Luciana Borio

Luciana Borio
Born	Brazil
Nationality	Brazilian, US
Alma mater	George Washington University
Member of	Council on Foreign Relations/Members, In-Q-Tel, Independent Task Force on Improving Pandemic Preparedness, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security/Working Group on Readying Populations for COVID-19 Vaccines
CFR, Biodefense expert, named to Biden's Covid Task force  FDA/Assistant Commissioner for Counterterrorism Policy In office 2010 - 2017  FDA/Acting Chief Scientist Dates unknown  National Security Council/Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness In office 2017 - 2019

Luciana Borio is a Brazilian-American infectious disease physician and medical/public health administrator. A member of the National Security Council and vice president at the CIA-connected In-Q-Tel, on November 9, 2020, U.S. presumed president-elect Joe Biden named Borio to be one of the 13 members of his COVID-19 Advisory Board.

She was a proponent of drastic lockdown measures, with the stated purpose to combat the spread of COVID-19, as early as January 2020.

Through her career, she has pushed for faster approval of Big Pharma solutions, and was part of a Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security working group recommending "Bundling services (eg, food security, rent assistance, free clinic services) that are already being provided to particularly vulnerable populations in the context of COVID (eg, older adults, low-income adults, Black and minority communities) could be a way to build trust and streamline vaccine provision".

In 2020, Borio was appointed by the Council on Foreign Relations to serve on its Independent Task Force on Improving Pandemic Preparedness, co-chaired by Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Frances Fragos Townsend.

Background

Borio obtained her MD in 1996 from George Washington University. She completed residency in 1999 in internal medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical Center and subsequently completed a combined fellowship in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University and critical care medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

Career

She previously worked as Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council, Acting Chief Scientist of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Assistant Commissioner for Counterterrorism Policy of the FDA, and Director of FDA's Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats. She is known for her work to quickly approve medical countermeasures for health emergencies, and the public health responses to the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, 2014-16 Ebola and 2015-16 Zika outbreaks.

Under Borio's leadership, the US Food and Drug Administration established the Medical Countermeasure Initiative(MCMi), which is an effort to hasten the development of these products, and to improve their odds of achieving FDA approval.

From 2017 to 2019, Borio was the director for medical and biodefense preparedness policy at the National Security Council (NSC), and served as a member of the NSC’s pandemic response team until 2018. That same year, Borio warned that influenza “represents both a health security and a national security threat” for which the United States was unprepared to “respond with the speed that we need to.” Borio helped initiate the U.S. government’s National Influenza Vaccine Modernization Strategy 2020–2030, published in 2020.

She is an advisor for Goldman-Sachs.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Atlantic Storm	14 January 2005	14 January 2005	New York US	A scenario designed to mimic a summit of transatlantic leaders forced to respond to a bioterrorist attack. Recommended militarization, vaccination and stockpiling drugs. Held January 2005.

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