Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Heidi Avery (see Dec. 30, 2009) called a meeting this evening (7:00 to 8:45 PM) in the Situation Room of the West Wing to discuss the broad plans to handle all public health threats, i.e. existing, naturally emerging and deliberately emerging. Present at the meeting was Zeke Emanuel, Nicki Lurie, Peggy Hamburg, Tom Frieden by phone from Atlanta, Jesse Goodman, Brian Kamoe, George Korch, Richard Hatchett, James Lawlor (latter 2 are my employees detailed to Heidi), Mike Kurilla, among others. Heidi had asked us (NIH, CDC, FDA, HSS) through Nicki Lurie to prepare a 1-pager on this initiative from each of our perspectives. Nicki consolidated the 1-pagers and we presented the concept to Heidi. Heidi is aiming to get the POTUS to announce some sort of initiative in the State of the Union Address on January 27. I am very impressed with Heidi and her no-nonsense style of getting to the point and the question at hand. Heidi mentioned to me as we left the Situation Room that she was relying on my “vision” to help get this going. Let us see what comes of this.