News from around Yale and the World

Speakers at IDWeek 2026 urged shifting global health partnerships from donor-recipient models to shared, locally led ownership as funding contracts.

Albert Icksang Ko, MD, the Raj and Indra Nooyi Professor of Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) as part of its 2026 class of 100 new members.

Albert Ko and Roy Herbst were among the 2026 inductees to the National Academy of Medicine.

The Department of Internal Medicine at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) honored former department chair Gary V. Désir, MD, with the inaugural Gary V. Désir Lecture on September 24, 2026, featuring physician-scientist Richard Kibbey, MD, PhD.

“What we do worry about the most is pneumonic plague,” says Richard Martinello, a professor of infectious disease and pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine. “People who are sick with pneumonia due to Y. pestis can produce droplets that contain the bacteria, and we know that they could be highly contagious and readily spread the Y. pestis to other people.”

In a fireside chat, Dr. John Nkengasong and YIGH's Dr. Ingrid Katz discuss health sovereignty, durable African-led health systems, and the roles of universities and the next generation of leaders.

Health scientists and clinical care providers have long recognized that health is shaped by far more than healthcare alone. Air and water pollution, transportation, housing, economic opportunity, and other environmental and social factors all influence health, yet efforts to address these issues often occur in isolation. Work led by Yale policy and health researchers, developed with significant contributions from Suzi Ruhl, JD, MPH, co-leader of the Yale Biological Embedding, Global Research & Intervention Network (BEGIN) at YIGH, has now helped shape Connecticut legislation that brings scientists, policymakers, and communities to the same table on these complex challenges.