As the third anniversary of the pandemic approaches, Abbe R. Gluck and Marcella Nunez-Smith reflect on the roles of a lifetime — creating a national response.
On a very untypical August day in 2020, Marcella Nunez-Smith sat down in her office and prepared to join an important video call. A day earlier, a representative for Joe Biden, then the Democratic nominee for president, had asked if she could speak with the candidate about health inequities in the nation’s response to COVID-19. Now, as Nunez-Smith waited for the call to begin, her computer flashed a message that her internet signal was unstable. Then, mere minutes before Biden was set to arrive, a fire alarm sounded in her building.
But then, as she frantically texted colleagues to find out whether there was actually a fire, the room fell totally and blissfully silent.
“The fire alarm stopped, the internet became stable,” she said, chuckling at the memory. “And then Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sat down.”
The call went well. And soon after, the Biden team asked Nunez-Smith, the C.N.H. Long Professor of Internal Medicine at Yale and one of the nation’s foremost experts in disparities in health and health care access, to lead a new task force charged with helping to inform a more equitable COVID-19 response and recovery.
A few months later, she would be joined by Abbe R. Gluck, the Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law, a professor of internal medicine, and an expert on health law, who was also asked to be part of the new...
This is a paid press release. Contact the press release distributor directly with any inquiries. NEW YORK, September 23, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Special Committee of the Board of Directors (the ...