Dr. Rajiv Shah
speaker
124 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Dr. Rajiv Shah’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
with the first Trump administration and stand up testing infrastructure, especially antigen testing across America at scale. I mean, when we started that project, there were only, it would take four or five days to get a PCR-based test result if you were lucky enough to get it in like April of 2000.
And the lack of testing availability retrospectively has probably been the number one reason COVID became an out-of-control crisis here in the U.S. And the U.S. suffered the highest level of morbidity and mortality relative to any OECD country on the planet against expectations. And we were able to do that as a big bet that worked in terms of getting testing stood up.
Then after COVID, we said, well, we should build a huge data infrastructure so everybody shares data together in real time on new cases of any pandemic so that if there's an outbreak somewhere in the world, authorities and labs and experts anywhere in the world can see it. And we tried to stand that up.
That didn't work because the politics were too hard and it was too complicated and this and that. And so We do things that sometimes work and make us really proud of the impact. And we do things that sometimes fail and are sources of learning for us as we go forward.
But maintaining the willingness and the risk appetite to try to solve problems and not just make incremental improvements on a tough situation, that's what we try to do day to day.
Oh, no, we got that. We still do. You know, there's always... an undertone of noise related to those types of conspiracy theories. But the reality is our job is really to be data-driven and science-based in making good judgments. And we don't do our work ourselves. We are fundamentally tethered to bringing together unlikely partners and building coalitions.
And that simple process of doing that tends to earn the buy-in and the support you need in communities where you're doing the work itself. So when we stood up our COVID testing effort, we partnered with more than 40 mayors and local leaders across the country, Republican and Democratic, their health administrations, Navajo Nation, NGOs, CORE serving underserved communities in Los Angeles.
And we said, we want to listen to and learn from all of you and then transmit that learning to, at the time, the head of the program at HHS, and then also take knowledge and resources from experts and make sure it reaches this vast network.
And that network mindset, that determination to work in partnership, I think helps build the trust that allows you to either overcome or not succumb to the reference you made to people who are more worried about the conspiracy theories.
Part of how we maintain an appetite for risk and a capacity to work that way, I think, is just being really true to our core DNA. That's the founding construct of this institution was not to be a charity that's all things to all people and not to try to meet every immediate need.
but rather to find those areas where science and innovation make problem solving at scale possible in a way that lifts humanity. I mean, this was a place, in addition to helping basically create the modern field of international science-based public health,
It was the Rockefeller Foundation well before I got here that invented dwarf wheat varieties and yielded a green revolution that moved 800 million people off the brink of hunger and starvation and earned the Nobel Peace Prize for that effort. So I think part of it is studying your past and saying, how do we have ambition to do things at that scale?
And if that's your North Star, it's hard to live up to, but you get to at least try in every successive generation.
Well, I think you have to be careful and pick your, should we call them fights? Pick your efforts, pick your initiatives carefully.
You know, pick things that are important, that are big, that are consequential, that will make a difference for you, for your institution, for the people and community of customers you might serve and be selective about those things that have the greatest level of impact. I mean, we told that story about vaccines because Bill Gates chose that
intervention because it was the most cost-effective way to reduce disease burden and deaths amongst people who are vulnerable. So be analytic and critical in deciding what you're going to do. And then I would say, when you do it, I would use these basic principles that I write about in the book. Really focus on building a culture of innovation and being data-driven on innovation and
really focus on building partnerships. I mean, today in a society moving this fast, you have to have partnerships, public, private, left, right, finance and engineering. And then third, and perhaps most important, is just be willing to measure results and learn along the way. Because the one thing you know is your plans will not work. And it's really about how you adapt.
I mean, the Ebola crisis was a great example of Everything we thought we were going to do turned out to not be the items that caused the greatest reduction in contagion and transmission. And those things that did cause that reduction weren't even in our headspace when we deployed. So you got to be constantly experimenting along the way.
You can only do that if you're very driven around measuring results.
Well, one thing I learned along the way, and I wish I knew earlier, was the power of what I call in the book, making it personal. But the power of... Connecting with people, not just based on a transaction or the work you might be doing, but on a deeper set of values that bind us together.
Showing 101–120 of 124 · page 6 of 7
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