How Communications and Journalism are Critical to Public Health
Dr. Judith Monroe
President and CEO
CDC Foundation
@DrJudyMonroe
Matt James
Senior Counselor
GMMB
As the Covid-19 pandemic rages on across the United States, uneven national and local responses are hindering efforts to coordinate a unified strategy to check the spread of the coronavirus.
Part of the problem: Unclear, sometimes contradictory communications and the inability of public health authorities to cut through misinformation.
In this session, Dr. Judith Monroe, head of the CDC Foundation, and Matt James of GMMB (and formerly of the Kaiser Family Foundation) will explore how the social sector can help make a difference in public health, the role of journalism in health, and more.
Below, watch the video, listen to the podcast, or read the transcript.
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Transcript
Jade:
My name is Jade Floyd, vice president of communication at the Case Foundation and Case Impact Network. Like many of you I’ve sat with reflection and meditation over the state of our globe over the past few months. As a mother, as a wife, as a patron, and as a human I have hurt for the people who have been savaged by violence of community they have called home. I watched as local businesses that are dear to me shutter their doors, and like all of you have seen the social upheaval unfold, igniting a global call to action.
In my own personal moments of darkness I have also seen glimmers of hope. Despair — who have shouted from the rooftops, This is not who we are as humans. A tectonic shift in the world led by women and men; Black, white, and brown; young and old, from every community across the nation. A moment in our history when we have all come together, despite our differences, to communicate that we must, that we can, and that we will do better.
At that same time, we have seen foundations and philanthropists answering this clarion call, recognizing the importance of mobilizing the resources and their dollars in support of social justice and equity and for small business impacted by these historic events. Many of you are behind the scenes, crafting the messages and thought leadership for your institutions, that is challenging us to drive the narrative in reality that is rooted in facts and equality and social justice and dignity and fairness. And for what is just plain right. For that I commend you and thank you for the countless hours and hard work you have put in. As I take the reins as chair of the Communications Network this year, I do so with the lens on the changing dialogues and sentiments of our nation and our globe that we are witnessing at this very moment.
Business as usual is no longer acceptable. Not only for institutions and the companies that we serve, but for our communities and for us as a human race. So what does this mean for each of us as communicators, as strategists and as leaders? How can we in our current professional capacity use our tools, our resources and expertise to truly drive change in the world, and stand for what is good?
As communicators we ignite good by changing the dialogues happening across media, social, and digital channels. Today, you tune in with hundreds of communicators and strategists like yourself. We hold the power to shape global dialogues, not just within the media or internal institutions of audiences we have, but within our homes, within our personal networks, and within our souls.
So as we navigate this new reality, this new normal we call life together, I hope that each of you find time to write your own manifesto. Reflect on what we fight for in our work and in our homes and our communities. Together we are a powerful force for good that I am proud to lead as board chair and I welcome each of you.
Now when we say that we don’t want this to be accomplished by ambition, it is a place to be a gathering, I think there is a distinction; I think there is a difference..
When you write, when you communicate, when you use your path for advocacy, you’re creating space for people to see themselves in other people’s stories. [Music] Hey I am — and welcome to ComNet. Well, I’m Luz. [indiscernible] I am Kendall. Hi I am Maureen, pronounced she and her. Hey, I’m Chelsea Dade with [indiscernible] for Justice. Hi all, welcome, my name is Andre Ledger. Hi I’m Betsy Lopez Wagner, welcome to ComNet.
Hey everybody. It is Sean Gibbons, welcome to my basement. That is where we are at right now, and I’m grateful that all of you are… here, not here but with us for the next couple of days. And listen, gang, this is going to be new and it’s obviously different, and we are facing so many amazing extraordinary crushing challenges. But I am grateful that you are making the time for us right now, and hopefully you will be able to be with us the next couple of days. My job — by the way, I am Sean, let me introduce myself. Maybe you saw me in a video just a second ago, I was wearing a jacket. Today, I’m not going to lie, I’m not wearing pants, but, I’m not going to lie, I have got shorts on. A little bit different for all of us.
