eason 1 of The Road to a Vaccine is an eight-episode educational video series that examines the latest efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and breaks down the complex process of developing a coronavirus vaccine.
Host Lisa Ling talks to leading scientists and researchers, healthcare workers on the front lines and public health experts around the world who are working collaboratively to bring an end to the deadly pandemic.
In the season finale of "The Road to a Vaccine", pandemic pioneers Paul Stoffels, M.D., and Peter Piot, M.D., Ph.D., discuss Dr. Piot’s own experience battling COVID-19. Cato Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D., a world-renowned physician and healthcare leader weighs in on how racism is a public health crisis and discusses the impact of recent protests in the midst of a pandemic. Plus, Lisa Ling talks with International Rescue Committee President and CEO Rt Hon David Miliband about how to protect refugees and other groups particularly vulnerable to the effects of the novel coronavirus.
Season 1
Episode 8
What Two Renowned Virus Hunters Want Us to Know About COVID-19
Ling is the Executive Producer and host of This Is Life on CNN. She has also been a field correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show and a contributor to ABC News' Nightline.
Dr. Laurencin is University Professor of the University of Connecticut and Chief Executive Officer of the Connecticut Convergence Institute at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Laurencin is an expert in health disparities and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, as well as a Core Faculty Member of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut.
Miliband is the President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). He oversees the agency’s relief and development operations in more than 30 countries, its refugee resettlement and assistance programs throughout the United States and the IRC’s advocacy efforts in Washington and other capitals on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable people.
Dr. Piot is the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a Handa Professor of Global Health. In 1976, he co-discovered the Ebola virus. The prestigious posts he’s held include founding Executive Director of UNAIDS, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, President of the International AIDS Society and Chair of the WHO Ebola Science Committee.
Dr. Stoffels is the Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer at Johnson & Johnson. He spearheads the research and product pipeline by leading teams across all of the company's sectors to set the company-wide innovation agenda, discovering and developing transformational healthcare solutions.
At the height of the outbreak in New York City, Dr. Ed Kuffner took a leave of absence from his job to volunteer at a Brooklyn hospital hard hit by the pandemic. He shares what the experience taught him about his own strengths—and ideas for coping during this unprecedented time.
