Former UN Assistant Secretary-General Reflects on Public Health, Policy, Possibilities

The former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations encouraged students to see the links between public health and policy at a Georgetown University event Jan. 27.

Dr. Shannon Hader joined Georgetown University’s Global Health Institute to discuss personal stories from Hader’s longtime leadership in the global HIV/AIDS response. In a conversation moderated by John Monahan, a lawyer and senior advisor at the Global Health Institute, Hader framed her career with several moments that motivated her lifelong interest in public service, from volunteering in a Taiwanese orphanage to directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) HIV programs in Zimbabwe.

Hader said her first exposure to the struggles of public health came during her gap year after college, when she witnessed how deteriorating U.S.-Taiwan relationships harmed Hepatitis B immunization campaigns for youth in the 1980s.

“I was staring into the faces of children whose health had been affected for life by geopolitical forces that had nothing to do with their disease,” Hader said at the event. “That was my first real introduction to public health.”

Hader also discussed her work in Washington, D.C., saying she led the city’s HIV/AIDS response during a period of widespread stigma and political stagnation.

“We turned around the data systems, got the evidence out and showed that there was a very large HIV epidemic here in the nation’s capital,” she said. “For HIV and AIDS, we were then able to increase diagnosis by 50%, decrease mortality by 30%, eliminate mother-to-child transmission and get the first-ever D.C.-funded needle exchange and comprehensive harm reduction program in place — 200,000 needles off the street in the very first year.”

Monahan said Hader displays versatility in different areas of public health, as well as her mentorship of future community leaders.

“Dr. Shannon Hader has made a career of improving health outcomes through her work at CDC, across Africa, with the United Nations, and at the D.C. Department of Health,” Monahan wrote to The Hoya. “She challenged students to commit to improving health and to remain flexible and open to unexpected opportunities at the global, national, and local levels and across the public, private, nonprofit, and faith sectors.”

Hader described implementing approaches during the worldwide HIV campaigns, like rapid testing and opt-out screening, which she said were often adopted abroad before gaining prominence in the United States.

“What surprised people was that we weren’t bringing innovation from D.C. to the world,” Hader said during the discussion. “We were bringing lessons from Zimbabwe back to D.C.”

Mikayla Friedman (SOH ’27), who attended the event, said she particularly enjoyed glimpsing into Hader’s legacy of working in underserved public health crises.

“I really enjoyed hearing Dr. Hader’s reflections on effective public health leadership over her impressive career,” Friedman wrote to The Hoya. “I was especially interested in the time she spent working at the D.C. Department of Health to improve access to HIV/AIDS treatment, testing, and harm reduction care for people in the District.”

Monahan said the discussion with Hader, part of a seminar series titled “Conversations in Health: Global to Local,” was a critical moment for students in his class.

“Conversations in Health: Global to Local is designed to do exactly this,” Monahan wrote to The Hoya. “The course engages Georgetown students with prominent health leaders who share their personal career journeys and reflect on the urgent health challenges of the day.”

During the talk, Hader repeatedly returned to the link between public health and policy, saying that health leaders must engage with the public without compromising scientific integrity.

“Public health has always been political,” Hader said. “That’s the ‘public’ in public health. What it hasn’t always been about is partisanship.”

Hader added that despite the growing partisan biases affecting public health, she has found that collaborating with political opponents who share ideals can be integral for bettering the health outcomes.

“I think it’s way more exciting and sometimes effective to seek out those I don’t know, who aren’t my friends, who might actually align on part of the ‘what needs to be done,’” Hader said. “Then, we can broker over the ‘how it needs to be done,’ which we might not agree on. Looking for those strange bedfellows has been where breakthrough successes in policy often happen.”

At the end of the event, when Monahan asked what gave Hader hope amongst a difficult time for science, Hader said that current instability is not a referendum on the future of public health.

“I’m hopeful that because all of you are here, developing your skills, your values and your vision, that the future doesn’t have to look like the past,” Hader said.