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Panel Discussion "The Future of Health Security - Lessons from the Pandemic"

On July 11, top experts from medicine, law and sociology will discuss the future challenges of health security at the Landgrafenhaus Marburg.

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On July 11, top experts from medicine, law and sociology will discuss the future challenges of health security at the Landgrafenhaus Marburg.

On June 14, the German government presented and adopted the first National Security Strategy. It is guided by the declared goal of following a broad understanding of security in order to take comprehensive account of the diverse threat situations of the present. The Collaborative Research Center (SFB) "Dynamics of Security" at Philipps University Marburg, Justus Liebig University Giessen and the Herder Institute Marburg is taking this as an opportunity to highlight different areas of security policy in a series of lectures and panel discussions. In the second event, high-profile experts will discuss the challenges of health security.

The threat of new infectious diseases has been addressed from a security perspective since the 1990s. In 2007, the then WHO director noted a "universal vulnerability" of the global community to pandemics. Preparedness policies, national and international legal frameworks, and disease surveillance systems have been implemented. The COVID-19 pandemic was the test case for this regime: how did it work in managing the crisis? How does the National Security Strategy account for the experience of this "event of the century"? Overall, what lessons do we learn from the pandemic for health security in the future?

To shed light on these questions, the panel discussion will bring together three different professional perspectives and thematic expertise:

Prof. Dr. Andrea Kießling is Professor of Public Law, Social and Health Law and Migration Law at Goethe University Frankfurt. She is director of the Institute for European Health Policy and Social Law and editor of the commentary on the German Infection Protection Act. Recently, she has distinguished herself by proposing how a future epidemic law could be designed.

Prof. Dr. Gérard Krause is Professor of Infection Epidemiology and was for many years Head of the Department of Epidemiology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research. Among other things, he developed the Surveillance, Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System (SORMAS) software for monitoring the spread of viral diseases, which was used worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, he was part of the advisory team to the federal and state governments. Since March of this year, he has been head of the newly established Surveillance Systems Department at the WHO in Geneva.

Prof. Dr. Sven Opitz is Professor of Political Sociology at Philipps University and leads the project "The Politics of Epidemiological Data" in the SFB. His research examines the role of knowledge techniques (including scenario planning, testing, simulation models) and regulatory techniques (including preparedness norms, standards, metrics) in managing health emergencies. During the pandemic, he collaborated with the RKI to study the work of public health departments and the effects of the Corona warning app.

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