12 November 2020 – The GPM congratulates professor Rebecca Katz with her appointment as advisor for President-elect Joe Biden’s Corona Virus Task Force. Professor Katz joins a highly regarded team of scientists and physicians set to advises the incoming administration on managing various aspects of the pandemic during the transition before the new President is sworn in January 20, 2021. Katz has been part of a team advising Biden on COVID-19 for the last several months along with two of the new task force’s co-chairs Vivek H. Murthy, surgeon general during the Obama administration, and David Kessler, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The third co-chair is Marcella Nunez-Smith, associate dean for health equity research at the Yale School of Medicine.
Since 2018 Katz is advising the Global Parliament of Mayors in the field of Public Health and supported the GPM to integrate the cause of pandemic preparedness and to prioritise it as a key component of urban health planning in the GPM Declarations 2018 and 2019.
At Georgetown, she teaches courses on global health diplomacy, global health security, and emerging infectious diseases in the School of Foreign Service. Prior to coming to Georgetown in 2016, she spent ten years at The George Washington University as faculty in the Milken Institute School of Public Health.