The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) is a government department of the City of Chicago. The purpose of the CDPH is to create a thriving and healthy community within the city of Chicago, Illinois by providing guidance, services and strategies. This includes promoting values of diversity, excellence, informed decision making, and teamwork within all residents and smaller communities within the city.
Diane Medved Harper is a United States professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan. Her area of expertise is human papillomavirus (HPV) and the diseases associated with it, as well as colposcopy, and she was one of the investigators in the clinical trials of Gardasil and Cervarix, vaccines against HPV.
Frederica M. Williams, MBA, FCIS has served as the president and chief executive officer of Whittier Street Health Center in Boston, Massachusetts since 2002.
EuroHealthNet is a non-profit partnership of organisations, agencies and statutory bodies working to contribute to a healthier Europe by promoting health and health equity between and within European countries. EuroHealthNet promotes health through its partnership framework by supporting members’ work in the EU and associated states through policy and project development, networking, and communications.
Roslyn Judith "Judy" Wilyman is an Australian anti-vaccination activist who came to prominence following the controversial award of a humanities PhD titled "A critical analysis of the Australian government's rationale for its vaccination policy" by University of Wollongong. The thesis came under heavy criticism from multiple directions, including medical professionals, due to claims within the thesis, including advancing a conspiracy theory whereby the World Health Organization (WHO) and the pharmaceutical industry supposedly conspire to promote vaccinations in the absence of evidence of safety and efficacy. The awarding of the degree created questions about the standards being applied and whether or not the thesis supervisors and examiners had sufficient knowledge to oversee the research, and led to calls for the university to review the doctorate. A number of individuals and medical organisations – including academics and researchers from other parts of the University of Wollongong – spoke out against the findings of the thesis, emphasising the need for vaccinations in order to prevent serious disease; and the University of Wollongong was criticised for a perceived lack of transparency in their doctoral process and an alleged failure to uphold standards of scholarship.
Jeong Eun-kyeong or Jung Eun-kyeong is a South Korean infectious disease and public health expert served as the first Commissioner of KDCA, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, from 2020 to 2022. Jeong was previously the first woman to lead its preceding agency, KCDC, which history dates back to 1981.
Vaccination policy of the United States is the subset of U.S. federal health policy that deals with immunization against infectious disease. It is decided at various levels of the government, including the individual states. This policy has been developed over the approximately two centuries since the invention of vaccination with the purpose of eradicating disease from the U.S. population, or creating a herd immunity. Policies intended to encourage vaccination impact numerous areas of law, including regulation of vaccine safety, funding of vaccination programs, vaccine mandates, adverse event reporting requirements, and compensation for injuries asserted to be associated with vaccination.
On December 31, 2019, China announced the discovery of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. The first American case was reported on January 20, and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared a public health emergency on January 31. Restrictions were placed on flights arriving from China, but the initial U.S. response to the pandemic was otherwise slow in terms of preparing the healthcare system, stopping other travel, and testing. The first known American deaths occurred in February and in late February President Donald Trump proposed allocating $2.5 billion to fight the outbreak. Instead, Congress approved $8.3 billion with only Senator Rand Paul and two House representatives voting against, and Trump signed the bill, the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020, on March 6. Trump declared a national emergency on March 13. The government also purchased large quantities of medical equipment, invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950 to assist. By mid-April, disaster declarations were made by all states and territories as they all had increasing cases. A second wave of infections began in June, following relaxed restrictions in several states, leading to daily cases surpassing 60,000. By mid-October, a third surge of cases began; there were over 200,000 new daily cases during parts of December 2020 and January 2021.
Uché Blackstock is an American emergency physician and former associate professor of emergency medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. She is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, which has a primary mission to engage with healthcare and related organizations around bias and racism in healthcare with the goal of mobilizing for health equity and eradicating racialized health inequities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Blackstock used social media to share her experiences and concerns as a physician working on the front lines and on racial health disparities and inequities exposed by the pandemic. She is best known for her work illuminating racial health inequities and her media appearances speaking about the COVID-19 pandemic. Blackstock became a Yahoo! News Medical Contributor in June 2020.
