Podcast explores UNMC’s health security past, future

UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, is featured on the latest "COVID-19 Update" podcast by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.

In the podcast, Dr. Gold and host J. Stephen Morrison, CSIS senior vice president and director of its Global Health Policy Center, discuss UNMC’s evolution into a national leader in health security and the role of the Global Center for Health Security in that transition.

Discussing UNMC’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Gold said:

"As we went into this, we were very clear that the safety and wellness of our faculty, students, and staff and the communities that we serve had to be our North Star. Any decision that we made, it was around the safety and health security of those that we serve.

"We became very rapidly a trusted source (on COVID-19), and that goes back to the days of the Ebola virus pandemic (which) catapulted us into the forefront around health security, particularly in the area of highly infectious agents," Dr. Gold said.

Listen to the podcast. (Please note that there may be a brief delay after clicking the play button before the program starts.)

The 38-minute episode focuses of UNMC’s health security history, including high points such as the 1997 creation of the public health lab, the 2004-2005 establishment of the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, the unit’s life-saving capacities during the Ebola outbreak of 2014-2105 and at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, when UNMC repatriated patients from the Diamond Princess cruise ship and U.S. citizens evacuated from Wuhan.

But Dr. Gold also spoke of UNMC’s goals for the future as the university stands ready to improve the U.S. surge capacity for managing future pandemic shocks. A wise person, he said, once told him that the only thing we know about this pandemic with 100% certainty is it will not be the last one.

He said he sees an opportunity to work with the Department of Defense, DHHS, Homeland Security, the VA, and others to build surge capacity — in workforce, supply chains, communications and infrastructure, technology and physical beds.

"We don’t have that capacity, and we’ve proven that with all things COVID," he said. "Not just from the physical beds in the hospitals, but from the workforce perspective, from the supply chain perspective, etc. So we have an opportunity now to develop multiple sites, multiple locations across the U.S. … that could rapidly ramp up, in a carefully controlled, carefully integrated fashion, in partnership with our federal government, our state and local governments and the private sector to build that capacity."

UNMC, he said, plans be an effective partner in that process.

"When you break down the public and private barriers, you can do more, and hopefully we’ll do that," he said.

"All the lights are green at this time, in the sense that there is a lot of energy."