{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/vx05x27h09/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Frank, Mark"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/289/original/CDCM_Mark_2.1.png?1728486742","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["David J. Sencer CDC Museum"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eAll rights to the interviews, including but not restricted to legal title, copyrights and literary property rights, have been transferred to the David J. Sencer CDC Museum. Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the David J. Sencer CDC Museum.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["David J. 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Today's date is Monday, June 26, 2023, and we are here in the audio recording studio at CDC's [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] Roybal Campus on Clifton Road, in Atlanta Georgia. I'm interviewing Mark today as part of our CDC COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] Oral History and Memory Archive Project, and we'll be discussing his experiences during CDC's COVID-19 Response. Mark, thank you for being here with me today. Do I have your permission to interview you and record this session?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=0.0,30.54749"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e You do, Mary, thanks.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=30.54749,31.71337"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e For the record, will you please state your full name and your current position at CDC?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=31.71337,35.33123"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Sure. My name is Mark Frank. I am the deputy director in the Division of Emergency Operations here at CDC.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=35.33123,41.16707"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e If you were going to give somebody a short description of your role during the COVID-19 Response, what would you say?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=41.16707,49.03248"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e For about the first six months, I served as the response chief of staff in the Incident Management structure for the COVID-19 Response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=49.03248,57.54425"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay. Before we dive into your experiences during COVID-19, could you tell me a little bit about your family background and the community that you grew up in?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=57.54425,65.77133"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Sure. I grew up in a household of four. We grew up—moved around quite a bit in the eastern half of the country, I don't think I stayed in one area of the country for more than four years, often get asked the question if we were in the military and we were not. My dad actually worked for General Motors; every time he got a new job we had to move around. Lived in Connecticut for several, parts of the Southeast, in Arkansas, Georgia. I finished high school in Maryland, just outside of DC [Washington, District of Columbia].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=65.77133,97.03447"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e From all that moving around, did you have any mentors that helped you decide where you wanted to go in college? Or were there things that interested you when you were growing up, as a kid?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=97.03447,107.95682"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I think in high school especially, I started to be attracted to biology and chemistry, and I think that really got me interested in pursuing a career in sciences. My senior year in high school, I remember hearing an announcement, came on the speaker, you know, we lived pretty close to the National Institutes of Health [NIH] in Bethesda, Maryland, and there was an announcement for a summer program for students to participate and work in a lab for that summer. And I decided to apply for that—and was lucky enough to get to work at the NIH, in a lab, the year before I started college. That really gave me some interesting experiences in working in a lab and into the scientific community as a whole, and I think really started me on my career for what I thought I was going to do, going forward, and kind of what has evolved into my public health career here at CDC.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=107.95682,157.89019"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, so you said you were involved in sort of biological sciences, and then you went to Cornell University?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=157.89019,165.94263"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=165.94263,166.74297"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e In Ithaca [New York]. What inspired you to go there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=166.74297,169.26985"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e You know, I think as any high school student that is applying to colleges, it had a good reputation. I went and visited, I had a really, I think, broad program at the time. I was interested both in sciences, but also in classics. I had taken four years of Latin, and I thought, oh, that may be an interesting field of study to pursue. I think I quickly realized there were not the jobs in that field to look at, so I think I was glad to have kind of the science career path to fall into. But I think Cornell just had that breadth of study and allowed me to kind of pursue any area that I wanted to study in.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=169.26985,207.22918"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e In our pre-interview, and we had one before this, you had mentioned that when you had that summer internship at NIH, you worked a lot with HIV [human immunodeficiency virus] assays. Did that—also inspire you to further your cell biology path?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=207.22918,227.0095"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e It did. Actually, yes, that was the other thing. In high school, I think, I had seen the movie [And] the Band Played On, which is the adaptation of the book [And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic; author Randy Shilts] about the emerging HIV and AIDS epidemic. I think that really—always sounded interesting to me. I think the work that CDC did in investigating outbreaks and protecting the public health, and I think that was a factor in me being interested in kind of the work that NIH was doing on the laboratory side. The lab that I worked in was actually in the National Institute for Dental and Cranial Facial Research, and what was interesting about that is, they were investigating a protein in saliva that actually had some inhibitory effects on the HIV virus. There was some thought that there was a protein that would help—maybe prevent the spread of HIV. But that's what they were investigating, and that was kind of a unique blend of kind of some outside interests that I had, but also in my interests in biological sciences.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=227.0095,287.74059"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e That was a high school experience, right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=287.74059,289.23998"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e It was. I actually went back there for a couple of summers during my undergrad years and worked there as well, so kind of maintained that relationship. I also ended up working there for about a year, for a full year, in between undergrad and getting my master's degree at Emory [University, Rollins School of Public Health].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=289.23998,306.43011"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, so we got to back up now. Then what do you do after you've graduated?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=306.43011,310.79693"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e My senior year of college, Abbott Laboratories recruited on campus for a job in Chicago [Illinois] at their headquarters. I took that position in a laboratory—in a quality assurance laboratory. So, basically, Abbott makes several diagnostic tests, and makes these huge diagnostic platforms, architect platforms, the one that they had hired me to work on, so I helped launch that product and some of the tests that were involved in that. It was not quite the same kind of the science work that I was necessarily interested in doing, so, when I was there, I started to think about what I actually wanted to do with my career. That's when I started to think that maybe public health was something that I wanted to get into. I didn't want to spend—I loved the city of Chicago, and I loved the area. I did not necessarily love that job itself as much, and so I did reach out to the NIH lab that I had worked for before and said, are there opportunities maybe to do something, at least before I go off to grad school? They invited me to come work through a fellowship there, so I spend another full year doing some laboratory benchwork there before starting at Emory in about 2002.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=310.79693,384.78795"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, how did you find out about public health? And what made you more interested in public health, rather than pursue bench science?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=384.78795,393.28535"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I think I was talking to some of my friends in college, who were also interested in health, some were much more interested in kind of the global health aspects. But they were encouraging me to think about, oh, you might like epidemiology, you do like statistics a little bit, maybe this would be a good blend of it. I'd also had an inkling of it, so during college, Cornell has what they call this \"externship program\" where, during the holiday season, you could spend a day with a professional in your area. Because I lived outside of Baltimore at the time, I ended up doing an externship with a doctor at Johns Hopkins, an infectious disease doctor who actually treats—was treating HIV patients through his clinic there. I think it just gave me a glimpse into kind of the, I don't know, more community-centered public health approach that is possible. I obviously did not go in to pursue a medical degree, or into that field, but it gave me a little bit of a concept in understanding of what some of the work that public health is all about. I think that experience, also, is kind of in the back of my mind that maybe gave me some push to maybe pursue a career in public health.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=393.28535,466.46113"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e You were at Johns Hopkins——they have a very nice public health program there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=466.46113,472.67275"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, they do.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=472.67275,474.32176"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e But you chose Emory?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=474.32176,475.312"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I did. I think honestly, when I was looking at public health schools, I applied to a lot of them, got into a lot of them. I was deciding really between Emory and [University of] Michigan. I was really attracted to Michigan, just, it was a campus very similar to Cornell—and so there was probably some nostalgia pulling at me a little bit in that ways. But I also realized that Michigan's program at the time was very lab-focused, and I think that's what I realized I wanted to get a little bit away from. Emory's program seemed a little bit more practical, and I think just the proximity of it, being close to CDC, was also more attractive. I'll probably also say the climate between Georgia and Michigan, I think Georgia won out there as well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=475.312,519.00513"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Climate-wise. Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=519.00513,519.97062"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=519.97062,520.51055"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e So, Emory’s——you said Emory's Public Health school was more—less the bench side, and more—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=520.51055,530.51414"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=530.51414,532.36698"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e It seems that you were more influenced by HIV? You had a lot of HIV background there, working with NIH, and then again with your externship. But you moved to Rollins, and you worked more with a different group. You also mentioned that CDC's proximity to Emory, which it's really across the street, that was also influencing you. Your CDC experience was that one, And the Band Played On?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=532.36698,560.60711"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, that was just—kind of understanding what they did. That was probably the recruitment tool—in the back of my mind, that—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=560.60711,568.7784"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, so that's incredible. Your experience at Emory, because you were so close to CDC, gave you another opportunity—they actually gave you an opportunity to work or experience CDC on a more one-on-one way. Can you dive into that for me?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=568.7784,589.00558"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Sure. During the summers when I was at Emory, and I think it's part of the work study program, I took a position as basically a data entry person in, at the time, I think was the Division of Health Care Quality Promotion, I think it evolved into that. It may have been called the Hospital Infections Program at the time. But worked on their dialysis surveillance activity, and so really, I would come in, in between classes, enter a bunch of data into that system, call around to some of the dialysis clinics that were—had maybe not reported data. Just helping with the quality of that reporting. That was probably my first real working experience at CDC. Made a lot of good connections, and interesting looking back, thinking about some of the people that I worked with, or who were in that program at the time are still some of the same people that are in much different positions now, but I still remember, twenty-plus years ago.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=589.00558,641.91912"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Wow. Do you still encounter those people? Do they remember you from—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=641.91912,645.42565"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I don't know if they remember me, but they know me—so Dan Jernigan [Daniel B. Jernigan] now is currently the director for NCEZID [National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases], I think Denise Cardo is the acting director for the Global Health Center now. Both of them were in that division, I remember, at the time. You know, I think it's just interesting to see, you kind of see some of the same people here at CDC once you've been here for quite a while.