Cooperation and Chasm: The Health and Future of Global Public Health

The devastating global impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic spurred international collaboration to address critical weaknesses in public health systems. Five years on, the question remains: is the world better equipped to cope with the threat of infectious disease?

In May this year, the Pandemic Agreement was adopted at the World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO), followed by relevant negotiations. While it aspires to improve international cooperation and ensure equitable access to vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics, the mechanisms to achieve these goals remain unresolved. Meanwhile, the United States – WHO’s largest donor – is withdrawing from the organization and cutting funding for other health research and initiatives that impact the fight against infectious disease. At the same time, zoonotic diseases continue to make headlines with avian influenza jumping to human hosts this past year and viruses like West Nile expanding their range as the climate warms.

Join Perry World House for this timely expert discussion on these evolving risks and what should be done to address them.

Speakers

Dr. Satoshi “Toshi” Ezoe currently serves as the Senior Assistant Minister for Global Health at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan (MHLW), since April 2025. Dr Ezoe is a health diplomat and a medical officer promoting public health nationally and globally. He joined MHLW in 2002 after clinical training. He has since then engaged in health care and public health policy, including in the areas of global health, universal health insurance system, non-communicable diseases, including mental health and cancer control, and infectious diseases crisis management. He was seconded to UNAIDS Headquarters in Geneva (2009-2012). He was the first appointed Senior Coordinator for Global Health at MHLW (2015- 2017). He was a Counsellor of the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations (2017-2020), where he was instrumental in facilitating UN General Assembly High-Level Meetings on tuberculosis (2018) and universal health coverage (2019). In August 2020, amid the COVID-19 crisis, he became the Director of the Global Health Policy Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was responsible for coordinating overall global health strategy and diplomacy, including COVID-19 response, health agendas for the G7 Hiroshima Summit in 2023, and contribution to global health institutions and Initiatives such as the WHO, the Global Fund and Gavi. He was the corresponding author for two prime ministers and a foreign minister who contributed vision articles in the Lancet on global health. He is a Medical Doctor with a PhD and received a dual Master of Public Health and Public Administration from Harvard University.

Louise Moncla is Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and PI of the Moncla lab, which investigates viruses emerging in human populations, and transmission between them. The lab works to better understand viral evolution and transmission with the goal of preventing new outbreaks from occurring and mitigating the toll of endemic viral transmission. Dr. Moncla received her Bachelor’s degree in biology from Penn State University, and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the direction of Thomas Friedrich. Her work on genomic epidemiology methods has been used to investigate drivers of viral outbreaks, were recently applied to Zika virus in Colombia and mumps in Washington State. Professor Moncla also has a long-term interest in the virologic and evolutionary factors that facilitate avian influenza virus host switching.

Jennifer Pinto-Martin, PhD, MPH is the Viola MacInnes/Independence Professor in the Biobehavioral Health Sciences in the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing with a secondary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine. She currently serves as the Ombuds for the University. She is the former Executive Director of UPenn’s Center for Public Health, the former Director of the Master of Public Health Program, and has served as both a Department Chair and Chair of the University Faculty Senate. Dr. Pinto-Martin began her career as an epidemiologist as the Project Director for the Neonatal Brain Hemorrhage (NBH) Study, a longitudinal study of neonatal brain injury in low birthweight infants. The NBH Study had over 20 years of continuous NIH support and conducted five separate assessments of the cohort. Dr. Pinto-Martin’s primary research focus is the epidemiology of autism spectrum disorder. She served as the Director and Principal Investigator of the Pennsylvania Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities Research and Epidemiology (PA-CADDRE), one of six such centers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the etiology of ASD. PA-CADDRE is currently involved in data analysis from the Study to Explore Early Development (SEED), a multi-site, case-control study of the risk factors associated with ASD.

Moderator

Eric Feldman, JD, PhD is the Heimbold Chair in International Law, the Deputy Dean for International Programs, a Professor of Law, and a Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He has expertise in comparative public health law torts, law and society, and Japanese law. He currently serves as Tri-Chair on the University of Pennsylvania Faculty Senate for a term from 2023-2026. Much of his research explores the comparative dimensions of rights, dispute resolution, and legal culture in the context of pressing policy issues, including the regulation of smoking, HIV/AIDS, and natural disasters. Feldman has a strong and long-standing interest in tobacco law and policy, and has published widely on the legal and regulatory aspects of smoking, tobacco consumption and public health, the bioethics of tobacco, and e-cigarette regulation. He has expertise in state and federal tobacco litigation in the United States as well as legal conflicts over tobacco globally since the 1950s (Feldman and Bayer, 2004). Feldman serves on the external advisory board of the Penn TCORS and provides legal and policy expertise on tobacco control issues.

Introduction By

Margaret Bond Simon Dean of Nursing Antonia M. Villarruel leads a world-renowned faculty to advance science, demonstrate practice excellence, shape policy, and prepare leaders—all through her extraordinary lens as a first-generation college graduate and daughter of an immigrant, an innovative nurse-researcher, the first—and to date only—Latina nurse inducted as a National Academy of Medicine member, and one of the few Latina nursing deans in the United States, not to mention the only Latina nursing dean at an Ivy League school.

Dr. Villarruel is the sixth dean of Penn Nursing. She also bears the distinction of being just the second Penn Nursing alumna to hold the deanship. During her tenure as Dean—which began in 2014—Penn Nursing has been a top-ranked school of nursing, domestically and globally.Penn Nursing has consistently been one of the top recipients of research funding from the National Institutes of Health—usually in the top three, if not number one.

Under Dr. Villarruel’s leadership, Penn Nursing also received the single largest charitable gift ever made to a U.S. school of nursing: a $125 million investment to launch a unique, tuition-free program aimed at preparing and increasing the number of nurse practitioners to work in underserved areas, among a range of generous donations made over the last decade. This support makes a Penn Nursing education accessible no matter a student’s financial situation and provides students with cutting edge opportunities and dynamic community engagement events and programs—while addressing ways to aggressively promote health for all people.The School seeks to be a preeminent intellectual and transformative force for improving the health of individuals, families, and communities locally and globally.