Public Health Threats and Pandemics
Global health expert Thomas J. Bollyky explores the paradox in our fight against infectious disease: the world is getting healthier in ways that should make us worry.
About the Expert
Expert 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 directed the first CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force devoted to global health, entitled The Emerging Global Health Crisis: Noncommunicable Diseases in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. He is also the author of the book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways.
Prior to coming to CFR, Bollyky was a fellow at the Center for Global Development and a director at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), where 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. He 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 has testified multiple times before the U.S. Senate and his work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times, Science, and Foreign Affairs. Bollyky has served in a variety of capacities at the National Academy of Medicine, including as co-chair of its workshop on international regulatory harmonization and as a member of committees on strengthening food and drug regulation in developing countries and on the role of science, technology, and innovation in the future of the U.S. Agency for International Development. He 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.
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.
Affiliations:
Georgetown University, adjunct professor of law
Featured
Health and infectious diseases have shaped the history of urbanization, but it is cities that will define the future of global health.
Population growth and aging are fueling a spectacular rise in noncommunicable diseases, such as cancers and cardiovascular diseases, in poor countries that are ill-prepared to handle them.
Current Projects
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The future of global health is urban. There are 4.2 billion city dwellers worldwide, accounting for 55 percent of the world’s population. The population of city dwellers globally is projected to grow by 2.5 billion by 2050, with nearly 90 percent in lower-income nations in Africa and Asia. The evidence suggests that urban residents have better health than their rural counterparts but that the advantages of urban life are unevenly distributed. Too little attention has been given to the essential role of health-care delivery, especially among poorer and more vulnerable populations. With shared challenges, there is an opportunity for health-care providers to low-income populations in different nations to learn from one another. The featured speakers for this discussion were Alex Ezeh, professor of global health at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University in Philadelphia, and Nilesh Kalyanaraman, chief health officer at Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore.
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CFR Senior Fellow Thomas J. Bollyky discusses his new book, Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World Is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways.
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Pollution kills nine million people each year and sickens many more, mostly in poorer nations. The global health effects of climate change are less well quantified, but also increasing with lower-income countries again bearing the brunt of greater food insecurity, increased rates of chronic respiratory illnesses, and shifts in malarial zones. CFR’s Global Health, Economics, and Development Roundtable Series held a discussion on the global health nexus between climate change and pollution and how a more coherent approach to these issues can advance progress at a time when some policymakers, especially in the United States, are unmoved by the environmental, health, and economic consequences expected in the coming decades. The featured speaker for this discussion was Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, dean for global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and recent co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health.
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Nearly forty years ago, Jon Rohde wrote a paper that argued that the “road to health has shortcuts,” advocating a strategy of expanded childhood immunization that helped inspire the UNICEF and World Health Organization campaign to improve child survival. In recent years, the field of global health has been moving away from donor-funded international initiatives on individual diseases, and toward mostly domestically-financed investments in universal healthcare, quality health systems, and achieving health for all. The role of philanthropy in this transition remains a work in progress. This meeting of CFR's Global Health, Economics, and Development Roundtable Series held a discussion of that role and whether technology-driven, community-focused initiatives might still offer shortcuts on the long road to better health. The featured speaker for this discussion was Dr. Rajiv Shah, president of The Rockefeller Foundation.
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Cell Phones Without Factories: A Conversation with Tyler Cowen on International Economic Development
Tyler Cowen discusses the prospects for a “cell phones instead of automobile factories” model of economic growth and prosperity. -
Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University, discusses poor world megacities, the reasons their growth differs from previous patterns of urbanization, and the implications for their residents and the world at large as part of the Global Health, Economics, and Development Roundtable Series.
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Steve Davis, president and CEO of PATH, and Richard Hatchett, acting director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) discuss spurring the development and delivery of medical tools to prepare for emerging infectious disease outbreaks as part of the Global Health, Economics, and Development Roundtable Series.
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Joshua Sharfstein of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University join CFR’s Thomas Bollyky to discuss the role that generic drug regulation might play in addressing off-patent pharmaceutical pricing concerns.
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In 2014, Mexico, which has a higher rate of adult obesity than the United States, became one of the first countries to implement a nationwide soda tax. Dr. Juan Rivera of the National Institutes of Public Health of Mexico joins CFR’s Thomas Bollyky to discuss the early results from the first year of that tax and its implications for the use of soda taxes in other countries and cities.
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Lord Jim O’Neill, chair of the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, joins CFR’s Thomas Bollyky to discuss the economic drivers and consequences of antimicrobial resistance and the role of global cooperation in confronting this challenge.
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FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg joins CFR’s Thomas Bollyky to discuss the lessons and accomplishments of her tenure.
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Task Force Co-Chairs Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. and Thomas E. Donilon, and Task Force Project Director Thomas J. Bollyky, join Time Magazine Senior Correspondent Massimo F.T. Calabresi to discuss the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force Report on Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs), which assesses the NCD crisis in developing countries and recommends practical, scalable strategies for intervention.