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=645.42565,665.91814"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. Okay, so after you got your master of public health [MPH], what did you do with it?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=665.91814,670.35506"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e One of the—trying to find a job, I was introduced to the Presidential Management Fellowship [PMF] Program my last year at Emory, and applied to that and got in. As part of that process, interviewed with a number of different federal agencies that were looking to bring people on, so the Department of Defense [DoD] was one, Food and Drug Administration [FDA] was another, and CDC was another of those. I ended up accepting a position with the Food and Drug Administration as part of that program, so went up to Rockville, Maryland after Emory, and started with them as an emergency coordinator, in their relatively new Emergency Operations Center [EOC].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=670.35506,709.9236"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e That's kind of a pivot from what you were studying. Tell me why that interested you, and how that happened, actually?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=709.9236,719.03237"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, so if you think back at the time, I graduated from Emory in 2002, not too long before then were the events of 9/11 [September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks], and so within the federal government, there was a real push on preparedness and response activities. For me, as someone just starting their career, it was really an opportunity, I think, because it was a brand-new space, especially—not only in public health, but I think in the broader federal government workforce, that you started to see an area that was pretty new, was starting to get a lot of funding and attention—and needed a lot of attention and energy—I saw it, really, as an opportunity. As the Food and Drug Administration was building up their kind of preparedness and response capabilities, they had had a Presidential Management Fellowship intern the year before, had good experience with it, decided to hire a couple more, and I was lucky enough to go into that. That really gave me my start, I think, in kind of this broad preparedness and response activity, related to more broader public health functions.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=719.03237,785.716"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e How was preparedness and emergency preparedness, kind of handled at that time, as it is compared to what we do today?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=785.716,792.94243"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I think it is still evolving today, but I think it was, people were still starting to understand what it meant, some of the terminology, some of the emergency management doctrine that was introduced. Parts of the government, at both the state, local, and federal levels, were using things like the Incident Command System. But they were starting—just trying to figure out how that would apply to kind of their day-to-day business. The fire system uses something like Incident Command, had really used it since the '70s, but within the federal government, you know, and the creation of Department of Homeland Security, we were really starting to figure out what this all meant for not only our day-to-day work, but our emergency response work as well. At FDA, it was really about both educating kind of the broader workforce, but also trying to implement some day-to-day practices to better-respond to what could be an emerging threat, or emerging situation that the agency may have had to deal with at the time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=792.94243,855.97804"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, so you kind of “grew up” with this kind of program? Your career began as these new fields have begun?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=855.97804,869.5275"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, it was really—I look back on it, it was very fortuitous. I mean, the events of 9/11 were awful and tragic, but for somebody who—had always been interested in government, who had kind of gone through public health grad school and kind of had a science background, it was really working at both FDA and now at CDC, I think, really provided me a good opportunity to advance my career, make some great contributions. Also, given the field and given how new it was, there was a lot of opportunity for growth, I think. As a young person coming into it, I think, you know, if you were just willing to step up and take whatever opportunity came about, that gave you a good—you were in a good position to, not only make contributions, but to do well for yourself as well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=869.5275,921.62864"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e During that time in FDA, did you ever collaborate with CDC?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=921.62864,925.85434"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I did. One of the main activities that were part of my job was to work on traceback investigations for foodborne outbreaks. When people got sick from eating, you know, bad tomatoes or bad lettuce somewhere, the state health department would conduct an investigation. Often, they would collaborate with CDC; CDC would help identify kind of what was causing people to be sick. Once they identified that product, they would communicate to us at FDA and say, there's a Salmonella outbreak, we think it's the tomatoes. Can you help us find where the tomatoes are? At FDA, because FDA has field offices around the country and had good collaborations with retail, we would try to source where people ate those products from, so whether it was at a restaurant or a retail location, and we would do a traceback investigation to figure out exactly what field or what road maybe that tomato or that row of lettuce was grown on. Oftentimes we were doing this pretty delayed, because traceback investigations took a while. But occasionally, you would be able to find a facility that was maybe more contaminated than really it should have been. You could maybe find some causes for what was actually the source of the outbreak.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=925.85434,1005.07683"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Were you actually going into the field and looking at these facilities? Or were you working with people who were already in the field?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1005.07683,1010.83596"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e We were directing—in our role as emergency coordinators, we were working directly with the district offices that FDA had in the field. So, we would direct them to collect records, we would analyze the records in the Emergency Operations Center, and put together kind of a backwards workflow of where the products were coming from. As we pinpointed, oh, these tomatoes were bought by this person from a particular grocery store, that grocery store got them from a particular warehouse, we would send our investigators out to that warehouse to collect additional records to find out maybe where that warehouse got them from, whether it was an actual farm, or whether it was another distributor. Sometimes the locations were domestic, and we would send out investigators to specific farms or facilities. Sometimes those products may have been internationally sourced, and we would work with our international partners as well, to figure out where they came from. You find a lot of dead ends, but I think the success was always, if you were able to find the source and triangulate maybe a common source, especially for large-scale multi-state outbreaks.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1010.83596,1078.37459"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Because the FDA is federal, did you have to work with—were you invited? Or did you have to get permission to work with states?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1078.37459,1089.27549"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e FDA, because it has regulatory authority over those products, they are allowed to conduct their investigation under their own authority. The collaboration that CDC would deal with states directly on that initial investigation, but once a product was identified, FDA, under its own authority, would start to take action.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1089.27549,1109.63341"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Great. During that period of time CDC used a thing, a product called PulseNet. Was that—can you explain what PulseNet was, and did that help you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1109.63341,1118.29302"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I will, in kind of layman's terms—I will kind of describe that it's a laboratory technique that matches up laboratory specimens with clinical specimens and specimens that may have been taken from food samples, to try to match up to see if there's a close match between what was making people sick and maybe what was found environmentally on the samples. It's probably twenty-plus years ago at this point—but it was really a way to kind of give some certainty to what those samples were telling you and to create, really, a scientific link between what was making people sick and the actual products. I think CDC would use that tool to kind of help identify the products and the samples, but I think what FDA did is really make that connection logistically, so you could see that products were actually documented and shipped from the farm, and to where it ultimately got to the consumer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1118.29302,1180.14672"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Where were you located when you were working for FDA?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1180.14672,1183.33258"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I was in Rockville, Maryland.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1183.33258,1185.17657"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, still. Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1185.17657,1186.13986"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1186.13986,1187.0469"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Then someone reaches out to you and offers you a position here at CDC? Is that correct? Or—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1187.0469,1195.16325"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Not quite, so I—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1195.16325,1196.74259"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e All right, tell me the story.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1196.74259,1197.80848"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, around that time, I was in my mid-twenties, I think, I was just starting my family and career, so, you know, got married. My wife was from Chicago. Unfortunately, there weren't too many jobs for me out there, I think she decided to move to Maryland. But I think, as we started to look at starting our family, we realized that buying a house was probably not as affordable, probably less affordable even now. Really, we thought Atlanta would be kind of the better option to start a family here. My wife had gone to the University of Georgia, so she was also familiar with the area, despite being from Chicago. We decided to move down here so I looked at jobs at CDC. One of my colleagues at FDA, who also went to Emory and was in the Presidential Management Fellowship Program with me as well, had recently taken a job at CDC, had heard of an opening, so kind of made a connection with me down here. That really kind of facilitated my first job at CDC.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1197.80848,1261.86965"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e How nice for you. And what was that job?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1261.86965,1263.84868"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e That was with—it was another emergency coordinator role—but this time with the National Immunization Program here at CDC.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1263.84868,1270.39283"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Ah. Okay, so tell me more about that. What did you do?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1270.39283,1273.2415"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e The National Immunization Program is really a collection of a lot of the same functions that are currently in the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases [NCIRD] currently at CDC, so a lot of it was dealing with vaccine-preventable diseases. I was there for about a year, probably, really to serve as the main point of contact for information sharing for outbreaks that maybe that program was managing around—measles, influenza—as those activities were ramping up. As it turns out, probably about four or five months after I came in, I actually went into the Emergency Operations Center here at CDC and supported a lot of the activities around Hurricane Katrina, and what eventually followed in Hurricanes Rita and Wilma, I think, as well. That was my introduction, I think, to CDC EOC shortly after I got here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1273.2415,1328.24613"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Tell me, what was that like for your introduction? What did you do?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1328.24613,1331.53239"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e One of the first roles that I had was what was called the deployment coordinator. At the time, CDC was sending out a number of teams to New Orleans [Louisiana] and the surrounding areas for the impacts of Hurricane Katrina. I think the first activities that I did, I remember having to put together a team of about thirty people to send out to the field, and so I did a lot of calling around to different programs at CDC. There was a list of functions and specialties that we knew we needed to send out and support the state health department. I remember calling around to people saying, you've been identified, are you interested in going? Eventually kind of put together a list of about thirty people that were willing and able to go on relatively short notice, and we'd send them out to the field.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1331.53239,1381.43971"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Was that a hard thing to do? To call around and get people to take time out of their actual job, and then deploy with your phone call quickly?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1381.43971,1393.82674"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I think it was probably harder on me, because I tend to be an introvert, and not wanting to ask people to do things. But I think what I quickly found is, because the storm was in the news quite a bit at that time—and CDC is filled with people who are interested in helping—and the people I was calling almost unanimously were a yes, when do you need me to leave, rather than, oh—making excuses and not being able to go. It actually, I mean, some people couldn't go, but there was a pretty wide range of receptiveness to being willing to go. It was challenging, the hardest part was probably just getting them to answer the phone initially. But no, it was good to go, and it was good to make a small contribution to that response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1393.82674,1443.06069"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Can you recall a certain event or something that stood out to you during either one of those, Wilma, Katrina—there's lots that stands out for Katrina—or Rita? Anything that stood out for those moments or those responses?