin in a hospital, it begins long before that and it's intergenerational.
Anthony Scaramucci: (24:57)
Yeah, and the way we eat and drink, obviously, and smoke has a big impact on this stuff, so we agree, but you are saying we do need a healthcare system that provides coverage for all of us, I think we would agree on that-
Michelle A. Williams: (25:15)
Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:15)
... but I want to hear it from you.
Michelle A. Williams: (25:16)
Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:16)
And then the secondary thing, I guess, I have for you is related to what your statement is about the prevention of poor health, and that is creating a platform of equal opportunity. You obviously got raised in a middle class neighborhood or lower middle class neighborhood, like I did, but you had some good teaching, maybe, some great parents, a combination of different things, and well, you're now where you are. How do we try to create that platform of opportunity for people that were similarly situated? And it seems like it's tougher today, Dean, based on my observation and my travels around the United States, it's tougher today. What do we have to do?
Michelle A. Williams: (26:02)
I think having a conversation like this is key. I think we have to communicate that building these platforms, sustaining these platforms that enable the thriving of populations is good for business. I think it's important to recognize that having a public safety net is not charity, it is essential, it is the bedrock for doing good business, because having the public health values of health promotion and prevention of diseases built into your business plan, ensures that you've got a healthy and thriving workforce, that is present at work. And it ensures that the consumers have the security and the enthusiasm about engaging in civil society and in commerce, and we need to have that virtuous cycle of health, wellness, and the investment in sustaining that health and wellness, to keep the workforce, the human capacity, both on the production side as well as the commerce side going.
Michelle A. Williams: (27:12)
Public health is fundamental to our economic as well as national security. The idea here is to point out, whenever possible and to everybody, the returns on investment for securing, supporting, and enabling populations to develop healthfully across the life course, is good for business, it's good for society, and one should to have to be put in a position to choose wealth over health, they are inextricably intertwined in ways that we have to appreciate and support.
Anthony Scaramucci: (27:53)
Well, it's very well said. I think one of the big issues and something happened, we can talk about this, but we probably need some sociological help as well, but we're starting to care more about ourselves and less about each other. The result of which now, we're moving away from each other, and we're stockading each other, but you can't do that, because you don't want to be, like I said, living in that McMansion while your fellow neighbor is suffering. We have to figure out how to... Again, I'm obviously a capitalist, my capitalist friends don't get it, if they don't start acting now, through the C-suite, through the corporations, it's going to be mandated upon them by the government, and that's going to create a misallocation of resources. As opposed to having a private/public partnership to get it done, which would probably be more efficient, offer greater economic utility to everybody.
Anthony Scaramucci: (28:52)
Well, Dean, this has been terrific, I really appreciate the opportunity for you to speak with us. I've got a ton more questions, we always at this point in our conversation, we flip it over to the audience. And so I'm going to turn it over to John Darsie, who's trying to outshine us with that stupid bookcase of his, but that's okay. I'm in the Beverly Hills Hotel, but I just want everybody to know, when this SALT cast is over, I'm going out to the cabana by the pool. It won't necessarily be on room rater, but I'm going to have a better room rating than both of you guys in about an hour. I just wanted everybody to know that. Go ahead, John.
John Darsie: (29:26)
I can't argue with that. Hopefully, the fumes from those fires and things are filtering down to the Beverly Hills Hotel Anthony.
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:33)
Pretty air quality today [crosstalk 00:29:34]-
John Darsie: (29:34)
We pray for your good health. Dean, I want to you talk about... I understand there's a course that you have launched for C-suite executives to educate people in business about what they can do to keep their employees and customers healthy and contribute to a lot of the public health issues that you've spoken about on this call. Can you tell us more about that course? Why you launched it? And Why it's so important today that we get business leaders more educated about these topics?
Michelle A. Williams: (30:01)
Sure, John, thanks for that. The course came about through a number of conversations I was having with the CEOs from a number about companies across different sectors. These conversations started around, "We've got a novel virus that is threatening the globe, and I've got workers and I've consumers who have questions. And the questions are around, how do we respond during a time of crisis, in a way that is ensuring public safety?" These conversations, the pattern was, how do we bring public health, how do we bring risk management and risk mitigation principles into the business plan going forward, while we manage COVID and after COVID?
Michelle A. Williams: (30:56)
The conversations across multiple sectors with a number of CEOs, lead us to creating a course. The course is really to bring the foundational knowledge of public health, which is prevention, preparedness, and response oriented to being with, into the modeling and business planning across different sectors, so that's what we're doing. I think my colleagues gave you a link to the website. The goal here is to put together academic and private and public partnerships in a way where we share knowledge, actionable knowledge that allows one to address concerns that would impact the health and wellness and safety of a workforce and would address concerns that consumers will have about what safety protocols are put into place, and how those protocols are designed to really allow for a safe way to reengage in commerce.
