Vanessa Kerry’s WHO health resilience envoy role puts a new system-building list in focus

Preparedness at the center

Kerry describes health resilience as readiness built through strong systems, primary care and response capacity. Those priorities will shape her work as the WHO’s special envoy for health resilience.

She argues that preparing for emergencies requires infrastructure already in place, not simply a response after an outbreak begins. She also says countries’ own voices should be heard.

Experience shaped by Rwanda

Kerry’s work in global health was influenced by experiences in her youth, including a trip to Vietnam at age 14 with her father, John Kerry, and later time in a Rwandan hospital during medical school. There, she and a nurse helped deliver a baby whose shoulder was stuck. Kerry recalled they lacked specific training and imaging, but the mother and child survived. She later described the episode as distressing and terrifying.

Building local health capacity

Kerry founded Seed Global Health, which trains local health workers and supports health systems in lower-resource countries. In Uganda, she says, the organization partnered with the Ministry of Health to train 30 emergency medicine physicians.