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1443.06069,1461.57895"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e There was probably a couple. I do remember—so I think at the time, it was when Rich [Richrd E.] Besser had just been appointed as the director for—I forget the—I think it was COTPER at the time, so the Coordinating Officer of Terrorism, Preparedness, and Emergency Response. I think that was his first day. He was there with Dr. [Julie L.] Gerberding in the EOC and was kind of taking the handoff. I just remember him speaking and introducing himself and just making a point about how important that response was. I do remember a couple of times during that response, when I was working, looking back on it, it was a relatively short timeframe of about three to four weeks that I was doing it. But I do remember several times just going home, seeing the news, and how devastating it was. It almost felt a little bit of a disconnect between seeing that and then working in the subbasement of Building 1 in the Emergency Operations Center, which was very dark, and you were just kind of immersed in your work. There was a bit of a separation between what was actually going on in New Orleans at the time and some of the work that we were doing here at CDC. It was all meant to help support them, but I don't think I really saw the impacts of it until I was, like, actually seeing the news reports at night.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1461.57895,1536.31324"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Can you describe what that early EOC—because you're describing, the early EOC was in the subbasement of Building 1—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1536.31324,1544.73721"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1544.73721,1545.18206"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Which no longer exists, because it had to be torn down.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1545.18206,1548.11801"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1548.11801,1549.90393"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Can you describe it? And what it was like——that room? What, four by five, and people had cubes?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1549.90393,1556.81491"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. It was in the subbasement, so by its nature, it just sounds like very deep in the bowels of the old Building 1 on the Roybal Campus. You got down there two ways; there was one elevator bank that took you down there, but I do remember there was a stairwell that went down, it was very old, and kind of dark, damp, and I just remember you would exit down into a very tiny lobby area of the EOC. There was a controlled access door, and once you got into there, the facility of that EOC was actually pretty dark. Even just the fact that it didn't have windows, but the lighting in there, down there, I do remember was always relatively dim. There were probably—it was a very small facility compared to the one that currently exists in Building 21 now. But it had, you know, maybe two or three rows of seats. There was a small row on the side that had our Emergency Operations Watch Team, which is the group that takes calls twenty-four seven. Surrounding the facility there were several team rooms, much smaller team rooms that probably held about six or eight people at most, with computer workstations. At the time, I remember thinking, wow, this is amazing and fantastic. I think if you compare it now to our EOC, it kind of does feel like a little bit substandard, but even now, going internationally and seeing some emergency operation centers, even going to some state and local emergency operations centers here in the US, looking back, that facility that we had at CDC from the start, really still is pretty state-of-the-art compared to what others use. Some of us may look at it as, oh, it was this dark, damp, you know—style place but actually, it was a fantastic facility for us to get kind of our Emergency Management Program here at CDC started and responding to emergencies.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1556.81491,1674.2757"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, thank you for that description. All right, so moving on to—further on, you also start responding in 2009 H1N1? You were part of that response as well?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1674.2757,1687.43343"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I was.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1687.43343,1688.38535"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay. There, you became a different role? You were deputy incident manager?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1688.38535,1695.278"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e No, not quite, but yes, so maybe leading up to that, I had started working for the Influenza Coordination Unit here at CDC. Our job was really to do a lot of the preparedness activities for preparing for an influenza pandemic. Before H1N1 in 2009, they actually did a series of about five full-scale, functional exercises that really was intended to help simulate an influenza pandemic and help prepare all of our subject matter experts [SMEs], and the agency, on how we would actually respond and coordinate those activities. That program was really at the behest of our director at the time, Steve [Stephen C.] Redd, who really believed in, I think, preparing and exercising for responses, and a lot of the times when we were doing those exercises, I think a lot of the subject matter experts from other programs came kicking and screaming at times, and thought they probably had more important things to do. But because we were so intentional about the planning for those events and actually conducting those exercises, it gave everyone an experience of what that stress would feel like, and thinking through some of the decisions that they would have to make, and some of the real considerations. And so, by doing a number of those exercises before the H1N1 pandemic hit in 2009, I think we were much more prepared, in fact, starting the H1N1 response, almost, to some people, felt like another exercise, because they were rolling into roles that they had tested, been tested on, for the past two years. They kind of understood what that experience was like, they understood the rhythm of what would be expected. That really helped, I think, get us set up. My role in that response, I took on a number of different roles. At the beginning, I do remember supporting what we stood up called a Plans Decision Unit, that was really there to kind of help think through and organize a deliberate—decision-making process for key decisions that the agency needed to make. We weren't necessarily making the decisions, but we were convening the subject matter experts to talk about the specific issues that needed to be worked through, and then presenting recommendations to either the CDC director or the incident manager at the time, to give that input on where we thought we stood, and then they would take that information to ultimately make the decision. But it was an organized process to help us think through some difficult decisions.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1695.278,1850.00152"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Can you describe how CDC handled the 2009 H1N1?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1850.00152,1859.58855"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I think it was——CDC handled it very methodically and appropriately. Like I said, I think the exercises helped. I think the tone that Rich Besser set at the time, at the beginning, too, was—kind of helped shape the direction of how we managed that response as a whole. He was very up-front about communicating things early, and up-front, and being honest about what we knew, what we didn't know at the time. I think that really set the tone for our external-facing communications. I think he also did a really nice job, too, of framing for the internal responders, how we should approach this. He realized quickly, early on, it's a bit of an overused phrase now, but the term, 'it's a marathon, not a sprint,' you know, he was very intentional about at least making a show of people taking some time off, he realized that people, especially at the beginning of the response, were working seven days a week, you know, fifteen, twenty hours a day, and realized that that was not a pace that could be sustained. I remember him during one of the incident manager meetings, making some comment about how he was intentionally taking the next day off to go see his child’s soccer game. I think he mentioned going to a Bruce Springsteen concert that night—whether he did that or not is probably beside the point, but the fact that he would publicly say that, or at least to internal responders, I think set an example to the others that it was okay to kind of take that time off, and for people to take care of themselves. I think that kind of deliberate, considerate approach, really throughout the entire response from all of our response leaders really helped CDC manage that well. There were challenges, just like any other emergency response. But I think we were the most prepared that we were to respond to a particular event, kind of knew some of the key decisions that need to be made, and understood how to change our response structure, and our approach, throughout those about thirteen months, I think, that we were activated for that particular response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1859.58855,1997.25006"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e H1N1 was a pandemic?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1997.25006,1999.19219"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1999.19219,1999.7314"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay. Were there partners that we worked with?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=1999.7314,2002.35988"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e We worked with everybody. We worked with state and local health officials, our colleagues at the Health and Human Services Department [HHS], our assistant secretary for Preparedness and Response, international partners, so many of the same partners that we work with in every major infectious disease response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2002.35988,2022.5507"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e WHO [World Health Organization] was involved in this as well?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2022.5507,2024.92612"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e They were, yes, of course. It was a worldwide pandemic, so they were seeing cases. Compared to maybe some future outbreaks that we dealt with, either Ebola in West Africa, or in COVID-19, probably a little bit less involved, but certainly they're a key partner for us to understand what's going on in other countries.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2024.92612,2046.88889"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e You said it was only about a thirteen to fourteen month EOC—?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2046.88889,2051.63798"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Activation, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2051.63798,2053.28352"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Activation, so it as pretty quickly—?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2053.28352,2057.61838"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e It was, I think, quick—relative. I think what we've seen over the past several years is that these large infectious disease outbreaks do take a year or two—I think COVID is a little bit of an exception—but do take quite a bit of time to resolve themselves. Some of the smaller—I don't want to say smaller—but some of the natural disasters and other events may come to resolution a little bit more quickly. But when we have stood up these large responses to infectious disease outbreaks, you're essentially creating kind of a brand-new center within CDC to manage the response. There's a lot of programmatic build-up, and it takes some time for it to stand down. Even if the cases may start dropping, or you may have vaccine available, and it becomes less of a threat, there's still a lot of programmatic activity that CDC is engaged in, whether it's communication activities, working with policy issues, or working with partners that requires a lot of maintenance—I call it \"care and feeding,\" but a lot of maintenance for those activities to continue on, so that's what generates that longer tail of the response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2057.61838,2128.88011"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Right, so what I'm hearing is, when we respond to an outbreak or a situation, we have to bring in all these people, we form another kind of new department, and then when it's on its way, or dwindling, and the cases are going down, we still have this group. What do we do with them? Do they get let go? Do they get reincorporated? Do they go back to their everyday jobs? That stand down is a bit of a—what do we do?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2128.88011,2155.5457"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, the transition of a response is always something that we try to get people to think about as they're standing up the response, because we realize that eventually the response is going to end, so whatever we build up, you know, you're going to have to start to move out. We start to ask people to think about what that transition looks like from the beginning—that's easier said than done, understandably, especially over a multi-year response, it's a little bit challenging to see into the future and what it's going to look like. But yes, dismantling that response structure takes some effort, and you want to make sure that things that need to continue will continue, and things that need to stop are stopped pretty quickly, so we're not putting effort into those activities that don't need to continue.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2155.5457,2204.3589"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. Is that part of what the EOC does? Is that help—do they stand up, and then they also shut it down, or absorb it back into wherever it needs to go?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2204.3589,2214.25865"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. We certainly try to help coordinate some of those efforts and try to help some of the programs and some our leaders understand, these are some functions that should be prioritized and need attention, or resources in the future. Sometimes we say these are functions that were great for this response, but they can stop. In some respects, we try to help them prioritize what are the most essential response activities to continue, and what are the other ones that can be put to bed, but maybe we resurrect later on, in a future response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2214.25865,2247.98996"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e As you move further on in your career, you're now the senior public health analyst?