Rajeev Venkayya — A VITALS Recap

The chance to ask an expert questions is a feature of NEOMED’s VITALS: Visionary Health Leadership in Action speaker series, and participants made the most of it at a Zoom webinar held Thursday, Nov. 5.

Guest speaker Rajeev Venkayya, M.D. (’91), addressed concerns and questions about COVID-19 vaccines, as well as answering questions ranging from whether the virus is mutating to why other countries have been more successful in preventing COVID-19 outbreaks.

Dr. Venkayya, who is the president of the Global Vaccine Business Unit at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., was introduced by NEOMED President John T. Langell. In Dr. Venkayya’s presentation, he touched on his time in the White House – when he was responsible for developing and implementing a national strategy (including the publication in 2007 of a 300-page “playbook”) for addressing an influenza pandemic.

He also discussed challenges and lessons learned, such as the ‘’swiss cheese” approach: Layering a stack of health interventions – each one of them imperfect, but covering each other’s shortcomings – will allow you to sandwich together a more effective solution to a pandemic like COVID-19.

Dr. Venkayya told the audience that even when he was a student at NEOMED (where Amy Acton, M.D. (’90), then Amy Stearns, was a year ahead of him), he had an interest in technology and the drive to shape many lives. His desire to be a leader who could make a large-scale impact led him to a position as Director of Vaccine Delivery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program, prior to his position at Takeda.

During Dr. Venkayya’s VITALS presentation, he spoke on inequities in health care, from the multi-tiered system he sees in the U.S to the discrepancies in access to vaccines by different countries around the globe. And from his long experience in the field, Dr. Venkayya brought a scientist’s perspective to topics including the public’s safety concerns about COVID-19 vaccines and his explanation of how effective a vaccine should be, in order to be considered useful.

The question-and-answer session segment following Dr. Venkayya’s presentation was moderated by WKYC’s senior health correspondent, Monica Robins.

In case you missed it

Those who weren’t able to attend the VITALS: Visionary Health Leadership in Action speaker series, or would like to see it again, can access the full event.

Next up on the VITALS series, held the first Thursday of each month: Mark Paul, president of the neurovascular division of Stryker, will speak at 5 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 3.