I want to make sure that you all understand what the plan is. Everything we have got planned is available now on ComNetvirtual.org. And I get it, if you are a parent like me, you’ve got Zoom school going on, and if you are going to be joining in and out to presenters as you can — chances are work is calling you more, not less — so if you are not able to grab something live and be with us, we understand. Everything will be available to you on demand. We make video recordings available, you know, 90 minutes, maybe two hours. Our goal is by the end of today everything that is up on the screen will be up online. So you can come back to the portal, which is what you are in now, call it the portal or control room or the lobby, and you can find that stuff later. So you want to share that or watch something a little bit later, you can by all means do that.
I want to thank a few people before we get into the sections that you clicked into, which is a couple of amazing conversations: having the good fortune to sit in with Dr. Judy Monroe from the CDC Foundation, and also with Kyle and Nathaniel — if you are in that room you are in for a real treat. And you are not going to miss either, Frank, because you can watch them both later if you wish, or watch the other one — if you are missing it live you can watch it later. Suffice to say I just want to thank a few folks and do a little bit of housekeeping to make sure — everyone has housekeeping they need to get through today on the journey we are all on together.
So first, a couple of moments of gratitude. The first thank you has to come to you. You are taking a chance by being with us, by being part of the community. We have nearly 2,000 people with us, joining online — on either online or on demand — and that is by far the largest group we had on the network. The last year in Texas — we know everything is bigger in Texas — and it was 950 folks. In here, almost 2,000. We ended about 1,980-ish, a few folks we let in late today. And so suffice to say we are grateful for every single one of you and hope you’re happy and well, and hope you have a sense of what we are about at the network, which is this real culture of community, and it is driven by kindness and generosity.
So please make sure you are being good to one another and participating in the chats. It’s going to be much more meaningful to you. The content we will offer [I] hope is helpful and useful to you. We hope it will be, but we are also mindful that the best resource that exists out there is you and the folks around. In fact, Morgan, our own colleague and friend, observed at ComNet a couple years back: You can observe wonderful things when you gather with the network, but the most important thing is the people sitting next to you. This year we are not sitting next to each other because of, well… you know why, but we do have each other. Either available through the chat or also together on socials — you can find each other on Twitter, Instagram, whatever your particular [wish]. And together we are using… if you got that wrong, #ComNetV or hashtag #commsforgood.
Quickly, the people. You know them as well as I do: Steph Langford, who is the network board chair who concluded his term. He has been an incredible study and inspiring partner and friend to me and to all of you. And so we are incredibly grateful for his service, and fortunate. Hopefully you have seen the news; we’re welcoming new leadership. You just saw Jade a moment ago, and she is being joined by Erica, the new vice chair, who comes from the Ford Foundation. We are also welcoming three new board members as we are gathering today: Anusha from Wikimedia Foundation, Virginia McMullen from the International Budget Partnership, and Daphne Moore from the Walton Family Foundation, and we are grateful for the leadership and the journey of the next couple years.
The next couple years are going to be… We are going to see — we are in deep ambiguity about the future. Also want to make sure that I acknowledge all my friends and colleagues who have played a tremendous role burning the candles on both ends and finding other candles beyond that, and that is the team from the network HQ. And so that is Carrie Klein, who is the mastermind behind… You see stuff that you like, Carrie gets credit. Trista… Karima Holston… Dylan Imani and Tracy Mitchell have been doing an absolutely extraordinary job getting us through it … . We are all learning as we go. Up late at night trying to figure all of this out; hopefully it will go off without a hitch. This is new for us. So extend us a little bit of grace if something goes wrong, and by all means be in touch, but know that we are all doing our best and have been working on this for months to bring this together, and we are glad we are all finally here.
I also want to make sure to acknowledge all the folks serving in the community, the original folks coming in from B+ — there are about 48 of you and about 365 of us in the B+ experience, things we will all be doing together over the next three days, but an extended experience over the next three months, where we are going to be building community and connections in addition to learning. And we are excited about that, but of course we are excited [indiscernible] local Atlanta nonprofits, because we were not able to be with wonderful folks at that scene today, but the folks from a number of organizations that you have seen here on the screen or you will be seeing on the screen in the next couple of days, we went to them over the year and said, We have this idea. We know it is important together. Could you help us? And an extraordinary number of folks did and because of that we were able to meet, and we are incredibly grateful to all of them.
