Expert Bio
Thomas J. Bollyky is the inaugural Bloomberg Chair in Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where he directs the global health program. He is also CFR’s senior fellow for international economics, law and development, and a senior consultant to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. Bollyky is the founding editor of Think Global Health, an online magazine that examines the ways health shapes economies, societies, and everyday lives around the world.
Bollyky’s work has appeared in general interest publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, the Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal as well as in nearly fifty scholarly publications in journals such as Science, Nature, the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Bollyky has testified multiple times before the U.S. Congress and foreign parliaments and served on several expert committees at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. He directed the first two CFR-sponsored Independent Task Forces devoted to global health: on pandemic preparedness and noncommunicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries. Bollyky has been a consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a temporary legal advisor to the World Health Organization. In 2013, the World Economic Forum named Bollyky as one of its global leaders under forty. Bollyky's book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress was listed as one of the top ten selling health and medicine books in 2018 and has been translated into Chinese and Japanese.
Prior to coming to CFR, Bollyky served in a variety of positions in the U.S. government, most recently at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). He led the negotiations on medical technology regulation in the U.S.-Republic of Korea Free Trade Agreement and represented USTR in the negotiations with China on the safety of food and drug imports. Bollyky was a Fulbright Scholar to South Africa, where he worked as a staff attorney at the AIDS Law Project, and an attorney at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where he represented clients before the International Court of Justice and the U.S. Supreme Court. Bollyky is a former law clerk to Chief Judge Edward R. Korman and was a health policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Bollyky received his BA in biology and history at Columbia University and his JD at Stanford Law School. He is a member of the New York and U.S. Supreme Court bars, and of the Council on Foreign Relations.
affiliations
- Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, senior consultant
- Georgetown University, adjunct professor of law
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In response to COVID-19, member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) have been negotiating to create a pandemic agreement and to amend the existing International Health Regulations (IHR). The negotiations have been closely watched as indicators of global health diplomacy's future in an increasingly divided world. On June 1, the WHO's World Health Assembly approved amendments to the IHR and extended negotiations on a pandemic agreement. Dr. Suerie Moon, codirector of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva; David Fidler, senior fellow for global health and cybersecurity at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); and presider Thomas J. Bollyky, Bloomberg Chair in Global Health at CFR discuss what the World Health Assembly's decisions on the IHR amendments and the pandemic agreement negotiations mean for global health security, equity, and governance.
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New fertility forecasts from the Global Burden of Disease Study stress our world's trajectory towards a low-fertility future. By 2050, fertility rates in three-quarters of countries will not sustain their populations, increasing to ninety-seven percent of countries by 2100. At the same time, relatively high fertility rates in low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa will continue to drive population growth, leading to a ‘demographically divided world.’ Please join our speakers, Ann Norris, senior fellow for women and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and Christopher J. Murray, director of the institute that oversees the Global Burden of Disease Study, for a discussion about the latest regional fertility data and how national governments can prepare for projected threats to health, economies, food security, the environment, and geopolitical stability brought on by these demographic changes.
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Policymakers face complex cost-benefit considerations when intervening in the market to mitigate perceived risks, from climate change to competition with China.
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An outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza that was detected for the first time in a milking herd of cattle in Texas one month ago has now infected thirty-three herds in eight states and at least one farm worker, spurring alarm among some experts that human-to-human transmission could be next. Please join us for a discussion with Dr. Nirav D. Shah, Principal Deputy Director of the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the U.S. response to this avian flu outbreak and on how the CDC and its U.S. government counterparts are applying lessons from COVID-19 to respond to the potential threat.
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In January, the U.S. Supreme Court debated whether to overturn Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council—one of the most cited U.S. cases of all time, which established the principle that the courts should defer to federal agencies when they interpret the law in the course of carrying out their duties. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the deference owed to federal agencies’ exercise of public health authorities was already heavily litigated. How much overruling Chevron would alter U.S. health policymaking is a matter of debate, with some claiming the change would be modest while others argue that FDA decision-making and Medicare administration would be rendered unworkable. Mr. Nicholas Bagley, the Thomas G. Long Professor of Law at Michigan Law and an expert on administrative law and health law, and Thomas J. Bollyky discuss what replacing the Chevron doctrine might mean for U.S. health.