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2247.98996,2253.32524"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e After working in the Influenza Coordination Unit, going through the H1N1 pandemic, I think I had—I probably spent about seven years with that group and realized that, for my career at CDC, I probably needed to experience some other different areas and get a few different experiences both programmatically and technically, to kind of round out my resume. Yes, I started to move around to a few different positions just to get some of those experiences. I guess—I don't know if it's cynical to say enhance my resume, but to really make some other contributions elsewhere.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2253.32524,2292.66519"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Can you describe some of those experiences?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2292.66519,2295.5735"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Sure, sure. After working with the ICU, I took a job with somebody who I worked with pretty closely in the Influenza Coordination Unit, so Toby Merlin was the director of the Division of Emerging—DEPEI, Division of Preparedness and Emerging Infections. He had asked me to come help be the program coordinator for the Emerging Infections Program [EIP], which is a cooperative agreement program that is set up between ten state health departments and associated universities that do a combination of programmatic and research activities, largely around infectious diseases. There's a little bit less of a preparedness and response aspect to that program, but EIP certainly makes a number of contributions for response activities. But I was really there to be the coordinator of the cooperative agreement, so a lot of that was learning how funding was executed for a cooperative agreement, working directly with the subject matter experts to identify what were their priority projects, or research projects, for that program. Probably one of the most interesting aspects of that was, we're working with the state health departments and the universities that are associated with that program, really got to meet some fascinating people in those areas who are really dedicated on very specific areas of research interest. It was interesting to kind of delve back into the public health science areas that I had really not worked in as much as recently. All that being said, I think that gave me a good understanding of how funding is executed, and how it gets out the door to really make an impact on public health programs. A few years, I want to say around the time that when Brenda Fitzgerald came as the director of CDC, had, I think it was her initiative to stand up these Communities of Practice [CoPs] at CDC. These were stood up in a number of different areas, but the idea, I think, was for there to be deputy directors that were overseeing the different centers and offices that were grouped at CDC. The one I ended up going to work for—so I worked directly for Steve Redd, who was the deputy director for Public Health Service and Implementation Science; that was that particular community of practice. That included the Center for Preparedness and Response [CPR], the Center for Global Health [CGH], the Center for State Territorial—CSTLTs [National Center for State, Tribal, Local Territorial Public Health], I think it's called.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2295.5735,2465.18837"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Local and Territorial Support, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2465.18837,2466.89614"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Exactly, and the Office of Minority Health and Health Equity. I think it was interesting looking back on those roles, and—sometimes we would have conversations about what that office was supposed to be doing and what it was intended to do, because I think it was—some of these were kind of created—there was a clear purpose, I think, especially on the infectious diseases side. But I think Doctor Redd and I sometimes were trying to think about the best ways to be most effective in that role. Part of that was trying to bridge some of the commonalities that some of those centers and offices had among each other, so a lot of the discussions that we had were about elevating the concept and the activities around social determinants of health, because there were some efforts happening both in OMHHE [Office of Minority Health and Healthy Equity] and CSTLTs related to that. There was an obviously kind of preparedness response crossover between CPR [Center for Preparedness and Response], some of the work that CGH [Global Health Center] was doing at the time as well. Steve was there too, I think, as a high-level representative from the OD [Office of the Director], and representing the broader activities, both in front of congress and with other partners to help build that out. I worked closely with him in the Influenza Coordination Unit (ICU), and I think he kind of trusted me, trying to help stand up that office, and kind of advise him on different things. It did feel kind of a little bit like a placeholder job, in a way, as I tried to figure out what I was going to do next, but I think it kind of positioned me well to understand all the centers in that area, and kind of, I think, gave me a good path to my next position that I started.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2466.89614,2567.29076"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. It's like your entire background is really grooming you for this next position.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2567.29076,2572.73402"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, it's funny you say that, because I remember, so I worked directly for Toby Crafton in the Influenza Coordination Unit at the time. I remember him saying offhandedly at one time, you know, we should target you for being the deputy director for the Division of Emergency Operations, maybe that's a position you might want to consider in the future. I remember thinking at the time, I don't know that's a division that I want to go to necessarily, it always felt, at the time, a little bit removed from—I think I still liked to think that I was going to be involved in some of the public health science activities. I think as I thought about it and I thought about my experiences at CDC, when that position became open, I decided to apply and went through the interview process, and I think was lucky enough to be offered the position, and I've been there since 2019 at this point. Yeah, so that kind of led me—I think all of those experiences kind of led to my position in the COVID Response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2572.73402,2633.04137"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Let's talk about how COVID unfolded for you, specifically.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2633.04137,2639.12979"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Sure. I think the first thing I remember was, it was probably New Year's Eve, I got a call from the center director at the time for the Center for Preparedness and Response, John [J.] Dreyzehner, called and said that he had gotten wind from NCIRD about some cases in China that were popping up, it seemed like pneumonia, but they weren't sure, and so they were just starting to get some information. You know, it was one of those notifications you get, or you may read about in ProMED, that's, like, oh, this could be something, but it's probably not much of anything. I remember taking note of it, I still have the email that he sent about that. But that is the first memory I have of kind of those initial cases and pretty quickly, going into January, that's what kicked off—several years for many of us who've been working in the COVID Response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2639.12979,2696.05771"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Because currently, you were now the—please describe what you are at this point in time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2696.05771,2701.99403"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Sure. In my day job, I'm the deputy director for the Division of Emergency Operations, and so we're really there, our division is really there, to provide the overall emergency management support for response activities. When we first got the notification, this was one of those situations where you’re—you know, the program at the time, NCIRD, is really the lead for kind of leading the response, but we are there to kind of advise on what emergency management—incident management practices they may want to start to implement. They have a very strong history, largely because of the work that we had done in the Influenza Coordination Unit, so they understood what needed to be done from an operations standpoint. But we were there listening in, making sure that we had anticipation of any requests that may come in, or if this was going to escalate much broader. At the time, they had a number of experts that were getting things organized, really I think in that first week of January [2020], they were monitoring the situation. But I think about a week in, maybe around January 6th or so, they realized that the response was getting a little bit more momentum and they needed to organize themselves a little bit more. They were starting to put together at the time what was called a center-led response, where they had a more formal Incident Management System structure, to kind of organize their activities, putting people into specific roles to help lead that response. That was really starting to activate some of those activities. Over the next week after that, I can't remember the exact time, but there was some effort to start to deploy a lot of staff to the quarantine stations that CDC has around the country, really to monitor illness of incoming passengers, who may have been infected and do passenger screening on their ways into those airports. A lot of our efforts, from my division's perspective, was helping to support the deployment of a lot of those staff to the field, to those quarantine stations. A lot of that is done in partnership with the Office of Safety, Security, and Asset Management [OSSAM], that runs our occupational health clinic. Making sure that the staff that we sent out were medically cleared, that had the right personal protective equipment [PPE] and were really ready to conduct the mission out there. I do remember vividly that we actually stood up and activated the EOC for that specific activity, separate from the COVID-19—broader COVID-19 Response, really to be able to deploy all of those people out into the field. CDC has this really interesting problem where the funding that CDC receives is allocated to specific disease funding lines, and to get people to participate in responses often requires an EOC activation, or it did at the time, to allow us to deploy people from maybe the Chronic Disease Center and have them work on passenger screening at the airports. We could not do that unless the director—the CDC director would exercise their authority to activate the EOC, so we actually activated the EOC in support of the quarantine station deployment effort, right before we actually activated it agency-wide for the COVID-19 Response. A little bit a nuanced fact that I don't think many people appreciated, or looked back at now, but a lot of things were moving very quickly, and I do remember thinking, well, this is interesting, we're activating for this specific activity, which I don't think we'd ever done before, but a couple of weeks later, it really didn't matter, because we were fully activated for COVID-19 anyway.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2701.99403,2931.82717"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Our director at the time was Robert [R.] Redfield?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2931.82717,2933.99872"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e He was, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2933.99872,2934.91157"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay. All right, well, and then we activate for COVID. There's a core capacity to the EOC, right? And that is always there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2934.91157,2948.17212"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, so we are there—we—the EOC—the division, our staff and the division, staffs it twenty-four seven, so we use our Emergency Operation Center for daily activities. We have—I may have mentioned this earlier, but we have a watch staff that is there that takes about two thousand calls per month from state health departments, from clinicians, and they triage those calls to subject matter experts throughout the agency. Our watch desk really is the front line for public health emergencies and the initial notifications into the agency. We have that kind of operations branch component that kind of manages the facility of the EOC day-to-day as well. We also have a number of staff that are always there as part of our Resource Support Branch, that really helps facilitate emergency travel, deployments of the field, both during responses, but also kind of—when we don't have these large responses activated, if we're sending deployers out into the field and they need equipment for their deployments, we're able to supply that to them as well. A number of other functions within our division support, kind of EOC-related activities, so we have the Emergency Risk Communications Branch [ERCB] that kind of does all things risk communication, and really is a co-lead of the Joint Information Center [JIC], which coordinates all the communications activities in responses. We have a lot of core capacity. Our Situational Awareness Team is really the group that puts together all the maps and displays that people will see on the video wall in the Emergency Operations Center, so they take the data that programs get and create visualizations to help facilitate decision making, broader information sharing. Those are just some of the core capacities that we have in there as well. We have a planning training and exercise component as well that helps really prepare people and trains people before an event, and they also become a central player during responses. We have all of those emergency management capabilities that are a core capacity of the EOC, and so any time we stand up a response, that's an element that is always there, but it supplements and always supports the lead center, or the particular threat that we're dealing with.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=2948.17212,3093.46993"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e For COVID, the lead center was, NCIRD?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3093.46993,3096.40713"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e They were. Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3096.40713,3097.97299"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, so after the EOC is activated for COVID, then NCIRD are no longer leading?