I want to close by opening our session with something that’s actually going to close us out on Friday. And so, Joy Harjo, who is the U.S. poet laureate, has written her latest book called An American Sunrise. I hope you have read this or you are aware of it, but maybe not. I think this is a nice place of departure for all of us. So if you will indulge me, I’m going to read a poem she has written called “Directions to You.” And if you’re curious, Joy will be with us Friday afternoon and she will close out the gathering together. This song, or excuse me, this poem… I’m a little nervous, gang.
Directions to You Follow them, stop, turn around Go the other way. Left, right, Mine, yours. We become lost, Unsteady. Take a deep breath, Pray. You will not always be lost. You are right here, In your time, In your place.
North
Star, guidance as we look up To the brightest white Hoping it leads you to where you want to go, Hoping that it knows where you should be. We find our peace here in the white, Gather our strength, our breath, and learn how to be.
East
The sun rises, Red, Morning heat on our face even on the coldest morning. The sun creates life, Energy, Nourishment. Gather strength, pull it in Be right where you are.
South
Butterfly flits Spreads yellow beauty. We have come to this moment in time Step by step, We don’t always listen to directions, We let the current carry us, Push us, Force us along the path. We stumble, Get up and keep moving.
West
Sunsets, brings Darkness, Brings black. We find solitude, Time to take in breath and Pray. Even in darkness you Can be found. Call out even in a whisper Or whimper, You will be heard. To find, To be found, To be understood, To be seen, Heard, felt. You are, Breath. You are, Memory. You are, Touch. You are, Right here. Begin. [Music]
Matt:
Hi there, I am Matt James and I’m delighted to be able to be here in conversation with a very different… And somebody who, I’m not sure if board members are supposed to tell the president of the organization, but has become a hero to me, Judy Monroe. Judy is the head of the CDC Foundation. I am fortunate enough to be on the board of the CDC Foundation. And Judy has been doing just amazing work in the … almost five years that she has been with us at the Foundation. Really, as we have been in an incredible transformative period, both because of the issues that we have been dealing with — everything from ongoing problems with Ebola to Zika to obviously now COVID-19 — and in addition to just the many, many other public challenges that we face at a time when budgets are tight, budgets are constrained, but the needs of public health are just absolutely great.
Judy will tell you a little bit more about the CDC Foundation. Even though we have CDC in our title, it’s not a government entity. We are an independent organization that helps the CDC do more and raise the resources to do that. But we do much more than that.
So Judy, I’m going to kick it to you. You’re heading one of the country’s most important public health organizations at an incredibly interesting time, to say the least. But public health wasn’t always your dream, necessarily, when you were growing up. You and I both sort of grew up in what I would say modest circumstances. I was raised in West Virginia on a place called the Coal River in a little turn in the road called Riverbend because that is where the river bent, and when you went to school in Kentucky, you graduated from medical school and you wanted to serve disadvantaged people where I grew up, in Appalachia. What led you to that?
Judy:
Yes, so, Matt, first of all, thank you for all of your service as a board member. You really been a remarkable support to me on the Foundation during this critical time. Yeah, so I grew up with an interest in serving the underserved. I think as a really young child I had… I love science; I found that I love people, and I was always a kid in class that I got along with everyone, so I was in homes of privilege and homes of underprivilege. You know, classmates. And I was struck by the differences. And so early on I had this curiosity. Why were there these differences? and then I read a book by Albert Schweitzer about his life, and I had this dream that I would become a physician and I would go to Africa and maybe follow in the footsteps of Albert Schweitzer. But then [I] learned about the needs here in the U.S. You know, you don’t have to leave this country to have a lot of work to be done, and there’s a lot of disparities. And so that’s how I ended up going to Appalachia to practice .. [I] learned about the National Service Corps, and took a commitment and practice in a rural community health center for four years.
Matt:
What did you see in Appalachia that helped shape the rest of your career?
Judy:
I have to tell you it was an incredible experience. You know, one of the things early on that I learned was the power of partnership. When I got to the practice, it was very underserved. I was the only physician in this large county. Very under-resourced. And I had women coming in with end stage breast cancer or men coming in with really severe peripheral vascular disease, mental illness, and I learned really early on that if I put the call out for help, people would answer the call. Maybe it was a precursor to my being in philanthropy and being at the foundation, but you know, people answer the call. And we ended up getting donated mobile mammography. We had a mobile vascular unit that was donated. We had, we were able to rally resources to be able to bring in a mental health provider. And I was like, Wow, this goes way beyond what they taught me in medical school.
