PROGRAM

This year’s Tisch Forum, “Confronting a Superstorm of Challenges: A New American Grand Strategy,” explored the ways in which U. S. public health policy must, moving forward, be formulated in the broadest possible context.  It examined the ways in which, on both the domestic and international fronts, public health is intertwined with a host of other issues, including environmental policy, climate change, national security and the economy. The silos in which policy in each area has been created — a divided approach which has outlived its usefulness — are outmoded and counterproductive, at a potential price of American global leadership. The night’s experts discussed how to build and follow through on a new approach both to public health and the myriad issues of public policy to which it is connected in today’s world, calling for a renewed focus on collaboration across policy-fronts and international borders.

PANELISTS

–  PATRICK DOHERTY, Deputy Director, National Security Studies Program, The New American Foundation
–  RICHARD JACKSON, Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow in Public Health at Hunter College
–  COL. MARK MYKLEBY, Senior Fellow, Smart Strategy Initiative, The New American Foundation
–  Moderated by MICHELE WUCKER, President, World Policy Institute

The speakers bring public health expertise as well as expertise in formulating military and diplomatic policy: Patrick Doherty, deputy director of the National Security Studies Program at The New America Foundation, directs their Smart Strategy Initiative, which seeks to provoke a new discourse across the United States and world capitals to ensure that a new American grand strategy is capable of forging a prosperous, secure and sustainable future for the country. His colleague and fellow panelist, Colonel Mark Mykelby, is a former senior Pentagon advisor who now serves as a senior fellow at the Smart Strategy Initiative. He is the co-author with Navy Captain Wayne Porter of A National Strategic Narrative, which outlines a 21st Century grand strategy for the nation. Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow Richard Jackson is a pediatrician and chair of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA. He served in many leadership positions in both environmental health and infectious disease with the California Health Department, including as the State Health Officer. Moderator Michele Wucker, president of the World Policy Institute, is at the forefront in working to draw together the various strands of policy-making — and to bringing policy makers into productive conversation with one another, the goal of tonight’s panel as well. Her new book, The Gray Rhino: Why We Keep Missing the Most Obvious Threats – And How We Can Get Out of Their Way, will be published in 2015 by St Martin’s Press.