RE Log - Fall 2021

FALL 2021 Ransom Everglades LOG 7 Devi Sridhar ’01 answered the call during the pandemic Devi Sridhar ’01 watched the emergence of COVID-19 in January 2020 with a sense of dread that even her closest colleagues did not share. The Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Sridhar almost immediately understood the inevitability of an international health crisis. What she did not anticipate was the extent to which she would be involved in the global response. In the last 18 months, Sridhar – just 37 – has advised governments, directed research and explained complex science to ordinary citizens. As COVID-19 wreaked havoc around the world, her work took on increasing importance, and the demand for her expertise grew. Since graduating from Ransom Everglades at age 16, earning her bachelor’s degree at the University of Miami in two years, and becoming the youngest U.S. recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship at 18, Sridhar has reached academic and career milestones with unfathomable speed. The urgency of the pandemic only accelerated her rise. “There has never been such interest in public health,” Sridhar said on a call from her office in Edinburgh. “There’s too much information out in the world, so if I can help sift it, if I can help make it simple and accessible, I feel like I’m playing a useful role … COVID has felt like a marathon. Just when you feel like you’ve gotten a handle on something, something new emerges that changes the picture.” Early in 2020, Sridhar began formally advising the Scottish and United Kingdom governments and the Wellcome Trust, a London-based charitable foundation focused on health research. This year, she was named vice-chair of a pandemic advisory group under the auspices of the U.S.-based National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She also has written a regular column for The Guardian , contributed to The New York Times , and appeared frequently on news shows on the BBC. When Scotland’s national academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, honored her as a 2021 Fellow last March, it called her a “public health expert” who during the pandemic had become a “household name.” “Devi is clearly a shining light … taking this field to a higher level, and very much in time,” said Julio Frenk, the president of the University of Miami and former Minister of Health for Mexico. “This pandemic – which makes every previous pandemic in the last century pale by comparison – has only underscored the importance of global health … It’s people like Devi who are going to move the agenda forward and, in the end, create not just a healthier, but also a safer world for everyone.” Frenk, 67, knows Sridhar as more than an alumna of the school he now leads. The two are longtime colleagues and collaborators; Sridhar was the lead author on a peer-reviewed scientific paper on global health with Frenk and two others published a year before he arrived to Miami in 2015. “It’s people like Devi who are going to move the agenda forward and, in the end, create not just a healthier, but also a safer world for everyone.” – Julio Frenk, president of the University of Miami “I immediately saw in her the face of the next generation of leaders in global health. She’s come not only to fulfill that impression, but actually surpass it many times over.” ON A FAST TRACK