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3097.97299,3104.48357"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Not quite, because a number of them, a number of NCIRD leaders and staff are, especially at the beginning, are central to the leadership structure that we set up for COVID. Many of them led the task forces; Dan Jernigan was the, I think at the time, still the division director for the Influenza Division. He was asked to be the incident manager. Nancy Messonnier was a key leader for the response as well. So, there were a number of people from NCIRD involved. When we moved to what's called an agency-wide response, that is really a designation that allows us to bring in the—leverage the expertise from across the agency. So we can bring in staff from other centers. There are—it basically heightens the priority level of that response and makes it so that more of our attention across the agency is put toward addressing that particular response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3104.48357,3159.37471"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay. You were asked to be chief of staff of that response?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3159.37471,3163.25373"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/118","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I was. Dan, I had worked with him quite a bit when I was with the Influenza Coordination Unit, I think he had knew me from that, but also from the Ebola Response; I think I was a deputy chief of staff when he was the incident manager for that, for a little bit as well, and so had some familiarity with our work styles. I think he knew that I understood the operations aspects of what needed to be done and could kind of help get some of the things more into the some of the normal processes that needed to be done for kind of what was quickly growing into a larger response. I think I—I don't want to say reluctantly accepted, because when you're asked for a role like that, you say yes, and then you stress about it, and you think about what you need to take care of. But yes, he asked me to serve in that role, and I stayed on through about early July [for the COVID Response].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3163.25373,3217.18794"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/119","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e There's something that I have written down, Washington State?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3217.18794,3219.78381"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/120","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, so early on, Washington state was where we really saw some of the first cases domestically here in the US [United States]. We deployed a number of teams out there to help Washington and Seattle, King County, investigate some of those initial cases. That was really the central location of where our investigation was going, where, really, the centralized focus of this emerging pandemic was seen in the US. There was a lot—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3219.78381,3253.70507"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/121","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Why was that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3253.70507,3254.69243"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/122","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Why was that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3254.69243,3255.9584"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/123","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Why Washington State?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3255.9584,3256.25772"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/124","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I think it was where—I will say, in part, probably because they had a really good public health system in that state, and in that city. The physicians in the medical system there, I think, were—astute and recognized some of those cases, so they were aware of what to expect, and I think were quickly able to detect some of the initial cases. To be fair, there was probably cases all over the country at that point, they were just maybe among the first to detect that. We sent a small team out there to help with their response. I think also there—they were starting to see a number of outbreaks in elder care facilities, and other areas that we were there to provide some of that infection control support as well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3256.25772,3302.72994"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/125","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Isn't that—gosh, this was right around January? Or are we in February?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3302.72994,3308.15084"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/126","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e You're testing me a little bit, but I think it kind of bled into both, it may have been early February I think, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3308.15084,3314.87486"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/127","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, because I know around—well, it was February 25th when Nancy Messonnier had that—it was a press conference, I think. She pretty much laid it all out there, and said, this is the big one.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3314.87486,3326.52172"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/128","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e She did. I mean, she was encouraging people to really think about—that this pandemic was probably going to be something that we had not really thought was actually going to happen, but our lives were going to change quite a bit as a result of it. I think she obviously—people will look back and see that she took quite a bit of blowback from—publicly and from the administration at the time, probably most specifically. But I think it was the right thing to do at the time, I think much in the vein of Rich Besser at the beginning of H1N1 being very clear about what we knew and what we didn't know. I think she was just trying to be honest with the American public at the time about what actions to take.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3326.52172,3371.9431"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/129","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e You bring up a good point that Rich and Nancy are doing these very similar things, but it was—the difference there were, the administrations were not handling it the same.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3371.9431,3383.81939"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/130","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. Did the administration that was there distract from how we should be doing things, the way we were supposed to be doing things? Like, the H1N1 [Response] seemed to go off so well and everybody knew what everybody else was doing. There was something different about COVID, though?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3383.81939,3401.31944"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/131","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I think—and I may be putting words into his mouth, but I feel like I've heard Rich Besser say that, you know, the Obama administration really let science be the lead in H1N1. I think you really saw that—I think the other departments and agencies kind of deferred to CDC, and I think CDC both with Rich and with Anne Schuchat at the time as well, we had two very strong communicators that were allowed to speak to the public, and the administration put them out front and center. I think early in COVID, I think the administration, at that time, was probably less reluctant to do that for whatever reasons, and so I think we were kind of less able to freely speak—when we needed to speak and communicate to the public. It was a little bit tougher to get our message out. We clearly made some of our own mistakes and—but if we had been allowed to do the job that we—it would have been easier if we had been allowed, I think, to—to do the job that we did in H1N1, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3401.31944,3466.71253"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/132","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e You talked about some of the mistakes, and that would have been—I think you're referring to the test kits that were rushed out for—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3466.71253,3472.93448"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/133","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Sure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3472.93448,3473.90901"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/134","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. That was—that set us back.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3473.90901,3477.42473"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/135","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e It did. Would it have prevented the pandemic from growing? Probably not, right? But it would have given—although, who knows, right? I mean, we like to think that it would have given us a better chance at putting CDC in a better light at the beginning and having better influence with the public. But in reality, I think, you know, like alluded to, the virus was likely probably already much more widespread at the time, and the delayed test kits probably just delayed us from realizing that the problem was much greater than we knew at the time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3477.42473,3516.15906"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/136","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e There's the Incident Management System here, too, that's part of the EOC?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3516.15906,3522.17668"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/137","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Right, the—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3522.17668,3522.90974"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/138","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e The incident would have been COVID? And there's a person who handles the management of that response——that's the incident manager, correct or not correct?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3522.90974,3531.7001"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/139","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Maybe, and maybe I'll clarify a little bit.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3531.7001,3534.05631"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/140","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, clarify, please.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3534.05631,3535.14374"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/141","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, so the Incident Management System is kind of the organizational system and structure that we used to organize the response. When I talked about before, we're kind of creating a new center for the management of this response, that Incident Management System is really that structure and framework that provides that organizing effort for the agency to address that particular response. The person who leads that response is the incident manager, and that Incident Management System has a structure that looks similar from response to response. But it changes and adapts throughout the lifecycle of the response. So, we're constantly evaluating whether we need to add positions, add units, or task forces to the group. If you saw an evolution from January of 2020 to even now in—what month are we in? June of 2023, the structure for COVID-19 has evolved quite a bit, it's gone up and down throughout that. That's really based on the principles of incident command, which espouses adaptability, flexibility——while still using some common standards. But you're supposed to scale and structure a response based on the needs of what you need to accomplish.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3535.14374,3615.78882"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/142","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay. That incident manager, how high up do they report to? To the director of CDC? Or does it go above that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3615.78882,3624.25724"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/143","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, when we have kind of our largest agency-wide responses, the incident manager reports directly to the CDC director. There is kind of that temporary direct line there, and yes, that person is kind of in the hot seat, but so is the director.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3624.25724,3643.31042"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/144","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e That's true. There are many people in their first weeks that we had from NCIRD, and then you mentioned FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] stood up activities in DC, which they usually do for a natural disaster. But this is not a natural disaster?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3643.31042,3662.38376"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/145","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Normally, FEMA had not really been engaged for these large infectious disease outbreaks—largely because their authority is really to provide the support for those natural disasters, that's where a lot of their authorities come from. When we did a lot of the exercises back in 2007, 2008, 2009, we did have a lot of discussions, even in the H1N1 pandemic about what the role of FEMA would be in coordinating a national level response. At the time, there was always this desire or push for it to be at least HHS [United States Department of Health and Human Services] to be the lead for all of the public health and medical aspects of those responses. That's really kind of the model that had always been assumed. For the most part, FEMA would, in these infectious disease events, would stay in the background, maybe called to support as needed, but would not necessarily take this leading, coordinating role. But as COVID grew quite a bit, and as a number of other interagency partners were starting to become involved, the administration had FEMA stand up their National Response Coordination Center up in DC to really be the hub of the national coordination activities. There was that effort, but there was also the White House leadership group that was also leading efforts. There was this more formal role that FEMA had in coordinating the interagency response, but then there was also the White House led response, which probably was the group that was really in charge in making the decisions there. But yes, FEMA stood up their center, and we ended up sending a number of staff up there to DC to both lead and support a number of different lines of activity there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3662.38376,3780.23134"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/146","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e You bring up a good point, you've gone through years and years of preparedness response training for things like this, for responding to pandemics and have done responses for pandemics. You have this great thing in place and everybody knows their role, then you have this outlier group suddenly take control—not FEMA, but more of a—?