ICCS06/Stephen Blount
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[edit] Stephen Blount
Director, Global Health
Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, GA
ICCS Presentation Title: Challenges and Opportunities in Global Health
Four major challenges are discussed as they relate to current and emerging issues in global health: the challenge of complexity, the challenge of connectivity, the challenge of scalability, and the challenge of complacency. Specific health issues explored through the lens of these challenges include pandemic influenza, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, antimicrobial resistance, emerging infections such as SARS and West Nile virus, maternal and child health, and the global burden of chronic disease.
While the challenges are substantial, the world community is responding in many innovative ways. Multilateral organizations, such as the United Nations (UN), have increasingly turned their focus to global health. Through the promulgation of the Millennium Declaration, the United Nations have established international development goals, many of which relate directly to health. The World Health Organization has promulgated its first health treaty, known as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and has recently made sweeping revisions to its International Health Regulations. The engagement of the private sector has also increased dramatically, with the establishment of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UN Foundation (founded by Ted Turner) and other initiatives. Furthermore, private corporations often make direct contributions, through donations or sale at reduced cost of medicines and supplies, financial contributions to ongoing programmatic efforts, or social entrepreneurship (producing products for underserved markets). Finally, the United States Government has also responded with new initiatives, such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the Presidential Malaria Initiative and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Public-private partnerships, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization are also stimulating new investments and achievements.
In this environment of both increasing complexity and enhanced engagement, the scientific community has an important role to play in overcoming key challenges to future progress in the global health arena.
About Dr. Stephen B. Blount:
Stephen B. Blount, M.D., M.P.H., is the Director, Coordinating Office for Global Health at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, the position he has held since 1997. He joined CDC in 1988 and has enjoyed a distinguished career in a succession of leadership positions at the agency.
In his current role, Dr. Blount is responsible for CDC’s global health portfolio that includes an annual budget of $900 million, 200 US government staff assigned to 50 countries, and 1500 locally hired staff and contractors. He provides programmatic and financial oversight for the Global AIDS Program; global immunization and disease eradication activities, malaria, tuberculosis, and tobacco control efforts; and international training programs. Dr. Blount is the lead strategist for CDC’s global activities and manages key partnerships with Ministries of Health, other US government agencies, UN organizations, the World Bank, private foundations, multi-national corporations, non-government organizations, and academic institutions.
His major accomplishments in his current post are in the areas of strategic direction, partnership development, and technical program management. As the first Director of the Office of Global Health in 1997, Dr. Blount led the development of CDC’s global strategy, including goals, objectives, priority program areas, and performance measures. He also selected key staff, organized the management structure, and established key internal and external relationships for the new office. Beginning in 2003, as part of the first agency-wide transformation of CDC’s structure since 1980, Dr. Blount has led the reorganization of its international activities to better align human, technical, and financial resources with the agency’s goals and priorities and to improve global business services.
In addition to managing existing partnerships with US Government and United Nations agencies, and in order to increase the leverage of CDC’s global resources, Dr. Blount has established and sustained new strategic relationships with key partners, including the World Bank, the American Red Cross, the Gates Foundation, the United Nations Foundation, and CARE-USA. In each case, he worked with the partners to establish a shared vision, agree on goals and objectives, and determine a governance structure and communications plan. Of particular note is the CARE-CDC Health Initiative, which was established in 1997 with a 4-year seed grant from the Woodruff Foundation. Working closely with the leadership of CARE-USA’s health and nutrition section, Dr. Blount helped expand the Initiative from an innovative, single-focus activity in 4 communities to a more comprehensive training and service effort in 10 countries, sustained by long-term funding from USAID.
Dr. Blount’s major accomplishments in the area of technical program management involve polio eradication, measles control, and AIDS. Since 1997, he has worked with the other leaders of the 4-agency Polio Plus Initiative to direct the efforts that have reduced the number of polio-endemic countries from 41 to 6 and brought the world close to eradication of this dreaded disease. Since 1999, as CDC’s representative on the leadership team of the Global Measles Partnership, Dr. Blount has provided strategic direction, advocacy, and technical expertise to the effort that has reduced measles mortality worldwide by 39 per cent. CDC’s Global AIDS Program, the agency’s largest international activity, began in 2000 and now works in 25 countries with a budget of more than $700 million. Dr. Blount oversees the technical and financial aspects of the program and manages the key relationships that have provided the institutional political support for the effort, both domestically and internationally.
After training in family medicine and public health, Dr. Blount served as Director of Epidemiology at the Detroit Health Department, taught at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan, and directed cancer control research programs at the Michigan Cancer Foundation before joining CDC.
From 1993 to 1997, he was assigned to the World Health Organization (WHO), the health agency of the United Nations, and worked at the Caribbean Epidemiology Center in Trinidad, where he served as Director.
Dr. Blount was born and raised in Detroit and educated in its public schools. He received his B.S. in psychology in 1975 and his M.D. in 1978 from Tufts University and his M.P.H. in 1980 from the University of Michigan. He and his wife have 2 adult children and live in Atlanta, Georgia. His hobbies include playing tennis and listening to and writing about music. He worked as a disc-jockey from 1984 to 1993 at National Public Radio-affiliated stations in Detroit and Atlanta and is writing a book about jazz.
