Director, Center for Global Health Policy & Politics @georgetown Prof of global health and law
Washington, DC
Joined May 2012
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US withdrawal from WHO: Has it happened? Are other political actors powerless to prevent it or (if it happens) shape how it affects global health? On both fronts, the answer is no.
My new piece in @ForeignPolicy on danger and opportunity.
A thread...
foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/23…
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
Episode three of Global Order is out: Ebola, Gender, and Crisis, with Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. Pandemics don't affect everyone equally — Ebola has made that painfully clear. Listen: open.spotify.com/show/3UVX9x…
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
I welcome the UNGA's political declaration on pandemic prevention, preparedness & response. Now it's time to redefine preparedness: tackle the inequality fueling pandemics, and ensure that the benefits of science reach everyone. #PABS #InequalityEmergency
news.un.org/en/story/2026/10…
Responders should be able to swarm a place when its first few infections appear, tracing contacts, disinfecting homes, engaging communities before transmission takes off… “Putting out small fires isn’t possible, you end up with massive fires everywhere”
bloomberg.com/news/features/…
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
Are we measuring pandemic preparedness the right way?
We asked Matthew Kavanagh , Director and Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Policy and Politics and a member of the Global Council on Inequality, AIDS, and Pandemics, ahead of the High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response at #UNGA81.
His take: having the laboratories, surveillance systems and health workforces is not enough.
If inequality means those capacities cannot be deployed effectively when a pandemic hits, then inequality has to be part of how we think about preparedness.
So what would a new approach to pandemic preparedness look like?
Mr Kavannaugh shares what he hopes comes out of this week’s high-level meeting — and why the world needs more than another declaration.
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
Great to be back in NYC for #UNGA81. Looking forward to seeing many colleagues and friends and thinking together about how best to advance our intersecting goals - and make the world safer from existing pandemics - and those to come.
At UNGA81, UNAIDS is focused on turning the commitments made at the June High-Level Meeting on HIV and AIDS into results, while bringing the lessons of the HIV response into the wider global health agenda.
Across the week, we’ll be exploring what this means for sustainable HIV responses, pandemic preparedness, equitable access to medicines, health sovereignty, inequalities and the future of UNAIDS.
From African leadership and regional production of frontier AIDS and pandemic medicines on 23 September, to the conversation on a transformed Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS on 24 September, and the High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response on 25 September, these conversations are connected by one question: how do we build health responses that are sustainable, equitable and ready for the future?
@AchrekarAngeli, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director, shares what she’s looking forward to at #UNGA81 and why the lessons from HIV matter far beyond AIDS.
Read: unaids.org/en/resources/pres…
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
1/3 We're pleased to release E2 of Global Order: Can a Divided World Be Ready for the Next Pandemic? with @HelenClarkNZ.
Listen now: open.spotify.com/show/3UVX9x…
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
Happy International Day of Democracy.
#Democracy for me is people living in freedom, being involved in making decisions that affect their lives, and being equal under the law – no one is above it!
Where justice is accessible for everyone.
So pleased to join the very first episode of Global Order: Democracy in an Age of Crisis — @GeorgetownGHPP's new podcast hosted by @MMKavanagh, to discuss inequality, democracy and what it will take to build societies that leave no one behind.
Have a #DemocracyDay listen! 🎧 youtube.com/watch?v=jxyEX7N3…
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
Health inequality does not happen by accident. It is the result of political choices.
So pleased to join the very first episode of Global Order, @GeorgetownGHPP's new podcast hosted by @MMKavanagh, to discuss inequality, democracy and what it will take to build societies that leave no one behind.
🎧 Have a listen: open.spotify.com/episode/5Op…
I’m so glad to release our first episode of Global Order, "Democracy in an Age of Crisis". My first guest is Winnie Byanyima — UNAIDS EXD, former head of Oxfam, and Ugandan freedom fighter 1/3 open.spotify.com/show/3UVX9x…
What’s stayed with me since we recorded: her claim that the health of a society and the health of its democracy aren’t two questions but one. Democratic erosion and failing health systems, she argues, are the same story told twice... 2/3
We trace it from the NHS registering her as a refugee in 1978, through Uganda’s bush war, to why she now says oligarchy rather than inequality. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, and click follow for a new conversation every week. ghpp.georgetown.edu/podcast-…
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
In the latest episode of Global Order, Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS, joins Matthew Kavanagh to explore the links between democracy, health, inequality and power — and what happens when political and economic power becomes concentrated in the hands of a few.
Drawing on her experience in Uganda’s pro-democracy struggle and decades of work in global health, Winnie reflects on how political systems shape health outcomes, the lessons of COVID-19, and whether the international system itself needs to be democratized.
🎧 Listen to “Democracy in an Age of Crisis” wherever you get your podcasts.
open.spotify.com/show/3UVX9x…
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
We’re pleased to release episode one of our podcast, Global Order with
@Winnie_Byanyima on democracy in an age of crisis.
Listen: open.spotify.com/show/3UVX9x…
The world needs South African scientists, the US needs South African science, this is good news
Welcome news here for global health. Research conducted in South Africa has been central to progress against HIV and TB for decades.
At a time of major challenges for global health, investing in science and international collaboration is more important than ever.
science.org/content/article/…
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
On Wednesday 9 September, we release the first episode of Global Order: Inside the Systems that Govern Life and Death — our new podcast on what happens to health as the rules and institutions the world relied on for 80 years come apart. Hosted by our director, @MMKavanagh
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
After dark, Dr @kizzabesigye1 was moved from Luzira Prison to JCRC hospital today.
He is still very weak. He struggles to walk, speak, write or even hold anything steadily.
I am asking for one thing - let me bring him home to Geneva for proper medical care, surrounded by his family.
He has been arrested more than 50 times. He has faced case after case. He has never run away from justice.
Why drag a sick man from place to place? Why deny him the care of his family? Why force a trial on a man too ill to defend himself?
He needs care, not cruelty.
This is not justice. It is persecution.
#RightToHealth
#FreeKizzaBesigye
Matthew Kavanagh [email protected] retweeted
We’re launching a podcast, Global Order, on what happens to health as the rules and institutions the world relied on for 80 years come apart. A moment of danger, but also a chance to build something better.
Click follow so you don’t miss it 🔔
open.spotify.com/show/3UVX9x…
I’m launching a podcast.
Global Order is about what happens to health as the old rules of the world break down. Aid frozen, clinics closed, institutions weakened. What comes next is uncertain.
Click follow so you don’t miss the 1st episode, out September🔔open.spotify.com/show/3UVX9x…
First guests: Winnie Byanyima on health & democracy, Helen Clark, former PM of New Zealand, on the next pandemic, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng on Ebola and the right to health, and Bloomberg’s Jason Gale on the long shadow of COVID.
Click follow on your podcast platform of choice, and you’ll get a notification for the first episode — and every one after. We're doing one each week in Sept
Hear the trailer below.
Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/3UVX9x…
YouTube: youtube.com/@GlobalOrderPodc…
