Dear Colleague,
Dr. Kathleen Neuzil, the Director of NIH’s Fogarty Center, was recently placed on administrative leave. She is the latest NIH director to suddenly be removed from her post. This action is part of a broader series of decisions by the U.S. administration that are weakening the NIH and other U.S. government bodies committed to improving health outcomes both domestically and globally.
If you are in the U.S., please see the attached letter (with gratitude to ASTMH for the original draft) that you can use as a template to contact your congressional representatives. We urge you to take a moment to send this letter and express your opposition to these decisions, which profoundly undermine our public health institutions, endanger global health efforts, and are an affront to the dedicated public servants who work within them.
Here are the links where you can find the addresses for the in-state offices of your congressperson:
To Find and Contact Your Representatives:
-U.S. House of Representatives: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-yourrepresentative
-U.S. Senate: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
A Few Useful Relevant References
- How to communicate effectively with policymakers. A guide for academics. https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/How_to_communicate_effectively_to_policy_makers.pdf
- How to communicate effectively with policymakers: combine insights from psychology and policy studies. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-017-0046-8
- Investing in the future of global health. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02191-3/fulltext
- How to write an op-ed or column. https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/hks-communications-program/files/new_seglin_how_to_write_an_oped_1_25_17_7.pdf
- Social media strategies. https://www.speakwithpeople.com/blog/social-media-strategies
- Global health threats require collaboration, innovation. https://www.aamc.org/news/global-health-threats-require-collaboration-innovation
- Building stakeholder trust: the heart of global health collaboration. https://www.dhealth.consulting/global-health-consulting-insights/building-stakeholder-trust-the-heart-of-global-health-collaboration
- Centering communities in global health: Using human-centered design to facilitate collaboration and intervention development. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2752535X241264331?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub 0pubme
- Engaging young people for health and sustainable development. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/274368/9789241514576-eng.pdf
- Reimagining global health: Accelerating change for a sustainable future. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11784496/
- Prioritizing health: A prescription for prosperity. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare/our-insights/prioritizing-health-a-prescription-for-prosperity
- The compounding economic dividends of global health investment. https://fpanalytics.foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2022/09/Compounding-Economic-Dividends-of-Global-Health-Investment.pdf
Thank you for your assistance.
Dr. Keith Martin
Executive Director