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3780.23134,3806.96741"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/147","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e There's a political element—yes. You know, in responses, we always realize that you're going to—you know, before an event happens, you develop plans and you lay out—this is how it's going to be, these are the steps we're going to take, this is the structure that we're going to set up. You always realize that that is going to change as soon as the response starts. Being flexible and adaptable and realizing that what you had designed is not going to look the same in a response, that's almost always a given. I think the approach, especially so early on, that was so different from a lot of our planning efforts or there were parallel efforts that were stood up—were quite striking. If you—looking back on it, you wonder how much energy was spent doing things that were not, even remotely, according to the plan—and doing things a little bit differently—and how much that took away the energy and our attention to really paying attention to the things that were most important and that needed to be addressed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3806.96741,3871.38996"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/148","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e That also may have influenced communications, too? Out to the public as well?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3871.38996,3877.12092"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/149","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Absolutely, yes. You know, there were a number of different messengers throughout the pandemic, at different times the president, the vice president was there speaking, CDC was there speaking at different times, Anthony Fauci at NIH obviously took a primary role, especially early in the pandemic, and was probably seen as one of the more trusted voices at that time. I think that—for the American public, maybe hearing from multiple different people, it was, oftentimes, if you stepped back from it, maybe a little difficult to figure out who was in charge and who was the voice of authority. Depending on your own personal beliefs or your own political beliefs, maybe you said this person was it, versus somebody else, rather than a clear unity of communication coming from the federal government. There was this disparate and kind of a bit all over the place, which I think, for the average American, probably made it challenging to figure out what's real and what wasn't, and who should I believe, and where should I take my guidance from.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3877.12092,3948.09684"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/150","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Then, the entire United States was shut down. It was mid-March. What was that like for you guys, working in the EOC. How did that influence or how did that affect the work you did?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3948.09684,3958.49087"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/151","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, it was quite striking, in the first couple of months of the COVID-19 Response, the EOC was packed from about 6:30 a.m. in the morning until, you know, at least 7:30-8:00 p.m. at night, so you were used to a buzz in that room and in the areas. Just kind of eventually became what I called like a steady chaos of activity throughout the day. But once we all—we I say—once everyone else was sent home to telework, it was interesting because you felt almost this unusual calm in the EOC, because I was there with some of our response leaders and some of our day-to-day EOC operations staff, but all of the experts that we had brought into the EOC, who were staffing a lot of the teams and task forces in the COVID-19 Response were all of a sudden doing all of that work from their homes, and remotely, and we were having conference calls on the phone, or using Zoom or other technologies to coordinate our activities. It was a little bit eerie, and a little bit disconcerting working there, because all of a sudden, it made things much more difficult to coordinate and ask questions. All of a sudden, instead of standing up and, like you said, yelling over to somebody or walking over to another team room where somebody was, you know, you had to send them an email, or some message that they may or may not respond to immediately. One of the beauties of working in the EOC is it really provides that in-person kind of connectivity and coordination. Things happen much more rapidly because you can just talk to the person, resolve something, you may overhear something, and work out issues. Oh, you're working on that? We're doing this, you know, and help really facilitate some of that coordination. When we had to move virtually and people were sent home, it did create some challenges in coordinating and making sure some things got done and you had to be really intentional about the meetings that you stood up, and being—not letting those meander too much and really be to the point so that you could take advantage of their time—everybody's time on those calls. It's no different than the entire workforce throughout the nation has had to deal with, right? As we've moved to more remote and telework environment. But for an emergency response, it was a new way of doing it. We were learning a lot of things on the fly. We are still operating a lot of our responses kind of in a hybrid mode a little bit—and I think we're still trying to figure out what is the best approach. There are pros to managing a response virtually, but I think we have found that you lose a little bit of the immediacy of some of the things that need to happen in a response. Not that we're hindering our response greatly, but I think there is some cost to be paid for not doing some of our responses in person.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=3958.49087,4143.48261"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/152","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e I just want to clarify the reason we all went to teleworking was, we did not want to spread it [COVID-19] amongst ourselves, in case someone did have an active case, or we wanted to make sure our staff was safe.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4143.48261,4155.99789"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/153","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Correct, we were. Actually, I can't remember the exact date, but a few weeks before there was the nationwide shutdown, there was an initial scare in the EOC where we thought somebody may have been positive or sick, so we actually had to send people home for a couple of days, so we actually a bit of a trial run in our response of what it may feel like to work virtually, when we had to send especially a lot of our leadership team to work remotely. There were some challenges there. We realized that it wasn't going to be easy working remotely, and that proved to be the case for the next couple of years. One of the things, especially working early in the response, I remember coming in, it was always dark, right, because it was still wintertime, and I would come in 6:00-6:30 a.m. in the morning, and then I would leave at night, around 7:00-8:00 p.m. at night. It was always dark. It always felt like it was raining, too, when I was going home. But when we did send everybody home and people were working virtually, I was still coming in six days a week, and I remember going the traffic up 85 [Interstate 85] or 400 [Georgia State Route] here in the Atlanta area was, there was nobody on there, and I felt like I had the highways to myself, I think, driving back and forth. In some respects, I did not like coming in. I was jealous of my family, that was, you know, kind of seemed to be on a spring vacation those entire months, but for me there was some enjoyment that at least my commute was probably cut in half, because there was not as many people out on the roads.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4155.99789,4250.22866"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/154","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e The first three months of teleworking, which would have been March, April, May, that's when there were——so many cases, so many people dying, so much was happening—and we're hearing about Operation Warp Speed. Can you—how did that fold into the EOC work?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4250.22866,4271.14641"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/155","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I think actually a lot of that work was just getting started, there in the spring. Eventually, played more of a role in CDC's response later that fall and into the early spring of 2021. But yes, it was an initiative really stood up to accelerate both the production of the COVID vaccine, and also galvanize the distribution efforts, because even if you have a vaccine, it takes a lot of work and coordination to logistically get it out to the American public. That effort was really meant to the accelerate the development of it, and then to make sure that we had the systems and processes in place to be able to distribute it out to the American public. I think it did get its initial start in the spring there, I think a lot of our colleagues in NCIRD were part of those planning efforts, and it really became much more serious later that summer and into the fall, as a vaccine candidate was developed, and mass production started to get underway.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4271.14641,4336.49972"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/156","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Right. By that time, you mentioned that you had rolled off in July—meaning what?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4336.49972,4343.74294"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/157","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. Meaning, yes, after working on the COVID-19 Response for about five or six months, there was a transition in overall response leadership. I think many of the people that had been in the response, like myself, had been on for several months. You know, when you're working these events, it's not like your regular job, where you just do it every day. It is taxing, especially in the chief of staff role. You are dealing not only with leadership, but you're dealing kind of with all of the responders in the response, and as the chief of staff, people come to you with any and all types of problems to address and fix. Emotionally, it becomes a little bit taxing after a little while, especially after the initial chaos of the months. I think I realized I was pretty spent mentally at about that time and realized that as a new incident manager was coming aboard, maybe it was a time for somebody else to kind of take on that chief of staff role. I handed the reins over to my good friend, Sherrie [M.] Bruce, who I worked with many times previously; she had been a chief of staff in many other the responses before. She was ready, willing, and able to assume that role. It was a really easy transition to hand things over to her. She and I had many conversations, even in the months after that, to kind of, you know, as she was encountering things she would come to me and I would come to her, in a way, to kind of process some of the things that I had gone through in the months, so it was a really good transition, and kind of relationship to continue. But yes, in July I kind of rolled off of the response and went back to my day-to-day job in the Division of Emergency Operations, so still supporting the response, but maybe less intently on a day-to-day basis.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4343.74294,4451.43762"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/158","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e When you roll off from being a frontline and hands-on kind of part of that leadership during leadership management, what do you gain? And what did you miss?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4451.43762,4465.86052"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/159","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e You know, the COVID-19 Response for me, either the length or just how traumatic it was, and what everybody experienced, I can't say that I missed too much of the day-to-day stuff. I think what I really missed were some of the people that I worked closely with during those months. I had my own team, on the chief of staff team, that I had kind of built up, they supported me, and I like to think I supported them. Many of them I was friends with before, and I think I look fondly on all the support that they helped with me. I miss working with them and talking with them on a day-to-day basis. I also missed a lot of the response leaders that I had worked with over the previous five or six months. Those personal interactions, in a way, because there were so few people coming into the office, because you were spending so much time with them in the response. In a way they almost became kind of your second family—and really your only social interaction. In a way, I felt lucky, because we were seeing people, for good or bad, like, outside of our familial bubbles during COVID when most people were, you know, just stayed within their homes, or had a very tight, close-knit pocket of people. Some of those people that we worked with I felt I missed. Yes, we had our own little pod in the EOC.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4465.86052,4549.43153"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/160","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e When you rolled off, what, exactly, did you do then?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4549.43153,4554.17371"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/161","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e It's a good question. I did a lot of processing, just in my own mind. My day-to-day job, a lot of it was just helping out, like I said, Sherrie with different issues that came up. I think one of the things that we started to think about were, what are some of the improvements that we would need to make in our day-to-day practices? What are some of the changes that we could make while the response was still happening, to make things easier for responders? We also started to work on some recognition efforts for some responders. We worked closely with the CDC Foundation very shortly after I rolled off, to try to send a few things to some of the response leaders that we worked with, they were interested in doing some recognition effort, so we kind of had some—the Foundation arranged for some donations, very small tokens of appreciation for some of those leaders. CDC Foundation gave—donated lunches for responders, really for a couple of years into the COVID-19 Response. Unfortunately, what I hoped most of my responders realized is that the CDC Foundation does a lot more than just feed our responders and they do a lot more impactful public health work, really supporting CDC's mission. But yes, they were very generous and kind of supporting that. I think that really, especially in the beginning, brought a lot of smiles to our responders' faces. I think at some point, you eventually start to do—tire of eating the same pizza or sandwiches at some point, but still, it was very much appreciated. Cafeterias were closed, and so it made it much easier for us to do our jobs.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4554.17371,4655.13784"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/162","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. Are you part of the team that had—because the response went on for quite a long time. People were experiencing burnout——rightly so. Were you part of that, let's keep this momentum going? Let's still, you know, we need more deployers?