And then the power of communications was huge for me. This was a low-literacy, low-health-literacy community. And I learned the power of partnering with a local newspaper, the local radio, newsletters, that media matters, and if you get your message out — I saw remarkable results with that.
The other is respect. These folks are salt-of-the-earth people living in Appalachia. It would be heartbreaking when I would hear them say, You are the first physician that has treated us like human beings. Treating them with respect then led to them trusting me. And the trust then led to action that made all the difference. People took the medication I sent them, they would get the test, they would adhere to my recommendations and so it was pretty remarkable because word started getting out that folks were really well managed in the county. I started having people coming for care outside of the county. That was unheard of. The folks would come in.
And then I would wrap up, the power is just the power of teams and community. Because if you can rally the community around major issues, that’s incredibly powerful. So I was able to see some real change in a four-year period.
Matt:
Well, that is great, and you are remarkable as a communicator, which is an important part of your job. You spent a lot of time, though, also in the academic community and as a public official, but you also had a stint, as you mentioned, we’re talking about radio and television — you had a stint as a radio expert in Indiana. Tell us about that.
Judy:
Yeah, well, thanks for that. So I had moved to Indiana. I was in academia with a large hospital system. The hospital was actually approached by one of the local radio stations. Actually the radio station had statewide reach. And they approached the hospital saying they would like to bring on a physician and do a regular show where the community could just call in and ask questions. And so the hospital leadership tapped me and said, Judy, we think you would do a great job, and the next thing I knew I had become Dr. Judy. In the state of Indiana. And we would get all kinds of questions from people in the community calling in, and it was tons of fun to have those conversations on the radio with us, to help educate. And then that brought more attention to me as a clinician and provider. And so then, when Mitch Daniels became governor, my name was out there. The hospital was floating my name as a potential health officer. And so the rest is history. I got tapped to be the state health officer and did a lot of media after that.
Matt:
I can imagine. I know your mom was also influential in your life, right? And was an important figure. And she suffered from polio and depression, which you have been very open about in terms of talking about. Tell us how that impacted your choices and growing up?
Judy:
Yeah, so my mother was a polio survivor. She was one of the lucky ones. She was left with some weakness in her right leg, but for the most part was functional until later in life when she developed post-polio syndrome. But as a child growing up, I heard from her all the time the stories of the iron lungs and children dying. And then the amazing breakthrough with polio vaccine. I can remember as a child lining up to get my polio vaccine, and my mother was just, the wonderful day in her life that her children could be vaccinated against this horrific disease that had claimed so many lives, that crippled children and adults alike. And it really piqued my interest in medicine even more. I think that really was a real driver for me to want to do that.
And then my mother also had depression. And sometimes she had some pretty severe bouts. Actually became sort of a family counselor — I was the middle child and I think I was the peacemaker and the counselor sometimes. But that also drove home for me how important not just physical health or mental health was for a rich and productive life. So that was a big influencer. It influenced my decision to go into medicine and to go into family medicine. So I could take care of all the needs of an individual family, and later whole communities.
Matt:
Right. Right. So let’s talk about Mitch Daniels. You are fortunate enough to serve with him. A remarkable public servant, a good governor. And you do that at a time when, somewhat similar to where we are now, there was a pandemic going on and you had to address it. Tell us about that experience
Judy:
Yeah, working with Gov. Daniels was fantastic. It was really one of the highlights of my career to be tapped to be his health commissioner. And so when I became health commissioner, honestly, my first day on the job I was being briefed by the staff on how the nation was undergoing a pandemic preparedness planning and rolling out a whole national strategy and then an implementation plan, which was huge. And so I explored a lot about planning, and then H1N1 hit, and working with Gov. Daniels, we saw this emerging. We had Richard Besser, the director of the CDC, on the news starting to tell the public we had this novel influenzavirus.
And I met with the governor at 7:30 on a Monday morning in his office, briefed him on what I knew, and he looked at me and he said, “You know, Judy what I want you to do is get on a state plane, go to every media market and get in front of this. They do not want to hear from a layman. They don’t want to hear from me, they want to hear from a professional. Get in front of this and line up with Homeland Security and the other partners.” And so that’s what I did, and I spent a week with all the state parks traveling with me, aligning with the local leaders. And we would be shoulder to shoulder in these press events in every media market, saying, Here is what we know. Here is what you as the public can do. And at that time it was, cover your cough, stay home if you are sick. You know, that just, we didn’t have much to offer. Wash your hands. There were kind of three things that we could tell people to do because we had no vaccine.
