EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak Begins Tenure as Chair of NASEM’s Forum on Microbial Threats
NEW YORK – January 22, 2018 – EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization working at the intersection of animal, environmental, and human health on a global scale, is proud to announce the ascension of President Dr. Peter Daszak to Chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) Forum on Microbial Threats.
NASEM’s Forum on Microbial Threats was created in 1996 at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Its mission is to scrutinize and to respond to potential threats to human populations by way of emerging infectious diseases in humans, plants, and animals. As a nonprofit dedicated to One Health action and policy, EcoHealth Alliance understands deeply the mission of NASEM’s Forum on Microbial Threats.
“It is an honor to be elected to serve as Chair of NASEM’s Forum on Microbial Threats,” EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak said. “As President of EcoHealth Alliance, as a disease ecologist, and simply as a human being, it has long been my belief that emerging zoonotic diseases are one of the greatest threats to global health in this modern world.”
Dr. Daszak will serve alongside two vice chairs, Dr. Kent E. Kester (SanofiPasteur) and Dr. Mary E. Wilson (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health).
Members of NASEM’s Forum on Microbial Threats include leaders of government, industry, academia, and nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. They meet several times each year to identify key problems in preventing pandemics and suggest solutions in the form of policy, research, and public action.
“As Chair of NASEM’s Forum on Microbial Threats, it will be my goal to work with leading experts around the world to better understand what causes emerging diseases and to identify new strategies to prevent them,” Dr. Daszak said.
Dr. Daszak has served in an advisory role on the Forum for eight years.
About EcoHealth Alliance
Building on over 45 years of groundbreaking science, EcoHealth Alliance is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting wildlife, environmental, and public health from the emergence of disease. Approximately 60 percent of emerging infectious diseases like Ebola, HIV, Zika, SARS, MERS, and West Nile virus have all originated in animals before spilling over to human populations. Using environmental and health data covering the past 60 years, EcoHealth Alliance scientists created the first-ever global disease hotspots map that identified at-risk regions to determine where research and field work are needed to help predict and prevent the next pandemic crisis. That work is the foundation of EcoHealth Alliance’s rigorous, science-based approach working in more than 30 countries worldwide. EcoHealth Alliance’s strength is founded on innovations in research, training, global partnerships, capacity building, and policy initiatives.