Dr. Kelley Lee: The World Health Organization and COVID-19 — Below the Radar Conversations

Welcome to the first episode of our Below the Radar conversations series. Our first guest speaker is Dr. Kelley Lee, Canada Research Chair in Global Health Governance at Simon Fraser University. In this video, she chats with Am Johal about The World Health Organization and COVID-19. Note: This interview was recorded prior to the United States cutting funding to the WHO.Am Johal is the Director of SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, and the Co-Director of SFU’s Community-Engaged Research initiative. Dr. Lee is trained in International Relations and Public Administration with a focus on international political economy. She spent over twenty years at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, initially analyzing the role of the UN in health. She was a core member of two major donor-led studies on WHO reform during the 1990s. She co-established the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Change and Health, and chaired the WHO Resource Group on Globalization, Trade and Health. Dr Lee also co-led a major international initiative to secure public access to tobacco industry documents, and analyze their contents in relation to the globalization of the tobacco industry. She has authored over 100 peer reviewed papers, 50 book chapters and 13 books including Globalization and Health, An introduction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), The World Health Organization (Routledge, 2008), Global Health and International Relations (Polity Press with Colin McInnes, 2012), and Case Studies on Corporations and Global Health Governance (Rowman and Littlefield International with Nora Kenworthy and Ross MacKenzie, 2016). She joined the SFU Faculty of Health Sciences in 2011 as Associate Dean, Research and Director of Global Health. She is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, Royal College of Physicians and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.