What that did is it built trust, and it built trust — one, that a state health officer I was aligned with my governor. The governor was always saying, Talk to Dr. Monroe, talk to the commissioner, and the physician leads — the professional leading the charge for H1N1, and it was a terrific experience. As hard as it was, it was a really good experience.
Matt:
Great training for what you are doing now.
Judy:
Yeah, exactly, exactly, but we should turn some questions to you, Matt.
Matt:
I’m not nearly as interesting, but go ahead.
Judy:
You have got a remarkable career, and the best I can tell, you basically have had three careers. I think you have been in politics, philanthropy as well as communications and advocacy. How did that come about for you? How did you end up doing all three?
Matt:
Unlike you, Albert Schweitzer was not the person who led me to where I thought I was going. I was actually more influenced by George Carlin and Bill Cosby and literally thought I was going to go into comedy and/or acting. And was a theatre major. That is what I did. But I realized quickly I had, as they say, a face for radio. And so quickly transitioned into communications when I was at school. And found that I really loved that.
I grew up in a family with a mother who was a liberal Democrat and a dad who was a conservative Republican, so it was a bit like a sitcom. Politics was what we talked about all the time. So when I graduated I thought I was heading into a career in the media. But then I had an internship with Congressman Mo Udall, and I ended up being offered a job on Capitol Hill, so I went to do that and had a great 10-year stint on Capitol Hill working for Mo Udall and Sen. Dale Bumpers and Sen. Pat Moynihan, and back to Mo as his chief of staff, and found that communications and policy and politics were an incredible way, obviously, that you could combine into a career to try to make a difference.
So that was sort of the transition, from where I thought I was going to go in life, and I always tell kids this, when they come and ask for career advice, sometimes you have to be open to what door is opening for you. And be willing to step through it.
Judy:
Yeah that is so true. You also did some pretty remarkable work at the Kaiser Family Foundation, when you helped pioneer new ways of thinking about philanthropy and how it can impact social issues through communications.
Matt:
It was an interesting time. I went there in 1991 and Drew Altman, who had been, by the way, the health and human services commissioner in the great state of New Jersey under Gov. Tom Kean, he had just come into the Kaiser Family Foundation as president. And Drew is just a remarkable guy. He wanted to figure out how you take a relatively small foundation, we had assets at that point of like $387 million or something like this, and have an impact on public health, or health policy writ large. So Medicare, Medicaid, the uninsured, all those sets of issues. And so he completely went about remaking the staff at Kaiser. I was one of his second, probably his second or third hired to come in, to run communications, because since he had been in politics he actually understood the power of communications, and using that to try to make the change that you want to make.
So at Kaiser we kind of really started thinking differently about, How do you communicate? How do you use your resources to do this? At that time communications and philanthropy mostly meant putting out an annual report or having a newsletter or a brochure. There were people like Frank Correll at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who was a mentor to me, who were doing things very differently. Kaiser, what we did eventually was we morphed over from being a grantmaking organization to an operating organization. They are now a public charity. And we invested deeply in educating reporters and helping them to understand more about health policy and how it really works.
And probably the biggest, the thing I probably enjoyed the most at Kaiser, working with Drew, was we had this crazy idea to start a news service that would be based out of the Kaiser Family Foundation. This was considered radical at the time — trying to get reporters and editors to come to work for us seemed impossible. Had a big breakthrough when I managed to get Lori McGinley to leave The Wall Street Journal, with a couple of Pulitzers under her belt, and come to start what then became known as Kaiser Health News. And Kaiser Health News, now under the direction of Davey Russo and Libby Rosenthal and Drew, has now become an effective, the effective health news service that we have in the country today. At a time when media cutbacks are just happening everywhere, and the public having trusted sources of information that they can turn to in times like COVID are just critically important.
So, very interesting, and I was sort of there being able to watch health in general change its approach on communications.
Judy:
Wow. And you know, what I think I have observed now in philanthropy committees, and it’s playing a larger issue in philanthropy all the time too. Why do you think that is? What are your thoughts around that?
