Jennifer B. Nuzzo

Why you should listen

Dr. Jennifer B. Nuzzo has worked for 20 years helping governments, businesses, communities and individuals prepare for pandemics. She was one of the first experts invited to testify before Congress about the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020. She sounded the alarm that the US was not doing enough to prepare for the devastating consequences of the virus.Nuzzo directs the Outbreak Observatory, which partners with frontline outbreak responders to study how we can better combat infectious disease emergencies. She serves as the lead epidemiologist for the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Testing Insights Initiative. She also co-leads the Global Health Security Index, which measures readiness for pandemics and other health security threats in 195 countries.Nuzzo is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), with joint appointments in the Department of Epidemiology and the Division of Infectious Diseases at the School of Medicine. She is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. She received a DrPH in epidemiology at JHSPH, an SM in environmental health from Harvard and a BS in environmental sciences from Rutgers.