Matthew Kavanagh

Matthew Kavanagh

@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

Prof of Global Health and Law, Director, Center for Global Health Policy & Politics Georgetown University https://ghpp.georgetown.edu/profiles/matthew-m-kavanagh-phd/

806 followers236 following770 posts

Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

The number of colleagues I work with regularly around the world who would say they have no interest in American elections is roughly zero. So yeah, welcome to being part of the world ….

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Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

viva.

Matthew Kavanagh@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

Congratulations to all my friends and colleagues whose lives and work depended on Brazil not falling to the right. Watching and learning. One of the lights in my work of the last few years has been work with colleagues on the Brazil G20 and what came from it. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

theguardian.comLula wins historic fourth term as Brazilian president in defeat of far-right Flávio BolsonaroLeftist incumbent Lula says unprecedented comeback was a ‘defeat for denialism’ as Bolsonaro refuses to accept election result
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

Congratulations to all my friends and colleagues whose lives and work depended on Brazil not falling to the right. Watching and learning. One of the lights in my work of the last few years has been work with colleagues on the Brazil G20 and what came from it. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

theguardian.comLula wins historic fourth term as Brazilian president in defeat of far-right Flávio BolsonaroLeftist incumbent Lula says unprecedented comeback was a ‘defeat for denialism’ as Bolsonaro refuses to accept election result

Matthew Kavanagh reposted

Liz Highleyman
@lizhighleyman.bsky.social

Health journalism win: after Arthur Allen’s @kffhealthnews.org report about a man having to go to China to get sunvozertinib (Zegfrovy) — which the FDA approved in July — to treat his mother’s lung cancer, AstraZeneca announced today that it is now available in the US.

Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

This is great

Global Health Centre (GHC)@gvagrad-ghc.bsky.social

🌐 Who will lead the World Health Organization next? Member States will decide in May 2027. We are launching a new project to make the Director-General (DG) election more transparent. 🔗 Explore 👉 ghplatform.org/who-dg-elect... #WHO @healthpolicywatch.bsky.social @rockefellerfdn.bsky.social

Matthew Kavanagh reposted

ghpoliticspodcast.bsky.social
@ghpoliticspodcast.bsky.social

In the latest podcast episode, fmr #CDC official @drdemetre.bsky.social discusses resigning from the agency amid political interference podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social @gregggonsalves.bsky.social @jonshaffer.bsky.social @bhadeliamd.bsky.social @madhupai.bsky.social

podcasts.apple.comThe Global Health Politics PodcastSocial Sciences Podcast · Updated Monthly · Hosted by Joseph Harris, the Global Health Politics Podcast features intimate, one-of-a-kind conversations with leading scholars, practitioners, policymaker...

Matthew Kavanagh reposted

Colin Carlson
@colincarlson.bsky.social

New paper out today shows that ICE and National Guard presence in DC led to a pretty sizable drop in pediatric ER visits among Spanish-speaking and Hispanic patients. If sick kids can't go to the emergency room, immigration justice has to be a public health issue. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

jamanetwork.comFederal Immigration Enforcement Deployment and ED Utilization Among ChildrenThis cross-sectional study evaluates changes in pediatric emergency department utilization following the August 11, 2025, immigration enforcement deployment in Washington, DC, and whether these chang...
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

always informative, always biting @angierasmussen.bsky.social "American servitude to adversarial foreign interests is what we should be worried about, not a maybe-plague outbreak that never happened."

Angie Rasmussen@angierasmussen.bsky.social

I went through the WHO Disease Outbreak Notice about the pneumonia of undetermined aetiology in Siberia. SPOILER ALERT: Russia is lying. About what is less clear but I have some ideas 👇 rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/the-plague...

rasmussenretorts.substack.comThe Plague That Never Wasn’tIs it a lab leak? Is it a bioweapon? Is it even plague? Who knows! But if it was a lab leak, Darya Shipilova didn’t know about it.
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

US media failing to cope with authoritarianism. When Trump came back and said he was going to root out “weaponization” of Justice he meant firing people who investigated actual crimes; now literally weaponizing DoJ against opposition lawmakers and has scrambled what’s what.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social

Ilhan Omar: 'Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced'

Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

Responders should be able to swarm a place when its first few infections appear, tracing contacts, engaging communities before transmission takes off… “Putting out small fires isn’t possible, you end up with massive fires everywhere” @jasongale.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

bloomberg.comEbola Spreads ‘Like Wildfire’ as Health Workers Battle ExhaustionExperts in the Democratic Republic of Congo are struggling to keep up as the virus spreads to new areas, stretching the human and financial resources available to fight it.
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

“In the meantime, Mangala relies on the district hospital, where in the early months of the outbreak, Ebola patients were treated in a mud house with no windows, an earthen floor and little ventilation. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/w...

nytimes.comHow Congo’s Ebola Epidemic Got So Bad So QuicklyWhat happened in Mangala, where residents were left with little outside support, helps explain how this outbreak became the worst seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Matthew Kavanagh reposted

CIDRAP
@cidrap.bsky.social

DRC Ebola cases grow, deaths top 4,000 as officials struggle to ascertain numbers, trends An aid worker was evacuated to Europe after testing positive for the virus. Read more: https://bit.ly/4hpcz61 📷: UK Department for International Development / Flickr cc

Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

surreal to be working in global health as the US administration pursues bilateral deals, kills milktoast UN pandemic resolutions, and and meanwhile our health minister wants to AI to help spread misinformation about basic public health science. 🤯

Matthew Kavanagh reposted

BK. Titanji
@boghuma.bsky.social

Fiji is experiencing an alarming HIV outbreak at a time when we have more tools than ever to diagnose, treat and prevent HIV. It is a warning that progress against HIV is not self-sustaining and to end the epidemic we cannot become complacent bktitanji.substack.com/p/hiv-is-not...

bktitanji.substack.comHIV Is Not Done With UsFiji’s rapidly growing epidemic is a warning about what happens when complacency, vulnerability and retreating resources give the virus an opening
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

This is so important. Kindof blowing me away as I sit in NY at the UNGA where governments are convening to talk pandemics.