Matt:
Well, I think Drew used to say — We created this one chart, a great chart one time for a board meeting that basically was one of these charts where you would unfold and unfold and unfold and it would get bigger and bigger and it basically had a little, it was all in proportion, a little [bar]. That showed Kaiser’s assets, which were about 400 million maybe at the time. Then you went to Medicare, Medicaid, the uninsured, and all the costs of the system, and we realized we were a rounding error in terms of impact that we were going to have to traditional grantmaking.
We used that to talk to the board and say, We need to find ways that you leverage your information to make a difference. And one of the biggest ways you leverage information is through communications. Being able to make sure that you are out in front of people explaining … these complex situations in a way that they can understand it and that they can trust that information. And I think philanthropy has run with that, and right now I would say there are many foundations across the country and around the world doing absolutely remarkable work in terms of communications. Vastly different, as I said — when I joined what is originally called the communications network in philanthropy, they literally had a session on how to design a brochure. And things are just a little bit different now.
Judy:
Yeah. So if you could be granted three wishes… for philanthropy, what would you want philanthropy to go deep into? What are the three things that they would really dive deep into invest more in?
Matt:
Well, you know I’m going to say communications. And here’s what I would do with it, though. Philanthropy in many cases is reactive, and that’s great, to what is happening out in the community. But I think philanthropy needs to be a little bit more strategic about communications and be forward thinking too. They are full of smart people who can think and see where there are basically problems and can find ways to fund them. So making sure the communications is on equal status with programmatic programs is, I think, absolutely important. That is what Drew did at Kaiser and it has made a big difference.
Secondly, I like what a number of foundation leaders are doing right now. Darren Walker at Ford, who I think is a true visionary, has found ways to tap into their assets at a time of great need, so that they can spend more now as opposed to just sitting on assets. This is difficult for a lot of foundation boards to wrap their heads around. And [what] they see in terms of spending is basically a ceiling, not a floor. But when you have great needs, like we have right now, I would like to see foundations spend more deeply. And I guess the third thing would be to try as [much as] they can to be more in touch with what local communities are experiencing. You need to be out from behind sort of the walls of the foundation and actually out into the community to understand what the problems are to make smart decisions. And this is not to say, any of those three things, by the way, that there are not a lot of great foundations doing this. But I would like to see more of it. If I can add a fourth, by the way —
Judy:
So granted.
Matt:
Thank you, I appreciate it. The fourth is when you think about the kind of staff you have, think about their communication skills. One of the things that has been tremendous at Robert Wood Johnson is bring on a guy like Richard Besser, who actually is an incredible communicator. Foundations have the ability to not just spend money but also leverage the social capital of their institutions, and that comes by being able to communicate what their values are, what they think people should be doing, what policymakers should be doing. Not crossing the line, but you can still be quite bold and quite out there. And so making sure that you have communicators at the top of these organizations. Bob Ross, at the California Endowment, Judy Belk at Wellness, those kind of people, I think, are just vitally important, and, frankly, having strong communication skills isn’t — external skills are not always what foundations are looking for.
Judy:
That’s very true. Very true.
Matt: Yeah. So let’s get back to the issue of the day and the CDC Foundation. Four and a half years you have been at the foundation. You have seen it change a lot. How has the foundation itself changed, and what has driven those changes?
Judy:
So we have been really undergoing quite a transformation at the Foundation. It started with technology. We are in a world where we need more data, and being able to embrace today’s technology, and we have done that at the Foundation. And thank goodness, because that has really served us well now during COVID and all of us working remotely, but to be able to have dashboards and look at our own data is incredibly valuable. So we have done that. Along with that, we have brought on staff that are digging deep into evaluation, not just a big analysis, but how do you evaluate, how do you start on the front end of any project and look to what are we driving toward? What outcomes are we driving and how are you going to evaluate that? That is a big piece that we have been doing.
We have been doing — over the last four and a half years we have been increasing our strategic planning with CDC. Along with our partners. And then we have had remarkable growth at the Foundation. Part of this is being driven by the needs of public health. There is no question, COVID obviously is a big driver of that. But just to give you an example, we have gone from about 200 staff in March to 800 today, and probably we will have over 1,000 staff. We have developed this nimbleness, or built some muscle around the emergencies to ramp up quickly, to meet the need of our health departments or what CDC is asking us to do, and we will bring that down on the other side. We did this with the opioid crisis. We handled search staff for states and then we started to, actually some of the staff then were hired by health departments because they were so happy with the quality of staff that we were able to hire.