Michelle A. Williams: (32:01)
It's been an incredible opportunity to de-silo the work that we do in the business sector and the academic sector, and it's creating an opportunity to put public health really into the bedrock of business planning.
John Darsie: (32:19)
It's interesting, you talk about that decoupling. I think we've all experienced a coming together of our work life and our home life, and you talked about the important need to create a social safety net and to create environments at home for people, so they can become more educated about public health, so they can reinforce good habits. How do you think the pandemic, long-term, is going to affect the workplace, the workforce, and how we blend our personal life and business life? Again, going back to Anthony's question about solutions for preventive healthcare, what types of measures would you like to see put in place that could solve a lot of those things, with a view towards post-pandemic workplace and workforce?
Michelle A. Williams: (32:59)
Well, I think work is going to be defined differently, what is work is now constantly being evaluated. First of all, the health and safety of the workforce is now more front and center than before. If you've noticed, when do you start to define and end the definition of essential workers? The pandemic has forced us to realize just how incredibly important our workforce is across all of the different domains, and the fact is, the challenge to identify a part of the workforce that's not essential is almost impossible.
Michelle A. Williams: (33:40)
People are now seeing how low wage, low income earners are so fundamental to the way our society has to operate. Where we work and where we have to work, is also being upended. We have all learned that we could use technology to adapt to working remotely and to have some very big benefits, where we are adding hours back to our life, because we're not commuting as much, and the physical environment is being improved because carbon emissions are brought down, because we are not zipping across the continents for a half day meeting and zipping back. We are learning through these natural experiments that we can conduct our business without as much travel and without as much place-based embeddedness as before, pre-COVID.
Michelle A. Williams: (34:43)
Now, there are going to be some challenges. The mental health burden that is being illustrated across all sectors as a result of the uncertainty and the physical threats of this pandemic, not to mention the economic fall out that so many people are suffering, from job loss, has brought forward a very high burden of mental health illnesses that we have to take care of. As a public health person who connects the dots, I can go on about the many good things that we've learned as a result of COVID around what the workforce can look like and what the workplace can be defined going forward, and some of the bad things.
Michelle A. Williams: (35:27)
Just one other point, the fact that we can now use a telemedicine platform to deliver healthcare, should be a very important lesson for those of us who live in communities where the ratio of medical specialists to the need are not in a good space or place for healthcare delivery. And we have learned some important lessons about the adoption and the reception and how enthusiastically patients receive telemedicine, to think about how we can use that platform to better provide high quality, primary care at lower costs and at greater levels of accessibility.
John Darsie: (36:14)
To your point, my brother's a radiologist, and there's a dearth of qualified radiologists around the country, but they've found ways to use technology. Some people talk about how things like AI could replace certain elements of physical doctors, but really it's a tool to enhance and scale quality healthcare, so it's a really exciting development.
Michelle A. Williams: (36:35)
Yeah.
John Darsie: (36:36)
I want to talk about global cooperation. We've talked about the United States, how individually, we've had a difficult time containing the virus. Some other countries have done better, and they've adopted different policies that have allowed them to, not maybe fully extinguish the virus, but limit the spread and limit the mortality rate. The World Health Organization has come under some criticism for its slow response early on in the pandemic and some of the steps that it took, but without really diving necessarily into the WHO, what are ways, globally, that we can do a better job of coordinating responses, and not just responses, coordinating prevention of the spread of pathological diseases as well as general public health issues?
Michelle A. Williams: (37:17)
No, thank you for that question. I would say, the World Health Organization, the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control, these are vitally important institutions that support our public health and global health agendas, and they've all been challenges for local and global reasons. The World Health Organization has a very difficult and complex mandate, and that is to anticipate and to respond to threats to human health globally. And that requires leadership and a commitment of leadership to collaborating and being thoughtful about local and global government's issues.
Michelle A. Williams: (38:12)
I have to say, as an institution, I'm hopeful that we will get back to a place where the US is appropriately involved and engaged as a global citizen, as a leader in positioning the World Health Organization to be responsible to our needs. It's as I was saying to Anthony earlier, the threats to humanity, know no boundaries and COVID makes that very clear. Antimicrobial resistance, air pollution, the issues around climate change, these are threats that are global in scope, and we have to find ways to have public, private, global governance engaged and committed to collaboration, to problem solving.
