Beyond the Headlines: What Employers Need to Know About Vaccines This Fall

Dr. Vin Gupta is a practicing pulmonologist public health expert who operates at the intersection of healthcare, innovation and communications. He currently serves as Managing Director of Health Innovation at Manatt and was formerly Chief Medical Officer of Amazon Health Services. Concurrently, he serves as a Major in the United States Air Force Reserves Medical Corps and as a medical analyst for NBC News.

Dr. Kate O’Brien is the Director of the Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals (IVB) Department at the World Health Organization (WHO). In this role she is responsible for leading WHO’s vaccine and immunization strategy and implementation to advance the vision of a world where everyone, everywhere, at every age, fully benefits from vaccines for good health and wellbeing.  The Department works across all levels of WHO (countries, regions, and headquarters), in collaboration with partners, to support countries achieve the optimum use and impact of vaccines across the life-course from infancy to older adult years, in routine programmes, as well as outbreak, emergency and pandemic responses.  Dr. O’Brien served as WHO’s technical lead on COVID vaccine during the pandemic response, through the vaccine pillar (i.e., COVAX) of the global multi-partner pandemic collaboration, ACT-A (Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator).

WHO's IVB Department works end-to-end across the vaccine preventable disease (VPD) value chain to achieve life-saving impact.  The Department is responsible for convening and coordinating key global vaccine agendas, VPD control/elimination strategies, and partnerships, as well as developing and issuing global vaccine and immunization policy recommendations, global immunization coverage monitoring, vaccine impact modeling, vaccine preventable disease surveillance, and advancing global vaccine access. IVB also has responsibilities for accelerating the vaccine research and development agenda on priority pathogens, optimizing immunization data systems and monitoring, enhancing immunization programme and campaign effectiveness, along with guiding vaccine introductions, vaccine portfolio prioritization and optimization, and outbreak responses.   

Dr O’Brien is a pediatrician, infectious disease specialist, epidemiologist, and vaccine clinical trialist. She earned a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from University of Toronto (Canada), her MDCM from McGill University (Canada), and her MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (USA). Her clinical training in pediatrics and infectious disease was at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (USA) after which she served at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer and staff member.  She is a dual citizen of Canada and the USA.

Prior to joining WHO in January 2019, she was Professor of International Health and Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she served as the Director of Infectious Disease at the Center for American Indian Health, and Executive Director of the International Vaccine Access Center. She served as a member of WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) from 2012-2017.  Her research and policy work over the past 30 years has focused on vaccine impact and equity through disease and risk-factor epidemiology studies, clinical field trials of investigational new vaccines, etiology studies of pneumonia, vaccine impact and effectiveness evaluations, modeling of VPD disease burden, and policy analyses to drive evidence-based decision making.   She has led policy and strategy initiatives to accelerate life-saving vaccine introductions and scale up in low- and middle-income countries, working in south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and with American Indian tribes in the southwestern United States. 

Kim Thiboldeaux is a seasoned, passionate health care leader with experience in both the private and non-profit sectors, spanning multiple disease areas and health care topics including HIV and AIDS, organ transplant, oncology, caregiving, patient navigation, and health equity.

Kim served as CEO of the Cancer Support Community (CSC) for 20 years, from 2000-2020, leading a global nonprofit network that operates at 175 locations, including CSC and Gilda’s Club centers, and in multiple hospitals and cancer clinics. Combined with a toll-free Helpline, a Research Institute, and a DC-based Policy Institute, Kim grew this network of professionally-led services five-fold during her tenure. In her last year as CEO, the organization provided more than $50 million in free support and navigation services to patients and families.

Kim’s service includes appointments to the nation’s premier health care panels and boards. In 2019, Dr. Francis S. Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, appointed Kim to the Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee. This panel is focused on providing advice and serving as a transparent forum for discussion of the scientific, safety, and ethical issues associated with emerging biotechnologies. In 2017, Kim was appointed to serve on the Biden Cancer Initiative’s Board of Directors.

In serving as a patient advocate on these high-profile boards and panels, Kim has brought attention to inequities in our health care system. In 2019, she joined Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, Dr. Jill Biden, and leaders of the Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation in Arizona to mark the opening of the first-ever full-time cancer and support center on an American Indian Reservation. Kim helped convene key Navajo Nation leaders, private sector supporters, and other officials to establish this culturally-adapted program located in an area larger than the state of West Virginia. That work led to the opportunity to develop a full-length, feature documentary, Navajo Nation USA, about the cancer center and the triumphs and challenges of the Navajo people. Kim is Executive Producer and Writer on the film (www.NavajoNationUSA.com).

In 2020, Stand Up To Cancer appointed Kim to its Equity Breakthrough Research Review Team, focusing on cancers affecting underrepresented populations. In 2019, the International Psychosocial Oncology Society presented Kim with the President’s Community Award for Distinguished Contributions at its Global Congress in Canada.

Kim has led numerous other initiatives to help patients and families in need. Most notably, she launched an emergency fund in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that provided financial relief grants to thousands of patients affected by the economic downturn and expanded the organization’s professionally-staffed Helpline as the call volume nearly doubled. In addition, as part of a two-year collaboration she led with Airbnb, more than 3,000 patients in need were provided free housing while traveling for treatment.