How to bring the CDC back from the brink

Elizabeth Cameron, a Miller Center practitioner senior fellow, is a global leader in health security and biodefense. She is a professor of the practice and senior advisor to the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. Previously, she was a senior advisor for global health security at the U.S. Agency for International Development. She spent two tours over five years on the White House's National Security Council (NSC) staff, where she twice helped establish and direct the NSC Directorate on Global Health Security and Biodefense and the White House Office for Preparedness and Response to Emerging Biological Threats. In this role, she built and led a robust team focused on preventing, detecting, and rapidly responding to biological crises. She holds a BA from the University of Virginia and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University.

J. Stephen Morrison, a Miller Center practitioner senior fellow who served as a James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor from 2021 to 2023, is a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington D.C. He founded and directs CSIS's Global Health Policy Center, which concentrates on the geopolitical and national security dimensions of U.S. leadership in international health, with an emphasis on bipartisanship and multilateral institutions, partnerships with private industry, foundations, advocates, and the faith community. Through several high-level commissions, he has shaped decisions in Congress and the administration on HIV/AIDS, reproductive health and gender equality, and health security, including pandemic preparedness. He holds a BA from Yale University and a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Patrick Ruffini is a founding partner of Echelon Insights. His book Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP was ranked as a best book in politics by The Wall Street Journal and predicted the political realignment and demographic shifts that decided the 2024 election. For two decades, Ruffini has advanced the digital and data-driven transformation of politics in numerous capacities, including senior roles at the Republican National Committee, on three presidential campaigns, and on the digital team for President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election. He has contributed to publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Politico and makes appearances as an on-air political commentator. He holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Margaret Foster Riley, the Dorothy Danforth Compton Professor at the Miller Center, is professor of law at the University of Virginia’s School of Law, professor of public health sciences at the UVA School of Medicine, and professor of public policy at the University’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. She also directs the Animal Law Program at the law school. Riley has advised numerous state and federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Department of Defense; committees of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; the Virginia Department of Health; and the Virginia Bar.