Michelle A. Williams: (39:08)
I think academic leaders, like myself and others across the country, have to use our voices to promote to populations everywhere that decisions around leadership have to include leadership that is invested in a public health and a global health mission, because the challenges are enormous, but we do have the talent and the capacity, if we choose to work together to address these problems. And it can't be an isolated solution, it's got to be where the global good of these solutions are appreciated and there's a commitment to make them a global good.
Michelle A. Williams: (39:52)
For example, for us to get back to a sense of normal, post-COVID, we will need for leaders to recognize that safe and efficacious vaccines have to be managed as a global good. That is the quintessential challenge in front of all of us right now. It is a public health and global health challenge, and the CDC, FDA, WHO are all needed to be strong institutions to help us operationalize on that global good.
John Darsie: (40:31)
Yeah, it's one of the disheartening things that you see is that people... Take polio as an example, we've eradicated, basically, polio from our society, but you have people today who say, "Well, the disease has been eradicated, we don't need to take the vaccine anymore. We don't need to vaccinate our children, and you're starting actually to see an uptick in cases of polio, because people are unwilling to get their children vaccinated for personal reasons, but really it's more about the public good. It's difficult in a society like the United States, which values freedom and personal choice, to ensure that people make those decisions that are part of the greater good.
Michelle A. Williams: (41:06)
Yeah, I think it's incumbent on us to educate. I don't mean to preach and I don't mean judge-
John Darsie: (41:14)
Right, please, do preach. Please, do preach.
Michelle A. Williams: (41:17)
... but I think it's incumbent of us to share the public health values, and to illustrate how this issue of a social contract that we all have for each other, for our family members, for our communities, for our society, and for the planet brings us together as a human race, that we have to find ways to work together. And to think that it's not just the individual, because we are, I over use this word but, we're so deeply interconnected, even more so now, because of the technology and our ease of travel.
John Darsie: (41:59)
Right. Well, Dean Williams, we're so thankful for you taking the time to speak with us. I know in the middle of a global pandemic, you're as busy as anybody in the world, right now, not just managing all of your academic responsibilities, but also trying to help solve some of these social issues.So we're very grateful. And we want to remind everyone about that course at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. We're going to send a link around to everyone who registered for this talk, and also we're going to send the link on all of our social media outlets as well, to that course, where can go online and learn more about it. We're going to try and get Anthony involved in that as well, so we can make sure that our SkyBridge staff is not just healthy in the pandemic, but reinforces strong public health principles going forward.
Michelle A. Williams: (42:41)
Awesome.
Anthony Scaramucci: (42:41)
He's eating a lot junk food, Dean. He's taking advantage of his youth, so he's [crosstalk 00:42:46], I just want you to know that. I'm only eating junk food 16 hours a day, John is eating it 24. I just wanted everybody to know. I'm down to 16 hours a day of junk food Dean.
Michelle A. Williams: (43:01)
Well, listen, I went to your restaurant, I took my son for a special dinner, at the-
Anthony Scaramucci: (43:08)
Oh, great.
Michelle A. Williams: (43:10)
... is it the Fish-
Anthony Scaramucci: (43:10)
Hunt & Fish.
Michelle A. Williams: (43:10)
... Hunt & Fish Club, love the food. I-
Anthony Scaramucci: (43:13)
Oh, great. I had no idea, I would have... Well, next time, I'll... We can't open until Broadway opens, unfortunately, but we'll be back.
Michelle A. Williams: (43:22)
I know. I know. But it was one of my most memorable dinners. It was mom taking her son out to a fancy dinner, and we had a great time. I wanted to-
Anthony Scaramucci: (43:28)
Okay, well, good.
Michelle A. Williams: (43:28)
... thank you for that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (43:31)
All right, well, thank you so much for doing that, and of course, there's no shortage of desserts at the Hunt & Fish Club. But in any event, you were terrific Dean. I hope we can get you back, after the election and talk about the future of public health and awareness for people in the United States. Thank you so much... for people around the world, for that matter.
Michelle A. Williams: (43:48)
Thank you Anthony, appreciate the opportunity [crosstalk 00:43:50]-
Anthony Scaramucci: (43:50)
All the best. I hope I can get up there and see you at some point, if they let me back on campus. We'll have to see if they'll let me back on.
Michelle A. Williams: (43:56)
Well, you've got to come over to the School of Public Health campus, you're welcome anytime.
Anthony Scaramucci: (44:01)
Okay, all right, because I think they put an electric fence around Harvard Law School after I went to word for Trump. I don't if I'd get electrocuted on the way in, but I'll come over to Public Health School anytime.
Michelle A. Williams: (44:12)
All right.
Anthony Scaramucci: (44:13)
All right, be well.
Michelle A. Williams: (44:14)
Be well, thank you. Bye-bye, Anthony. Bye-bye, John.
John Darsie: (44:17)
Bye.