Public Health Sciences Grand Rounds: Retreat, Recommit, or Reinvent? The U.S. Role in Global Health at a Crossroads

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Title: Retreat, Recommit, or Reinvent? The U.S. Role in Global Health at a Crossroads

Speaker: Stephanie Psaki, PhD | Distinguished Senior Fellow, Brown University School of Public Health

Stephanie Psaki, PhD, is a public health researcher and policy leader whose work spans global health security, pandemic preparedness, sexual and reproductive health, and health equity. Her work sits at the intersection of research evidence and policy translation.

From 2021 to 2025, Stephanie served in senior policy roles in the U.S. government, serving first as Senior Advisor in the HHS Office of Global Affairs and then as a member of the National Security Council staff, where she was appointed by President Biden to serve as the inaugural U.S. Coordinator for Global Health Security. In that role, she directed whole-of-government biological threat preparedness and response, led the development of the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy, oversaw the replenishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria, and represented the United States in multilateral negotiations, including on the WHO pandemic treaty.

Stephanie holds a PhD in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Master of Science in Population and International Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research — published in journals including Social Science & Medicine and Demography, and spanning topics from adolescent reproductive health to the causal effects of education on sexual and reproductive health outcomes — draws on rigorous quantitative and evaluation methods across low- and middle-income country settings. Before joining government, she co-founded and directed the GIRL Center at the Population Council, building an interdisciplinary applied research center focused on girls’ health, gender equity, and evidence-based programming. Prior to that, she served as Co-Investigator on a Fogarty International Center grant at the NIH and as a researcher with Partners in Health and the Harvard School of Public Health. Stephanie is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Brown University School of Public Health, as well as Board Chair of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and a member of the Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security at CSIS.

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