The coronavirus pandemic has posed major challenges to population health and well-being, disrupting progress made in recent decades and exposing risks from underlying ill-health.  The pandemic has also given the global community its biggest learning – that population health and economy are inseparable and the world is at great risk without a robust public health system.

Delivering the Fourth Distinguished Yusuf Hamied Lecture online, Dr. Linda Fried, Dean of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and Director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, underscored the need for investing in public health for our now longer lives and reframing public health as a vital public good in an increasingly globalized world.  This lecture was organized by the Columbia Global Centers | Mumbai and Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health on April 28, 2022, and attended by a sizable international audience of academics and practitioners.