This article was featured in The Morningside Post.
Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, a University Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at Columbia University and the director of ICAP at Columbia, was appointed by President Lee Bollinger to serve as the next Director of Columbia World Projects. CWP is an initiative focused on bringing Columbia's academic resources to bear on the significant challenges facing humanity.
I had a chance to speak with Dr. El-Sadr over Zoom, roughly one year after the first reported COVID case in the United States. We talked about her career accomplishments, the importance of global collaboration, and her outlook on the COVID-19 pandemic. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: You hold multiple roles at Columbia — professor, director of ICAP, and now Director of Columbia World Projects. Do you find connections between them?
There are some really interesting connections across all of these roles. I enjoy the mix of the different positions and what they offer me. I enjoy teaching students, and I enjoy doing research. And I also enjoy designing health programs and being a part of teams that implement programs and answer big questions. Each of these roles in some way fulfills something that I enjoy.
Q: What drew you to study infectious diseases, and HIV and Tuberculosis early in your career?
I was born and raised in Egypt. Having grown up in a low-income country, I think I gravitated towards the major public health threats that I was most familiar with. Then, during my training I specialized in infectious disease, and I was freshly minted when HIV came on the scene here in NYC. There were compelling reasons for people like myself to become involved both in terms of taking care of people living with HIV and also doing research on HIV.
Q: What inspired your decision in 2003 to apply what you had learned at Harlem Hospital to the global fight against HIV?
I think in part because I am an immigrant to this country I've always been connected to the world. Tackling HIV in Harlem was not easy — it was a very stigmatized disease with a lot of discrimination against people living with HIV, particularly in disenfranchised communities. With the advent of effective treatments for HIV in the U.S., I felt that I wanted to take some of the lessons I had learned at Harlem Hospital to other parts of the world. That's what motivated the establishment of ICAP: to show that by working on the ground and supporting people on the ground, similar progress could be made in tackling HIV in Africa.
Q: Is there an accomplishment you are most proud of?
I think of my work at Harlem Hospital and in sub-Saharan Africa as very pivotal moments in my career. It was very satisfying to establish a program that was comprehensive, humane, and high quality for people in Harlem. And similarly, it was an amazing opportunity to demonstrate proof of concept for our programs in Africa — to show that it was possible.
Q: A year into the pandemic, is there anything that has surprised you about the global response?
One of the most disappointing aspects of the COVID response, at least in the U.S., has been the lack of a coherent, comprehensive response across the whole country. We've kind of fractured our response and lost precious time. The other disappointing thing has been the realization that the disinvestment in public health — something many of us have been talking about for years — has come back to haunt us. Had we had a robust public health system, we would have been better positioned to be nimbler and respond more effectively.
Q: How concerned are you about unequal access to COVID treatments and vaccines?
I am very concerned. If we don't make this a priority and actively try to think about it every day, I think unfortunately we're going to see what we've been seeing — the disproportionate mortality in certain communities, limited access to some of the treatments, and so on. Particularly as it pertains to the vaccine, I personally feel like we should have started this work way back last summer. It's unfortunate that now the vaccines are here and we're just starting the efforts to engage communities.
Q: Why was there a delay?
We were struggling. We were struggling with testing and scaling up of testing. We were struggling with hospitals that were full of patients. We were struggling with trying to get consensus around masks. We didn't have a plan, and we were struggling with division and confusion. In a way, we couldn't think ahead. We were tackling the crisis of the day.