Nicola Mary Turner is a New Zealand public health advocate who is a Professor at the University of Auckland and Medical Director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre, an organisation that advises the New Zealand medical profession and the New Zealand Government. She has contributed to advisory committees for the New Zealand Ministry of Health, is a spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Group and works in general practice. Much of her research and outreach has focused on improving immunisation coverage and closing equity gaps for the national schedule vaccine delivery in New Zealand and she has commented publicly on these issues during COVID-19 in New Zealand.
Marcella Nunez-Smith is an American physician-scientist. She is C.N.H Long Professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine, where she serves as the inaugural Associate Dean for Health Equity Research and founding director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center. She also holds joint appointments at the Yale School of Public Health and the Yale School of Management. After co-chairing the Biden-Harris transition's COVID-19 Advisory Board from November 2020 to January 2021, she was selected by President Joe Biden to serve as Senior Advisor to the White House COVID-19 Response Team and Chair of the Presidential COVID-19 Equity Task Force.
Misinformation related to immunization and the use of vaccines circulates in mass media and social media in spite of the fact that there is no serious hesitancy or debate within mainstream medical and scientific circles about the benefits of vaccination. Unsubstantiated safety concerns related to vaccines are often presented on the internet as being scientific information. A large proportion of internet sources on the topic are mostly inaccurate which can lead people searching for information to form misconceptions relating to vaccines.
Joneigh Khaldun is the Vice President and Chief Health Equity Officer at CVS Health. Prior to serving in this position, she served as the Chief Medical Executive for the State of Michigan and Chief Deputy Director for Health in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. On February 10, 2021, she was announced as a member of the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force under the Biden-Harris administration.
The COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the United States is an ongoing mass immunization campaign for the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first granted emergency use authorization to the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine on December 10, 2020, and mass vaccinations began four days later. The Moderna vaccine was granted emergency use authorization on December 17, 2020, and the Janssen vaccine was granted emergency use authorization on February 27, 2021. It was not until April 19, 2021, that all U.S. states had opened vaccine eligibility to residents aged 16 and over. On May 10, 2021, the FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 15. On August 23, 2021, the FDA granted full approval to the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine for individuals aged 16 and over.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unequal impact on different racial and ethnic groups in the United States, resulting in new disparities of health outcomes as well as exacerbating existing health and economic disparities.
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the United States is the sociocultural phenomenon of individuals refusing or displaying hesitance towards receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the United States can be considered as part of the broader history of vaccine hesitancy.
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 vaccine mandates have been enacted by numerous states and municipalities in the United States, and also by private entities. In September 2021, President Joe Biden announced that the federal government would take steps to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for certain entities under the authority of the federal government or federal agencies. Most federal mandates thus imposed were either overturned through litigation, or withdrawn by the administration, although a mandate on health care workers in institutions receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds was upheld. All federal mandates were lifted when the national emergency was declared to have ended in May 2023. A small number of states have gone in the opposite direction, through executive orders or legislation designed to limit vaccination mandates.
Jasmine Y. Zapata is an American physician and epidemiologist. She is the chief medical officer and state epidemiologist for community health at Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Her career includes work as a pediatrician, public health researcher, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, author, and her support for youth empowerment with a variety of initiatives.
Vaccine equity means ensuring that everyone in the world has equal access to vaccines. The importance of vaccine equity has been emphasized by researchers and public health experts during the COVID-19 pandemic but is relevant to other illnesses and vaccines as well. Historically, world-wide immunization campaigns have led to the eradication of smallpox and significantly reduced polio, measles, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus.
Helen Siobhan Marshall is an Australian medical researcher who is Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Adelaide. She was named the South Australian of the Year for 2022.
