Jonathan D. Quick

On March 27, 2015, Dr. Peter Piot of the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and Dr. Jonathan D. Quick, MSH President and CEO, sat down at the Boston Public Library with Stefanie Friedhoff of The Boston Globe to discuss Ebola, epidemic preparedness and rebuilding public health systems. 

Watch the video of the whole program:

Here are some excerpts from their conversation:

Stefanie Friedhoff: What did countries do that worked well in the Ebola fight?

Jonathan Quick: There were 6 things that worked well in three of the rim countries of Nigeria, Mali and Senegal.

1. Leadership: Ministers of Health were on top of the first cases and declared national emergencies.
2. Preparedness of public health systems.
3. Rapid action in getting the index case identified and case detection system for subsequent cases.
4. Good communications campaigns.
5. Mobilizing the community.
6. Heroism of local health workers.

SF: Why was the international response so slow? What should be done?

Post updated January 8, 2015

Join MSH President and CEO Dr. Jonathan D. Quick on This Week in Global Health on Wednesday, January 7, 2015, at 2:00 pm. Dr. Quick will be interviewed by Dr. Greg Martin about global health systems. Tune in to find out more about MSH’s approach, why health systems are so important, how to help improve health systems around the world, and more.

Watch live Wednesday at 2pm or find the video later by following this link: http://bit.ly/1zGyjuR.

Update, Jan. 8, 2015

Watch the interview with Dr. Quick on YouTube:

Universal Health Coverage Day.Management Sciences for Health (MSH) bloggers are discussing universal health coverage (UHC) and why we support health for all this week, leading up to Dec. 12, UHC Day. MSH is a founding member of the UHC Day coalition. Today, MSH authors Chelsey Canavan, Jonathan Jay, and Dr. Jonathan D. Quick discuss if, and how, UHC could help prevent major outbreaks, like the current Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa.

This post originally appeared on Devex.

Dec. 12, marks Universal Health Coverage Day, the second anniversary of a United Nations resolution endorsing UHC as a global priority. The last two years have seen a growing consensus that pursuing UHC will save lives and alleviate poverty, especially in developing countries.

Meanwhile, the devastating Ebola crisis continues to claim lives and stifle opportunity in West Africa. Observers were quick to note that UHC could have helped arrest the spread of Ebola, yet countries like Nigeria, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — all quite early on their paths toward UHC — have successfully contained Ebola outbreaks.

So is UHC really the answer?

Ebola shows us that more resources must go toward public health infrastructure. That’s an important lesson for UHC reforms, which could easily overlook those investments in favor of individual health services. UHC strategies can’t rest on individual service delivery to mitigate major health threats. When we imagine UHC, we should see institutions and organizations actively promoting the public’s health—long before the need for emergency response.

#HealthforAll. Everywhere. @UHC_Day]" width="200">#HealthforAll. Everywhere. @UHC_DayPost updated: December 9, 2014, 11:30 am EST

On Friday, December 12, 2014, a global coalition will launch the first-ever Universal Health Coverage Day (UHC Day) and call for universal health coverage (UHC) to be a cornerstone of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda and a priority for all nations. UHC Day encourages civil society organizations from around the globe to publicly display support of UHC and health for all on Friday. Over four hundred organizations have already joined the call.

"Developing strong health systems will ensure the collective well-being for all over the long term," said MSH President & CEO Jonathan D. Quick in a Letter to the Editor, published October 3, 2014, in The New York Times.

In the letter responding to Nicholas Kristof's Sept. 25 column, “The Ebola Fiasco”, Dr. Quick wrote:

Nicholas Kristof rightly states that early action on Ebola could have saved lives and money. The early investment should have been in bolstering the health systems for the long term—not as a quick fix after Ebola had re-emerged. ...

Steady international and national investment in health systems, including epidemic preparedness, is the only way to ensure rapid containment of the next disease outbreak—which surely will come—and to avoid the human and financial cost of an epidemic out of control.

Read Dr. Quick's Letter to the Editor in today's The New York Times (print edition or online).

Experience the 69th UN General Assembly (UNGA) and Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting as we take you through some of the key events in photos, videos, and tweets. More than a dozen Management Sciences for Health (MSH) representatives led or participated in UNGA and CGI activities in New York City, New York, last week.