Pandemic Security Project
The Pandemic Security Project (PSP) was a significant two-year initiative dedicated to exploring and analyzing the crucial lessons learned during the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through its duration, PSP successfully convened Dartmouth, domestic, and international experts in economics, biosecurity, and epidemiology to study the global effects of pandemics, investigate the origins of COVID, analyze our preparedness strategies, and propose vital ways to prevent future epidemics. The initiative demonstrated an expanding scope of influence and effect, starting with local and academic perspectives and growing to encompass national impacts and successes, ultimately reaching the international stage to address disease burden and foster innovation.
Notably, the Covid Crisis Group (originally the Covid Commission Planning Group), formed in 2021 and comprising 34 experts including Kendall Hoyt, meticulously mapped the crisis landscape and conducted nearly 300 listening sessions. Culminating its work two years later, the Group published the impactful investigative report Lessons from the Covid War (PublicAffairs, April 2023), offering critical insights into America’s Covid response.
Further highlighting its achievements, the project included the Dartmouth International Vaccine Conference in December 2023, co-chaired by Kendall and cosponsored by the Dickey Center, which facilitated discussions on multidisciplinary advances in vaccine research and the role of academic vaccine institutes. Additionally, in March 2024, Kendall and the Dickey Center convened the Salzburg Global Seminar Better Preparedness for the Next Pandemic: Developing Vaccine Access Models with Low- and Middle-Income Countries, bringing together senior representatives from international health ministries, procurement heads, policymakers, researchers, and health care specialists from Africa and beyond.
Salzburg Global Seminar
- Convened international stakeholders to establish the key principles in the design of a new mechanism for multilateral procurement of medical counter-measures for epidemics and pandemics
- Read the program proceedings here
Global Health Fellows
Presentation to Global Health Fellows students about vaccine procurement models
Dartmouth International Vaccine Conference
Turning Vaccines into Vaccinations
- The first annual Dartmouth International Vaccine Conference will highlight important advances in research and development of new vaccines for the world and the role of academic vaccine initiatives. Speakers will include leading national and international experts from academia, foundations, industry, and government. The theme of “turning vaccines into vaccinations” will also consider critical issues in vaccine acceptance and vaccine access.
Lessons from the COVID War: A Conversation
Former Ambassador Philip Zelikow in conversation with Dartmouth Professor Kendall Hoyt in connection with the launch of the Covid Crisis Group’s report they coauthored, Lessons from the Covid War. The report lays out the lessons to be learned from the pandemic and a blueprint for preventing the next one.
Book Launch in Washington, D.C.
Discussion of Findings from the Covid Crisis Group
- The National Academy of Medicine hosted a half-day event to discuss the findings presented in the Covid Crisis Group’s report, Lessons from a Covid War, published in April 2023.
- The launch event featured Victor Dzau, Philip Zelikow, Richard Danzig, John Barry, Marc Lipsitch, Gary Edson, Ruth Faden, Margaret “Peggy” Hamburg, Mark McClellan, Melissa Harvey, Richard Hatchett, Monique K. Mansoura, and Kendall Hoyt
Pandemic Security Simulation
Over 40 Global Health Fellows, War & Peace Fellows, and Great Issues Scholars participated in a Pandemic Security simulation run by Naval War College designers that focused on stakeholder engagement, cross-organization cooperation, and fraught dilemmas in a pandemic response.
Vaccine Hesitancy And Misinformation: Sources And Solutions
A panel discussion about how we cross the chasm of political discourse in science, the WHYs of vaccine hesitancy, and detailed suggestions on how to make changes on a national and global level.
The panel of experts included Thomas J. Bollyky (Council on Foreign Relations), Brendan Nyhan (Dartmouth), Gillian SteelFisher (Harvard School of Public Health), Lindsey Leininger (Tuck), Kendall Hoyt (Geisel, Dartmouth, Thayer), and Benjamin Chan (NH State Epidemiologist).
Medical Supply Chain Security and Governance
This workshop examined methods to ensure that medical supply procurement mechanisms, manufacturing systems, and the supply chains that support them can be both resilient and nimble during health emergencies.
Workshop participants included representatives from Dartmouth College, The Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Center for Global Development, MITRE, MIT, The Global Health Innovation Alliance Accelerator, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Kendall Hoyt and Chris Snyder
Pandemics: Looking Back to Look Forward
Two international experts in biosecurity and the global effects of disease discussed the origins of COVID, analyzed our preparedness, and suggested ways to prevent the next epidemic.
John Barry, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, and Professor Kendall Hoyt, the Dickey Center’s Faculty Director of the Pandemic Security Project, are both advisers on the national Covid Crisis Group. They, along with moderator and Dickey Center Director, Tori Holt, sought to answer the question “Where do we go next?”
