The Pandemic and Preparing for the Next One

The Pandemic and Preparing for the Next One
In the UK alone, over 200,000 people lost their lives due to Covid-19 and many more have been affected by a loss of education, employment, access to care or other consequences.

Although this relatively new disease is still causing real harm, the acute phases of the pandemic are behind us. We are now looking backwards to better understand what happened and whether the right decisions were made. Recovery is challenging with new crises including war in Europe, cost of living and huge pressure on public services. Many countries have established pandemic institutes, reviews, public enquiries and new studies to learn from what has occurred and inform future preparedness. What did we learn, and can the next pandemic be prevented – or is it still too early to know?

Professor Linda Bauld OBE FRSE FRCPE FAcSS FFPH is the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health in the Usher Institute, College of Medicine, University of Edinburgh and Chief Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government. For the past 25 years she has led studies to prevent or treat the main modifiable risk factors for Non-Communicable Diseases including cancer, diabetes and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases with a particular focus on tobacco, alcohol, diet and inequalities in health. During the pandemic she was involved in research on Covid-19, chaired two Scottish government advisory groups and is now a member of Scotland’s Standing Committee on Pandemics working on preparedness for future threats. She is a former Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Health, the World Health Organisation and Cancer Research UK on prevention and public health.

Learn more:  ed.ac.uk/usher • ed.ac.uk/profile/linda-bauld • Twitter