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4655.13784,4670.59238"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/163","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e There's kind of—maybe at a broad level, there's probably two different roles that we take people from their normal jobs and put them into something else. One of those would be asking people to deploy physically to a field location to support state, local departments, health departments, or some of our international partners. There's a certain type of person I think that is interested in that, really, field-level work. Often maybe a smaller group, but those are very enthusiastic people that are kind of willing to endure what are sometimes difficult conditions and deploy to the field. We also ask people in responses to fill different roles within our Incident Management System structure, so oftentimes those take the flavor of either coming into the EOC and working physically as part of a team, or as we saw in COVID, working virtually as part of a group, but working as part of an ad hoc team to address anything from collecting and visualizing the data in the response, working on vaccine-related issues, or working on communications activities that may be going on in the response. Often, when we ask people to come into the response, what we're trying to do is to ask people to use existing skills that they have and apply them within the context of a response. If you're an epidemiologist, we have a need for an epidemiologist on such-and-such team, we're asking you to kind of come in and do that. Same if you're a communicator or a policy expert. When responses first start, you get a lot of interest from people who are interested—they see something emerging, it's exciting, they want to jump in. But, as responses linger on, they're, even as impactful as it may be, sometimes either no people have gone into a response, maybe they've had a tougher experience, or they've had their own experience, and was, like, that's enough, I don't want to do that anymore. It does become—the way CDC had structured itself is that these response assignments, were really voluntary, and it becomes much more of a challenge for people personally to keep that momentum up. They shouldn't feel the need to have their—maintain their day job. Our expectation when they come on to response is that the response is their job, and their program really needs to reprioritize and account for people. But people still feel that pressure to both maintain—handle their response duties, but also check in on their program. I felt the same, especially in the fall of 2020 when I helped the Vaccine Task Force [VTF]. I was trying to help them do that job, but also still maintain a hand in my day-to-day job in the division. It does become a challenge. One of the things that we try to do is, really move towards—one of the outcomes of the COVID Response is really to instill more a sense of everybody at the agency is a responder, and to try to implement a program where we give people a little bit more training, and a little bit more comfort that they can come to a response, but also realize that they can take time off from that when they need to, really with the idea of building a more resilient emergency response workforce. It became to the point where we had probably up to two thousand people working the COVID-19 Response at any given time, and over several years, as people were rotating in, every ninety, a hundred and twenty, a hundred and eighty days, it really became a challenge to sustain that overall effort. We had to find ways to try to—incentivize people to come back, but also make things work well when they were in the response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4670.59238,4901.73043"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/164","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e That's quite a lot of people moving in and out of positions. How did you guys maintain the continuity of, and quality of, work?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4901.73043,4910.50982"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/165","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e It was—if we're being honest with ourselves, it was probably mixed. You know, we had mechanisms to track people who were coming into roles, so we knew who served in roles, we'd try to go back to those same people. It does become a huge challenge just to try to sustain that. I think one of the things, every time you see turnover, there's always a kind of a learning curve, both for the person coming on, and I think what frustrates maybe some of our partners, too, is that when we have people who were more in externally-facing roles that are constantly rotating in and out, it does make a little bit difficult for our partners and our external customers, for lack of a better term, to kind of know who to go to and build those relationships, like they would in a day-to-day program. Unfortunately, the way that in the past that we have structured the way we staffed these responses by this volunteer model that was probably one of the costs or cons that we had with implementing something like that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4910.50982,4972.81931"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/166","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Have we looked—I mean, now that we're somewhat out of COVID, have we looked at ourselves going, well, could we have done this better?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4972.81931,4980.87698"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/167","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e We are—as part of the Moving Forward initiative that CDC stood up, one of the big efforts is called our CDC Ready Responder Program, and that's really geared at something that FEMA has implemented, where this idea of standing up cadres of people who have similar skillsets, and can readily fill, and are available to fill certain positions within a response. There's a preparedness aspect to it to make sure that we can identify who's available, and who's qualified for certain positions, make sure they have the proper training. When a response stands up, we're able to draw on those pre-identified people to fill roles, and really use those cadres to sustain those response activities on a long-term effort. Yes, we're working on that, and we hope that it is successful in the next big response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=4980.87698,5032.84007"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/168","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, great. I know we had talked about——the Commission Corps are a different type of CDC employee; they're [United States] Public Health Service [USPHS], and they are assigned federal institutions. That's a whole other type of worker at CDC. You have contractors, you have fellows, you have FTEs [full-time equivalents], and then you have Commission Corps. But that's a lot of different flavors to mix together?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5032.84007,5065.85313"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/169","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, the Commission Corps really are a fantastic group of people. I think they go into those positions knowing that response is a key aspect of their functions, and we relied heavily on a number of them during the COVID-19 Response. And a number of them served in a number of key leadership positions. At CDC, our Commission Corps workforce is fantastic. I remember I had one contentious phone call with their headquarters. When we were initially staffing up the quarantine stations, we were trying to get use of Commission Corps officers from other public health agencies, or other agencies in the federal government, and they really wanted to send those people out directly, but we also wanted to make sure that they were prepared to go out to the quarantine stations, bring them to CDC, give them a very brief training, clearance activity, make sure that they were well-protected. It was just strange to thing that they just wanted to go without giving them those preparations in advance. But overall, I would say they were very supportive, and I think, because really, the ones at CDC are fantastic, and we rely on them for a response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5065.85313,5139.43225"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/170","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e It's got to be hard trying to manage all of those different flavors of employee at CDC?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5139.43225,5144.46483"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/171","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, it is. Oftentimes we know that contractors or fellows may have a certain skillset that we need for a particular role, particularly in the field. But for some of those employee categories, either for liability issues or just because we're not allowed to send them out in the field, we can't make use of some of the skills that they have. It does become a little bit of a challenge. I would say that it's not a major problem, but it becomes more of an annoyance than anything, especially when you know a person has what is needed, but you can't physically put them out into the field without going through an enormous array of administrative hurdles. I think that's an after-action issue that we can—we always continue to try to address. I think over the years we've made improvements, especially on the contracting side, to make things a little bit easier. But you can't resolve every scenario before an event, but it's something we do try to work towards.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5144.46483,5207.85497"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/172","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e During COVID, there was a lot of—well, it really showed—highlight of health equity and that sort of rose to the surface because that was part of the Vaccine Task Force, was also part of that. You worked in the Vaccine Task Force group?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5207.85497,5228.20874"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/173","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I did. Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5228.20874,5228.93"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/174","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Can you—?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5228.93,5230.08436"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/175","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes, I think the COVID pandemic, particularly because of who it was disproportionately affecting, really arose to light a lot of the health equity issues in certain populations. One of the things that we did around April or May of the response was really, worked with Jay [C.] Butler, who was the incident manager at the time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5230.08436,5253.16875"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/176","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e 2020?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5253.16875,5254.22841"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/177","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e In 2020. We worked with him and Leandris Liburd who's the director, or—yes, the director of the Office of Health Equity, Office of Minority Health and Health Equity [OMHHE], to establish what we called the chief health equity officer within the response. This was actually the first time in a response that we had elevated that role to a leadership position in the response. The intent was really to both highlight the importance of those issues across the response, but also to ensure that there was a leader who was there coordinating across the entire Incident Management System structure for those particular issues to make sure that there was an overall strategy that things were being looked at from the health equity perspective. I think Doctor Liburd and her team really filled that role, and took on that leadership mantle, and I think we've institutionalized that for future responses. I do remember a few years ago, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, we had a speaker from, I think, the New York City Department of Health come and speak about their experience in supporting Hurricane Sandy and other responses, and it really struck with me that health equity issues should not just be kind of an add-on to the response, it really is the response. I think CDC, also as part of the Moving Forward effort, has used this term of baking in health equity into our broader public health work. I think that's what we really tried to need to do as well on a response, is not make it a separate taskforce that is, oh, they're just focusing on that issue. I think by elevating health equity issues at the IM [incident management] leadership level, it really provides that visibility to everyone in the response that this is an important thing, that we need to pay attention to it, and really incorporate all aspects of that into our day-to-day work. In the Vaccine Task Force, there was a particular focus there to make sure that we were reaching certain populations, both who needed to have the vaccine so that we could target certain communications activities to them, making sure they had both access and the knowledge to why the vaccine was important to get. It plays the role both at the leadership levels and the programmatic levels in a response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5254.22841,5397.64226"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/178","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Okay, so while we're on the vaccine, let's talk a little bit about the vaccine reticence part. I know in the very beginning when everybody would have taken this vaccine in a heartbeat. We were very keen on a vaccine. And then by the time it comes out, very quickly, but still within all what it needed to pass to be a safe and effective vaccine, people were not that keen on it anymore?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5397.64226,5430.37036"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/179","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. It was interesting to think about it, look back, especially a couple of years later after the vaccine was rolled out, you know, initially, right, people were very excited, and probably would have taken it in a heartbeat. I wonder if some of the challenges, and I think some people wonder, like, you know, initially, the supply of vaccine initially, in those initial days and weeks, was not as plentiful, it wasn't widely available for everybody immediately, and I think that created some communication challenges a little bit, about who should go get it, and where was it available. You know, looking back on it, that was such a short window, I think, of when we had that shortage ability—pretty quickly it was available widespread, and anybody could get it at any time, but I think broadly, as a nation and probably as a world, we missed our window of opportunity to push that, and be ready to really galvanize people, and make them understand why they should take that. There was a recent interview that I saw with General [Gustave F.] Perna, who was the head of the Operation Warp Speed. I think he did everything he could to make sure the systems were in place to get vaccine out to people, but I think one of the things that he mentioned was that there—it wasn't in, necessarily, his charge, but it really wasn't the strong communications push to galvanize that interest for people——why they needed to take it. You can tell people that they need to take it so they don't get sick, but we saw people still get sick, even if they had the vaccine. Communicating that, that—that was still going to happen, and what you're really doing is lowering the chances of you getting sick and others getting sick that you get in contact with, that was probably a missed opportunity for us broadly, as public health. Not just CDC, but just from a public health enterprise perspective.