Colin Carlson@colincarlson.bsky.social

What's behind this tidal wave of epidemics? In the largest study ever conducted on emerging infectious diseases, we show that the popular explanation - "our relationship with nature is out of balance" - doesn't hold up. Out now in Nature, after half a decade of work: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comThe anthropogenic fingerprint on emerging infectious diseases - NatureEmerging infectious disease outbreak risks are ubiquitous worldwide, and highest in landscapes where people, livestock and fragmented natural ecosystems coexist, but detection and data ...
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

Fundamentally #Pandemic #PABS impass is not technical, just political: most of the world recognizes w/o sharing technology, next pandemic will play out just like COVID, HIV. Rich country companies oppose➡️their govts block agreement. MOH’s can’t change that. So what will happen? … 1/2

rani – Resilience Action Network International@rani.co

Over five days at #IGWG8, @who.int Member States sought to advance the #PABS Annex – but no major breakthrough emerged. Complex discussions continued on how pathogen data would flow through the system and how benefits would be enforced. Key takeaways 🧵👇🏼

Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

Options? 🅰️South caves under pressure; toothless treaty on equity or 🅱 heads of state step up on hard choices, overrule narrow interests, North breaks ranks, decent PABS. PABS is a non-ideal vehicle for vaccine/meds equity, should have been treaty proper but last best option for treaty to matter

Matthew Kavanagh reposted

Colin Carlson
@colincarlson.bsky.social

"Women and Global South respondents emphasized normative goals: equity, justice, and structural reform.... In contrast, men and Global North respondents often framed success through processes: institutional innovation, efficiency, and procedural legitimacy." academic.oup.com/heapol/advan...

academic.oup.comWhat is success in global health diplomacy? A qualitative analysis of gendered and global perspectives on success and failureAbstract. Global health diplomacy is central to shaping the international response to health challenges, yet what counts as “success” or “failure” remains
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

Ideology? The "EU Diplomat" is right, but in reverse. The idea that private monopolies on scientific knowledge drive innovation and voulntary sharing can stop pandemics has proven wrong again and again. That is a stark and dangerous ideology, Europe. healthpolicy-watch.news/as-pandemic-...

healthpolicy-watch.newsAs Pandemic Talks Resume, EU Diplomat Sharply Criticises ‘Ideological Polarisation’ - Health Policy WatchEU negotiator Americo Zampetti warns that ideological polarisation over pathogen access threatens to derail the WHO Pandemic Agreement.
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

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

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Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

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.

Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

In each episode I get an hour with people who are both thinking deeply about these questions and actively shaping the answers — to work out what’s happening, why it matters for health, and where the room for action lies. Long conversations, not soundbites.

Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

Yep! In COVID Moderna was thinking ahead to now: If they had shared mRNA tech w Africa, Asia, and Latin America, allowing them to produce their own vax, then future, exclusive profits from new uses of mRNA would have been in jeopardy. @gregggonsalves.bsky.social www.thenation.com/article/soci...

thenation.comWill Moderna’s Cancer Vaccine Be Good for People, or Profits?The drug giant restricted access to its Covid vaccine to protect its bottom line. Will history repeat itself now?
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

The median household income in the US is $83,730. The average patient in the trial stayed in the drug about 8 months. So new drug costs at least 4x the average US household makes before taxes. Reminder: Monopolies vis patent are NOT the only way to incentivize research.

Natasha Loder@natashaloder.bsky.social

And now the bad news. I’ve just heard that the company behind this drug wants almost $40K for a month's supply or $480K a year. Deeply disappointing. H/t @endpts.com

Matthew Kavanagh reposted

Natasha Loder
@natashaloder.bsky.social

The company behind this drug wants almost $40K for a month's supply or $480K a year. Deeply disappointing. H/t @endpts.com

The Economist@economist.com

Trial results for this new drug drew a standing ovation from scientists. Now approved in America, it nearly doubles median survival for certain types of advanced pancreatic cancer—breaking a decades-long deadlock against one of oncology’s deadliest targets

bit.lyTreating pancreatic tumours may have revealed cancer’s master switchA promising drug could be the first of an entirely new class of treatments
Matthew Kavanagh
@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social

Public health seriously needs a political arm dedicated to recognizing active opponents and countering them in the real world. e.g.👇

Dr. Lucky Tran@luckytran.com

I worked for New York’s largest medical center at the start of the pandemic. There were morgue trucks on the streets. They set up emergency medical tents in Central Park. Healthcare worker colleagues died. It is horrific that RFK Jr is on national TV lying that ICUs were empty.