Welcome to the Harvard Center for International Development’s Beyond COVID podcast. This podcast is a series of conversations with CID faculty experts on various key dimensions of COVID response and recovery. Our goal with these conversations, and with CID’s Beyond COVID research initiative, is to make use of lessons learned and capitalize on emergent innovations sparked by the pandemic in order to address losses and reimagine global development in the post-COVID era.

On March 3, 2022, we were joined by Walter Willett, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. CID Student Ambassador Kerianne DiBattista sat down with Walter to discuss nutrition, climate change, and COVID-19.

Nutrition, Climate Change, and COVID-19

In this episode, we explore the dynamic relationship between education policy and human development in the Global South. Dr. Emiliana Vegas, a professor at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. She shares her wealth of experience and insights. From advocating for micro-inputs to promoting comprehensive support systems, Dr. Vegas offers valuable perspectives on the evolving landscape of education reform. Tune in as we delve into the crucial role of contextual understanding and collaboration with local leaders in designing effective, culturally relevant, and sustainable education policies. Hosted by Usama Mohammed, a student at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.

Navigating Education Policy and Human Development

HKS Professor Thomas Patterson, author of an ongoing series of reports out of the Shorenstein Center on the media's coverage of the 2016 election cycle, discusses what he sees as troubling consequences of how the press approaches reporting on the campaign.

How the Press Covers the Election | PolicyCast

Originally recorded on December 4, 2020.

Carolina Sanchez-Paramo, Global Director of Poverty & Equity Global Practice at the World Bank, continues her discussion after a virtual CID Speaker Series event on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic crisis on households, which are significant, pervasive, and worsening in some cases. The design and implementation of an effective policy response requires that decision makers have access to timely information about who is affected and how. With COVID-19 having brought traditional data collection efforts to a halt, last spring the World Bank launched an unprecedented data collection effort aimed at filling this critical information gap. As part of this effort, phone surveys are currently under implementation or preparation in over 100 countries to obtain real-time information on the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic on households and individuals. 

Carolina Sanchez is the Global Director of Poverty & Equity Global Practice at the World Bank. In her talk, she drew from from this data and other analysis to present the latest evidence on the poverty and distributional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic crisis.

Emerging Evidence On The Socio-Economic Impacts Of COVID-19 On Households

Incredible progress has been made throughout the world in recent years. However, globalization has failed to deliver on its promises. As problems like unequal access to education and healthcare, environmental degradation, and stretched finances persist, we must continue building on decades of transformative development work.

The Center for International Development (CID) is a university-wide center based at the Harvard Kennedy School that seeks to solve these pressing development problems—and many more.

At CID, we believe leveraging global talent is the key to enabling development for all. We teach to build capacity, conduct research that guides development policy, and convene talent to advance ideas for a thriving world. Addressing today’s challenges to international development also requires bridging academic expertise with practitioner experience. Through collaborative, in-country partnerships, CID’s research programs, faculty, and students deploy an analytical framework and context-dependent approaches to tackle development problems from all angles, in every region of the globe.

Navigating Education Policy and Human Development

Harvard Center for International Development

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