Like the others that you've spoken with—frankly, like everybody—we've pivoted during the pandemic. What was fascinating about the science and research ecosytem was that COVID provided a very clear, shared sense of purpose. It didn't matter if you were, like Dr. Gerdts, working on actual vaccine development or if you were a social scientist who worked in communications and were suddenly interested in misinformation about COVID. It was really a rallying point for research across the spectrum to really come together and to self-organize, in a sense, around a lot of different initiatives.
What we did in genomics in terms of building a national surveillance system started out as a grassroots movement. There were labs across the country starting to do the work. We pulled that together into a national initiative, then that plugged into other things.
When it comes to what we've learned and what we can build on, that sense of mission is a real opportunity for us to move the needle in some of the areas where we've sometimes struggled. Things sometimes persisted in issues when it came to data sharing or other issues around health research across the country. We're confronting what we call wicked problems and things like climate change, for instance, or food security.
Hopefully we won't have quite the same urgency as we had with COVID, but providing some really clear signals from the federal level to say these are the sorts of things that we need to come together to really tackle....
I think providing strategic leadership is a big, important piece. Also, we saw an injection of funding that allowed the work to happen in the universities and in government research. You can't have one without the other. You need the fuel that drives the car; you need the foundation upon which you build.
Going forward, that sense of both purpose and mission built on a solid foundation will really position us well to confront the other challenges we face.