Controlling borders during the COVID-19 pandemic

It is (or should be) uncontroversial that values and norms were central to decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, less attention was given to the values that underpin the collection and interpretation of data and evidence, and how that then shaped (or didn’t) the values that motivated global health and public health decision-making, as well as our evaluation of them. One of the most complex, vexing, and controversial set of decisions had to do with the policing and closing of international – and in Australia’s case, state-level – borders. Resolving the challenges associated with border controls during pandemics requires understanding the values – ethical, political, and epistemological – that drive the interconnected nature of these debates. In truth, these debates about values, evidence, and policy long predate the COVID-19 pandemic and they’ll persist after the current pandemic is over. Addressing pandemics and planning for future ones require a recognition that it is a quintessential wicked problem, one that highlights problems of coordination between a plethora of decision-makers and jurisdictions.

The Sydney Health Ethics Network, Sydney School of Public Health, and the Australian Global Health Alliance invite the Sydney University community, and the public health and global health communities in Australia, to delve deeper into these challenges with a keynote address by world-renowned global health governance expert Professor Kelley Lee from Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her address will be followed by commentaries from Associate Professors Meru Sheel and Claire Hooker, and a Q&A session.

Our keynote speaker:

Kelley Lee is Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Global Health Governance in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University. She is also the Scientific Co-Director of the new Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society (PIPPS). She was previously Professor of Global Health Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she co-directed the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Change and Health. Her research focuses on collective action to address transboundary health risks including major infectious disease outbreaks. She previously led the Global Tobacco Control Research Programme at LSHTM and SFU which secured and conducted extensive analyses of internal tobacco industry documents. She currently heads the Pandemics and Borders Project which analyses the use of travel measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. She continues to study the commercial determinants of health including serving on the Editorial Board of a forthcoming WHO Global Report. She is a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health, Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and Royal Society of Canada. She has published 15 books, 200+ papers and 60+ book chapters including the Oxford Handbook of Global Health Politics (edited with Colin McInnes and Jeremy Youde, 2020).