Episode #78 High Truths on Drugs and Addiction with Dr. Tom Frieden on Public Health

Can the public health solution to drug overdoses follow the public health model for COVID?Can we do contact tracing for overdoses like we do for infectious diseases? Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director say yes.

Dr. Tom Frieden is a physician trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases, public health, and epidemiology. He is former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former commissioner of the New York City Health Department. Dr. Frieden is currently President and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives.

Dr. Frieden began his public health career in New York City confronting the largest outbreak of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis to occur in the US. He was then assigned to India, on loan from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he helped scale up a program for effective tuberculosis diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring.  Asked to return to New York City to become Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s Health Commissioner, he directed efforts to reduce smoking and other leading causes of death that increased life expectancy by 3 years. As Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Frieden oversaw the work that helped end the 2014 West Africa Ebola epidemic. He now leads Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of the global health organization Vital Strategies, that works with countries to prevent 100 million deaths and to make the world safer from epidemics. During the Covid pandemic, Dr. Frieden has overseen an expansion of Resolve to Save Lives activities including policy and program innovations in the United States, counsel to multilateral institutions, and support for rapid response, health care worker safety, and data-driven decision-making in more than 20 countries.

Dr. Frieden is also Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Asleep at the Switch - Dr. Frieden publication on applying public health strategies to non communicable diseases The Health Impact Pyramid - Dr. Frieden publication