Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, MPH, MPA comments on the government’s ability to oversee a public health response to the next pandemic after COVID-19.

“The public-health response has to be unified across the country, must be guided by national leadership and national direction,” Wafaa El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University, told me. “This is almost impossible in the face of limited authority of the CDC over states and the autonomy of states in making their own decisions, often due to political imperatives.”