Columbia Set To Lead New York City's First Pandemic Response Institute

Upper West Side NY

20 October, 2021

1:31 PM

Description

Columbia Daily Spectator BY AILI HOU OCTOBER 19, 2021 Columbia has been selected to lead New York City's first Pandemic Response Institute, according to an announcement released on Sept. 29 by Mayor Bill de Blasio. The institute—which will be led by the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs at Columbia, the Mailman School of Public Health's Center for Infection and Immunity, and various other University programs—will work to protect the city against future public health crises and transform New York City into a leader in global health. Several other community, research, and industry partners will aid Columbia in leading this initiative in addition to its key partner, the City University of New York's Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. The formation of the PRI was first proposed in December 2020 by de Blasio in response to the unprecedented challenges the COVID-19 pandemic posed to the city as well as the underlying health-related inequities it exposed. Between December 2020 and January 2021, city agencies such as the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene worked toward shaping the creation of the PRI by gathering perspectives from local community organizations and public health experts. "[Location] matters greatly, and a lot of the health disparities that are part of the goal of this Institute are happening in the ZIP code that the Institute will be housed in," Miriam Aristy-Farer, co-Chair of Community Board 9's Health and Environment Committee, said. "So I hope [the PRI's location in West Harlem] makes it easier to gather data and to test pilots that can then be deployed to different parts of the city, Manhattan, and the rest of the country." With the PRI initially housed at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, the city released a Request for Proposals on April 15 to search for potential directors of the Institute, with a goal set for its official launch at the end of 2021. According to dean of CUNY SPH Ayman El-Mohandes, Columbia and CUNY SPH worked together from the start to submit a proposal to host the PRI. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP at Columbia and Columbia World Projects and a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Mailman School of Public Health, will be leading the PRI on Columbia's side. "From the very beginning, Dr. El-Sadr and myself decided that this would be a very strong collaborative application," El-Mohandes said. "Columbia University and [the] CUNY School of Public Health felt like there was a complementarity in our skills and in our mission. We both felt like we were very well positioned to compete for that opportunity to serve the City of New York." Columbia and CUNY SPH's joint proposal was anchored in several key principles, largely based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, that will now guide the direction of the Institute. Dr. El-Sadr says that these principles include striving toward equity to combat the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on marginalized communities, remaining "perpetually energized" by driving innovation during periods of both crisis and noncrisis, and promoting agility by responding quickly and efficiently to emergencies. "Even when COVID-19 is behind us, we will be working consistently on how we put in place systems to be able to predict, to prepare, to rapidly detect the next health threat, and then also to effectively respond to the next health threat," El-Sadr said. El-Mohandes explained that their proposal explored a variety of domains ranging from the usage of epidemiological data to increased community outreach about public health emergencies. Additionally, he believes that their emphasis on a collaborative model is what further strengthened their application. Both Columbia and CUNY SPH brought on a vast network of partner institutions ranging from community-based groups to health care delivery organizations in order to form a strong consortium of collaborating agencies. "Each of our institutions brings their strengths … but also will rely on collaboration from the other institutions," El-Mohandes said. To support its launch, the PRI will receive a total of $20 million in city capital funds. Meanwhile, Columbia, CUNY SPH, and their partners will fund the programmatic side of the Institute, with the University providing $2.75 million over five years and CUNY SPH, Amazon, and Cepheid each contributing $1 million over five years. While acknowledging the need to procure additional funding in order to fully launch the Institute's operations, Dr. El-Sadr said that Columbia's initial funding for the PRI will draw from the Mailman School of Public Health, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Columbia World Projects. "The funding will be utilized to initially recruit the staff to be able to do the work, as well as to also be able to start working on some of the key priorities that we will identify in conjunction with the New York City Department of Health," El-Sadr added. CUNY SPH's funds, according to El-Mohandes, will mainly be used for the compensation of its faculty who participate in the Institute's activities, as well as for potentially expanding its reach to students who will be trained to partake in service and research. The PRI will operate on a hub and spoke model, with one centralized headquarters—whose location Columbia has yet to determine—and five "spoke locations," one in each of the city's boroughs. The Manhattan location will be located at CUNY SPH, on West 125th Street in Harlem. El-Mohandes believes that the Institute's direct location in Harlem is part of what will help enable it to address the disparities in health infrastructure that disproportionately impact communities of color, especially during public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, people of color have died from COVID-19 at higher rates than white individuals, a fact that illuminates many of the underlying inequities communities of color face, such as an increased difficulty in accessing health care. "Being situated in Harlem, one of the hardest-hit communities in Manhattan, [we] will be able to work directly with community-based agencies," El-Mohandes commented. "And in these communities where perhaps the reserves are limited and the risks are high, we intend to be most representative—working directly with the community … having adequate representation on our advisory boards and our collaborating agencies." Aristy-Farer believes that the PRI's location in Harlem will benefit the local community through its quantification of data regarding the health-related disparities that many residents experience and its enabling of West Harlem to potentially become a model for how other localities should respond to crises. "Even though we can see the [disparities] on a day-to-day basis, if we don't have data to back it, sometimes it's hard to make our case with city agencies," Aristy-Farer said. "Having an educational partner like Columbia … really gives us more support as a community to elevate the disparities that we know exist." While many of its details still remain in the works, Dr. El-Sadr says that the PRI will soon aim to conduct a survey among its many community partners to find spoke locations for the rest of the city's boroughs and determine how each group's assets can inform the Institute. "We want this to be bidirectional—we don't want this to be the Institute, in a way, kind of bringing something to the community," El-Sadr said. "We want the community to also inform the priorities of the Institute moving forward, to bring their voice from day one." Aristy-Farer also emphasized the need for the PRI to maintain consistent communication with the community by engaging directly with community leaders and empowering them to contribute to advancing its mission. "I would love to talk to [the PRI] and understand from them directly what their plans are for our community and how we can be involved," she said. "If they're speaking to the community … the Community Board [9] is the community they're speaking about. So I hope that we can support them, and they can support us." While Aristy-Farer looks forward to seeing how the PRI will benefit West Harlem and its surrounding areas in the near future, El-Sadr wishes for the program to benefit not just New York City, but also people around the world. Eventually, El-Sadr hopes that the PRI will be able to serve as a model for how communities across the globe can respond to major health threats. In the meantime, however, it will start with New Yorkers—developing initiatives to bolster the city's pandemic preparedness and the resilience of its most at-risk localities. "I always say that everybody in New York, every New Yorker, has felt the impact of COVID-19 in a very deep way," El-Sadr said. "And I'm hopeful that this Institute and the promise of this Institute will resonate with individuals and also will resonate with institutions in the city." Staff writer Aili Hou can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter at @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.