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5430.37036,5553.46928"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/180","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e I want to turn towards more of a personal—how did these two years have this effect on your personal life? Your family life, your—members of your family?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5553.46928,5563.77526"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/181","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e For the most part, my family stayed healthy throughout the pandemic, I think probably the most challenging for us was just getting my kids through virtual school. Both my daughters are great students; one of them that we actually sent to school, just because I think she, as a high schooler, was kind of missing that environment, and I think just enjoyed learning in person more, and I think once she was able to do that, I think she was able to enjoy her high school experience a little bit more. I had a middle schooler as well at the time, who actually stayed virtual through up to the point where up until most of the students started going back to school, and that worked out for her, too. But I think just balancing that was our biggest challenge, and honestly, that is no challenge, compared to what most people went through. But I think we were very lucky and came out of the pandemic personally pretty well. I think it changed me a little bit in my perspective, and maybe in my enthusiasm, a little bit, for jumping into responses a little bit. I'm probably no different than a lot of the other COVID-19 responders that went through several months of hard work, and there were people who worked much harder than I did and went through way much—many more difficulties. I think you go through enough of those, it just kind of lessens a bit your enthusiasm to immediately jump into the next response. But time also has a way of kind of clouding your memory a little it. You know, when the next one comes up, I'm sure I'll be ready to jump aboard.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5563.77526,5668.68538"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/182","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Do you feel like you had a little bit of burnout there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5668.68538,5671.38041"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/183","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Absolutely, yes. I talked with several of my colleagues who I spent the first several months with, I think we all acknowledged in a way, kind of going through that was a bit of a traumatic experience. You do come away with a little bit of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. You weren't, like, a—you know, you're not in a war zone or anything like that, I don't want to be overly dramatic. But it does kind of take a toll on you when you're spending so much time working on an activity and you don't see—you still see the caseloads going up as much as they were, or you see a reluctant public not adhering to the public health messaging that your agency is putting out. It felt a little bit, what have I been doing with my time for the last five or six months? What effect have I really had? You have to kind of put it into perspective, you have to find the wins where you can, and you helped personally, you know, you helped support people who were in the response, and you worked through different issues, and you try to step away from the maybe bigger headlines you were seeing when you went home.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5671.38041,5733.30411"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/184","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Did you ever take any of those comments or criticisms about CDC personally?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5733.30411,5738.41127"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/185","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e No, not really, because oftentimes they were so general that I didn't take them personally, but it did make me less want to say, at times, that maybe I worked at CDC? It was funny, because it's this analogy during Hurricane Katrina when FEMA became almost a laughingstock, and you didn't want to be associate with them. It's interesting to kind of compare in COVID that, like, FEMA, in some respects, was there to kind of not rescue us, but kind of was there when we, at HHS and other agencies maybe weren't able to do things on our own. But, you know, I'm still glad I work at CDC. I think we have a very important mission to do, and on the response side, like any response teaches us, there are things that we learn and go through. It was challenging.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5738.41127,5795.44308"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/186","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e You talked a little bit about PTSD. What about mental health state, in general? Your own mental health and the people that you worked with? How do you gauge that? I mean, if you saw someone who was very much struggling, would you have said, you need to sit down and take a breath?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5795.44308,5816.52563"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/187","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Occasionally, yes, as I worked pretty closely, especially early in the pandemic with—we had a resilience officer who was part of our team in the Incident Management System structure, and she was fantastic about—we had a number of deployers that had gone out into the field that were struggling when they came back, and she would often help them work through those issues. I would refer people who I saw in the response to her, to help process what they went through, or help deal with any issues that they may have gone through. I think all of the responders, in a way, it's their responsibility to keep an eye out for that. I do remember that there was a notable story that one of our agency leaders had to tell one of our response leaders to kind of take a break, and take away their cell phone for a weekend, just because they could see clear signs of burnout in that person. They asked them to avoid any calls, and basically, yes, he took away his cell phone and told him, do nothing for the weekend. You have to—as all of us who are working in responses kind of have to pay attention to that in the moment. I think what helps after a response is really processing that with people who you've gone through kind of that similar experience with. I've relied on a lot of the same people that I worked with to kind of chat through and talk through different things, really in the year probably after I left the response. You know, as different news articles would come out, or we would relive different moments, and I think that helped kind of process and come to terms with some of the things either we had seen, or we had heard about, or gone through. I think just kind of sharing that experience with others who had gone through it as well, helps you process that from a mental health perspective.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5816.52563,5929.40764"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/188","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e This is going to be something that we pass down to our future generations. The repercussions for future generations, you spoke about your daughter, who is in high school and how all of those missed milestones for your family, missed milestones for other people's families, loss of being there for a loved one when they were dying—all of that. We had so much happening all at once. The whole mental health of this country was tied to this one disease. The question I'm getting at here is, what was the most challenging part for you professionally? Or even personally during this period of time?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5929.40764,5970.75607"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/189","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e It's a good question. I think I struggled initially—you know, in the chief of staff role, it is a leadership role in the response. I think—I had done that role in previous responses, but nothing felt—no other response felt like it had kind of the weight and immediacy of this one. You felt some responsibility—I had to separate that, yes, I was the chief of staff in the CDC response at the beginning, did that mean that I was to blame for any of the issues that led to our ineffectiveness? Maybe there were some things I definitely could have done better. But I also try to think about, you know, a lot of those things were probably out of my control, and I shouldn't blame [myself for] that. What I really tried to do was kind of focus on the things that were within the span of my control a little bit. I was proud of the team that we built. Initially, I was proud of a lot of our leaders who tried to take a stand when they could. There were probably times where I was a little bit more reserved than I needed to be? And thinking back on it, that's probably things that I was probably more disappointed by, and it's something just to learn from, from every response. I think I'm most proud of all the people that we worked with and who stood up to make a contribution in the response.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=5970.75607,6058.95064"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/190","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e You brought something with you today, in the shape of an egg?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=6058.95064,6066.62248"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/191","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=6066.62248,6066.95794"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/192","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e I want you to explain—people can't see what this is, but these are five different colored wooden eggs with the words, \"White House Easter Egg Roll,\" that would be 2020—?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=6066.95794,6081.04226"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/193","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e That's right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=6081.04226,6082.01717"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/194","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Which would have been April?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=6082.01717,6083.59111"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/195","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e Yes. I think, you know, the White House, every year, does an Easter Egg Roll on the lawn of the White House. In 2020, to, I guess, recognize CDC's efforts and supporting the response, the First Lady and her team reached out to CDC, and wanted to share Easter eggs, these wooden Easter eggs, with the responders at CDC. They were sent to us in the Emergency Operations Center to receive and we were supposed to distribute them. We did distribute a number of them to some of the leaders and responders, but I think by the time we got them, like, you alluded to earlier, many of our response workforce was working remotely and never to be seen again. But we did receive a couple of thousand, I think, of these eggs that were all in these different colors and handed out a number of them. But every year, I think you can buy them through the White House office, just like the ornaments, the Christmas ornaments that the White House produces every year. But they give them out, and you can also purchase them online. But these were eggs that we handed out to responders. They also came with little packages of red, white, and blue jelly beans, that we could also hand out as well. Yes, so we had a number of these to give out. Some people were excited to receive them, other people were maybe less excited to receive them. They saw who they were coming from, so—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=6083.59111,6173.71246"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/196","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e Interesting. It's an interesting thing for our collection. I like it. We're coming to the end of our time here, and I wanted to make sure that we've gotten stuff in that you wanted to get in, which, are there any important parts to your job, or your experience, or background that you wish people to know for the historical record?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=6173.71246,6193.85778"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/197","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eFRANK:\u003c/strong\u003e I think we've covered quite a bit of it. Maybe I'll go back to something that I said at the beginning about starting my career in emergency management—I think what I've realized, especially over the past several years, and kind of being in the division that I work in is that, you know, the Emergency Operations Center here at CDC just recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary of being in existence. It really is still an early professional field for public health and the world in general. I think emergency management is still developing its doctrine and trying to instill it more broadly in the workforce, while it strongly encourages common terminology. I think we, as emergency managers, sometimes don't do as good of a job explaining the importance and role of it, but I think where we have seen it work well, I mentioned the lead-up of all the exercises that we did in the late 2000s, up to H1N1, when there's buy-in and dedication to some of the principles of consistent communication, unity of command, unity of effort. I think those things really enhance emergency responses. I think it's something that, as the field continues to grow and we continue to get more people to participate in responses, and realize how important those concepts are, that's only going to help us respond more effectively to all of the threats that we encounter, both here at CDC and as a nation as a whole. That's really the core concept that our office now at CDC does, and it's just something that I hope continues to grow as CDC continues on in its mission.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=6193.85778,6306.63082"},{"id":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563/transcript/76482/annotation/198","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eQ:\u003c/strong\u003e All right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://globalhealthchronicles.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2849/collection_resources/142415/file/263563#t=6306.63082,8020.15988"}]}]}]}