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The Road to a Vaccine: Why is COVID-19 hitting minority communities so hard?

Season 1 of The Road to a Vaccine is an eight-episode educational video series that examines the latest efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and breaks down the complex process of developing a coronavirus vaccine.

Host Lisa Ling talks to leading scientists and researchers, healthcare workers on the front lines and public health experts around the world who are working collaboratively to bring an end to the deadly pandemic

In Episode 3, Ling interviews National Academies member and University Professor of the University of Connecticut, Cato Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D., to learn what his new coronavirus study reveals. Plus, what’s needed to mass-produce a vaccine and what we’ve learned from other outbreaks.

Note: This program originally aired on Apr. 28, 2020.
RTAV: Season 1, Episode 3
Graphic depicting the COVID-19 disparities amongst African American, Hispanic, and Non-Hispanic communities.

Lisa Ling

Ling is the Executive Producer and host of This Is Life on CNN. She has also been a field correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show and a contributor to ABC News’ Nightline.
Margaret A. Hamburg

Margaret Hamburg, M.D.

Dr. Hamburg is an internationally recognized leader in public health and medicine. As Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Hamburg serves as a senior advisor on international matters and liaison with other Academies of Medicine around the world. She is a former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, where she was known for advancing regulatory science, modernizing regulatory pathways and the globalization of the agency.

Cato T. Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Laurencin is University Professor at the University of Connecticut and Chief Executive Officer of the Connecticut Convergence Institute at the University of Connecticut. He is an expert in health disparities and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, as well as a Core Faculty Member of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut.

Paul Stoffels, M.D.

Dr. Stoffels is the Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer at Johnson & Johnson. He spearheads the research and product pipeline by leading teams across all of the company’s sectors to set the company-wide innovation agenda, discovering and developing transformational healthcare solutions.

“I’m a scientist working on a potential COVID-19 Vaccine”: Meet a researcher who’s studying a promising candidate

Roland Zahn, Ph.D., a Janssen scientist and expert in viral vaccines, was at the front lines of research during the Ebola outbreak. Today he and his team are working at record speed to help deliver a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus.