The Critical Need for Rapid, Localized Funding
Rapid response is essential to containing infectious disease outbreaks and saving lives, yet a lack of available, sustained funding creates a persistent challenge for outbreak preparedness and response. Financial resources are especially vital in the earliest stages of an outbreak, when decisive intervention can prevent widespread transmission. However, local health departments are persistently underfunded, creating delays that hinder prompt action. Ensuring timely, local access to funds is essential for securing supplies, deploying additional personnel, and initiating control efforts before a situation worsens.
The need for innovative financing to support outbreak preparedness and response, particularly at the local level, has only grown more acute, as federal government services and funding to state and local health departments have been curtailed. Yet, the world, and the United States in particular, is at greater risk of a high-consequence infectious disease outbreak(s) than any other time in recent history.
Reimagining Public Health Financing
Innovative financing mechanisms that strengthen local public health response are essential for protecting health security, particularly in the face of growing infectious disease threats. Mass gatherings such as concerts, sporting events and festivals pose a heightened risk for disease transmission because they bring together large groups of people in close proximity. At the same time, the private sector has a vested interest in preventing outbreaks since public fear and government restrictions during epidemics can severely disrupt these events and lead to financial losses for venue owners and organizers. This alignment between public health goals and private economic incentives creates an opportunity to mobilize new sources of funding and support for outbreak preparedness at the local level.
PAX sapiens is launching an initiative to develop a practical toolkit that enables partnerships between local health departments and private venues to strengthen outbreak preparedness and response at mass gathering events. The goal is to address persistent gaps in preparedness by designing mechanisms that leverage private sector incentives to support public health readiness and response. The toolkit will demonstrate how these partnerships can work in practice, providing a foundation for wider adoption and adaptation.
Advisor
Rebecca Katz
Senior Fellow, The Innovative Financing for Pandemic Response
Dr. Rebecca Katz serves as an advisor to PAX sapiens on pandemic preparedness and leads the organization’s work on innovative financing mechanisms for epidemic and pandemic response.
She is a Professor at Georgetown University, where she directs the Center for Global Health Science and Security and serves as Faculty Director of the Graduate Certificate in Global Health Diplomacy. For over two decades, Dr. Katz has worked at the intersection of academia and public service, including as a Senior Advisor to the U.S. Department of State on the global COVID-19 response.
Dr. Katz holds a BA from Swarthmore College, an MPH from Yale University, and a PhD from Princeton University. She is a prolific author, with more than 120 peer-reviewed publications, seven books, and numerous op-eds, book chapters, and policy papers to her name.
