Snuffing the next epidemic: Carnegie grant to fund Emory research

Polly J. Price, professor of law and professor of global health at Emory University, has been named one of 35 recipients of the 2017 Andrew Carnegie fellowship. She plans to use up to $200,000 from the grant to write a book about responding to serious disease threats, such as Ebola.

Credit: Christopher Quinn

Credit: Christopher Quinn

Polly J. Price, professor of law and professor of global health at Emory University, has been named one of 35 recipients of the 2017 Andrew Carnegie fellowship. She plans to use up to $200,000 from the grant to write a book about responding to serious disease threats, such as Ebola.

Emory University law and global health professor Polly J. Price, may have a hand in stopping future outbreaks of deadly plagues such as Ebola.

Price is one of 35 recipients of a 2017 Andrew Carnegie fellowship and will receive up to $200,000 toward researching and writing a book about how governments confront the challenge of contagious diseases.

An outbreak of Ebola in Africa in 2014 put a scare into the world, and Emory became the first medical facility in the U.S. to treat as case as infected medical missionary Kent Brawley was flown to Georgia. The outbreak caused wide discussion about how to deal with such events.

“The goal is to help initiate, encourage and frame the terms of public debate on how government may best respond to health threats in the future,” Price says.

It will take into account complex regulatory demands, multiple levels of government, best allocation of medical resources, ineffective prevention measures and the need for trustworthy information.