The winter respiratory illness season now includes three major pathogens that people need to prepare for by getting available vaccines and following the usual hygiene protocols to reduce risk of infection and transmission: influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Join Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and Health Beat Leader for infectious diseases Tara Haelle to hear about the CDC’s tools and resources for covering the upcoming flu/COVID-19/RSV season. Join us for this opportunity to get the answers you need to prepare your coverage.
This webinar is sponsored by the US Department of Health & Human Services.
Tara Haelle
AHCJ Infectious Diseases Health Beat Leader
Tara Haelle is AHCJ’s health beat leader for infectious diseases and medical studies. She’s an independent science/health journalist, author, speaker, and photographer. Her work has appeared in the National Geographic, Scientific American, Texas Monthly, Science News, Medscape/WebMD, The New York Times, Wired, and O Magazine, among others.
She specializes in public health and medical research, particularly vaccines, infectious disease, maternal and pediatric health, mental health, healthcare disparities, and misinformation. She also covers medical research conferences and edits Long COVID Connection on Medium. Haelle earned a master’s in photojournalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and her images have appeared in Texas Monthly, NPR, the Chicago Sun-Times and elsewhere.
Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH
Director, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, is the Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). Most recently, he served as the Director of the Division of HIV Prevention in CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. Dr. Daskalakis has been recognized nationally and internationally as an expert in HIV prevention and has focused much of his career on the treatment and prevention of HIV and other STIs as an activist physician with a focus on LGBTQIA+ communities. He also served as the Deputy Coordinator of the White House’s Mpox Response, where he led vaccination and public education efforts that helped to halt advancement of the virus.
Dr. Daskalakis began his career as an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and later served in several public health capacities there, including the Deputy Commissioner for the Division of Disease Control at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He also served as the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene incident commander during the measles outbreak of 2018-2019 and the 2020 COVID-19 public health emergency. Dr. Daskalakis received his Doctor of Medicine from the New York University School of Medicine and received a Master of Public Health from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
