Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer Shares Insight and Experience
By Madeline Kuney
On Tuesday, March 26, 2019, the "Conversations in Global Health" lecture series welcomed Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer (retired) as he reflected on his career and shared insight into the fields of global health and development. Apart from the experiential wisdom Ziemer has acquired from his time serving with the U.S. Navy, USAID and the President’s Malaria Initiative, he also shared with us his refreshingly human perspective—one that is genuinely concerned with and focused on the individuals and communities that are directly affected by health and humanitarian crises.
When asked about the recent testimony he provided at the Senate hearing on the United States’ response to the ongoing DRC Ebola virus outbreak and the impact of cultural understanding on humanitarian efforts, Ziemer emphasized the complexity of this situation. “We know how to deal with the virus,” he said, referring to U.S. disaster relief efforts. In contrast, with regard to managing cultural differences, building trust within the affected communities, and molding behavioral changes, he said, “no one’s cracked the code on that.” I found this statement to be very revealing of what Ziemer views as global health’s greatest challenges. In order to be effective, global health and development efforts must be equally concerned with the societal and political health of a region as they are with physical health of a region. A multifaceted approach that first addresses the deep-rooted, societal issues that hinder or prevent effective health intervention requires an expansive, multilateral approach that is built upon the cooperation of many organizations, but that is still structured with the community as the focal point in order to enact behavioral change from the bottom up. Such an approach is clearly very complicated and I understand why the U.S. has had trouble living up to this ideal in the past. However, I agree with Ziemer that this multifaceted and community-based approach is the direction that global health needs to move towards in the future in order to address the new and emerging threats that our world faces today.
Ziemer’s humble yet direct and no-nonsense approach to managing global health and development initiatives, referred to in both The Atlantic and New York Times articles we read in preparation for this discussion, serves both as evidence of his prior career in the military and as an explanation for the incredible success he has had in his various roles since then. From our conversation with Ziemer, I was reminded that technical expertise and education can only carry you so far—in order to grapple with extremely complex issues and make them more manageable, you must center your thinking on the individual people.
Madeline Kuney (C’20) is an undergraduate studying biology of global health. She is also the resource development and policy intern at the Sabin Vaccine Institute.
This blog was written by a student in Georgetown’s Conversations in Global Health course, which brings leaders in global health to Georgetown to discuss their careers and work.