So we have expanded a lot over the last four and a half years.
Matt:
Right. Let’s talk about COVID-19. So in our lifetimes I think it is safe to say we have never really seen anything like this, that affects virtually all aspects of our lives. At the CDC Foundation we have seen a remarkable growth, obviously, in people who are contributing funding to the projects and programs that we are both helping to operate and also identify and fund. The last number I saw, by the way, I think it was $13.7 billion has gone to COVID around the world in various ways, shapes, and forms.
For the CDC Foundation, tell me about both the asset growth, and then how you have been using that and the kind of projects you’re using it to run around the country with those funds.
Judy:
The good news is for us — none of us would have wished for a pandemic, and this is the biggest public health crisis that we have really seen in 100 years — but the good news is, donors really responded, and a lot. In particular in March we started seeing a number of donors from the general public, which has been really heartwarming to see the public support to the CDC Foundation to be able to do our work, as well as private-sector and philanthropic support. And so our ability to bring funds in was growing in leaps and bounds.
But we also — with that comes great responsibility. And we really felt that. And we have been working diligently to be good stewards of those resources, to ensure that they are getting out in a strategic fashion, that they are — where we sit at the Foundation, and that’s one of the things I love about the Foundation is because we work so closely with CDC and our local health departments, we know where the government funding is going. And we can use then our philanthropic donations strategically to complement those funds. So we have been able to do a number of projects across the U.S., all the way from national communications strategies and messages that are really important to helping our schools.
One of the projects we just funded — actually I’m really excited about — is, where it’s going to give CDC the capability of almost having real-time data from schools. So all of us, we want our schools to open safely, but where are the bright spots, which schools are doing that really well? We need that real-time data, or those that are faltering, we need to be able to go help them quickly. So that is a really cool project. But we have supported laboratory capacity, data solutions, at-risk communities, and across the whole U.S. And tribes and territories. And it’s been quite remarkable to be able to do that.
Matt:
And you have put regional directors in place to be able to identify what the needs are in different regions that can then work with local philanthropy to help direct resources?
Judy:
That is exactly right. We have got on the ground now, we have got, Health and Human Services has divided the country into 10 regions. So we have a senior advisor for the foundation that is overseeing work in the states and each region and working directly with health departments, and then worked with community-based organizations. So working with the CDOs closely on the ground, and all of this is mirroring the best science, the best emerging science on the ground to do the groundwork. So it’s been quite a miracle to have the brain trust join us.
Matt:
Just so everybody understands who is watching this and is not actually with the CDC Foundation, we are funding both what the CDC does not have resources to do, programs and projects that they’re bringing forward that they don’t have the resources for, but also projects to come to the CDC Foundation privately that you then have the resources to be able to fund.
Judy:
That is correct, because we get requests from the health departments directly or from community partners directly.
Matt:
Let’s talk a little bit about Pressure COVID. So Pressure COVID is an internal project we have come up with at the CDC Foundation, basically to try to use more resources to be able to fight COVID on the ground. And hopefully, as we say, crush COVID. Tell us about what the pillars are.
Judy:
So first of all, the need is just tremendous with us. And the funding that we brought in the door, we have been getting out the door very quickly. So there is a need now for what we are calling Crush COVID, and the three pillars are equity, because the disparities, what COVID has done to at-risk communities is really disheartening, and we really want to approach equity in a very strategic way. Crucial communications is a pillar. And particularly under that one is individual behaviors. We know that we need to drive individual behaviors better. Wearing masks, the social distancing, handwashing, not going to bars, those types of things, and vaccines will follow closely behind that. And our third pillar is supporting the frontline public health and healthcare workers. We will continue, they are going to continue to need personal protective equipment and those types of supports. But they need support, like our health departments are the ones advising the schools. They are advising businesses in their communities how to open safely, and we get a lot of requests from our health departments. Regarding either personnel that they need, expertise, sometimes it is equipment. And a number of things that are in short supply.
Matt:
Health departments in many cases have been under attack, right? With the officials who are running them and trying to communicate in a way that… helps us do everything to get the economy started again, open the school safely. [transcript cut off] [CC switching Zoom room]
