Impact

Ending Pandemics present books to Salzburg Global in memory of public health expert Melinda Moore

In January 2019, the staff at Salzburg Global Seminar and Ending Pandemics were sad to learn public health expert Melinda Moore passed away at her home at the age of 68.

Moore had bravely battled ovarian cancer since 2017 and had just recently attended a Salzburg Global and Ending Pandemics program in November 2018 titled, Finding Outbreaks Faster: How Do We Measure Progress?

Moore was a senior physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. During the program, Moore’s expertise proved invaluable. She and other participants helped create a set of eight outbreak milestones for use by both public health agencies and other interested organizations.

An obituary, published by the Washington Post, says, “During her extraordinary career in global health - 20 years at CDC, 5 at HHS, and 14 at RAND - she attained the rank of Captain in the USPHS, worked in over 45 countries, and touched countless lives. She will be remembered for her adventurous spirit, moral and intellectual leadership, and eternal optimism.” Staff at Salzburg Global and Ending Pandemics share these sentiments.

At Finding Outbreaks Faster: Metrics for One Health Surveillance, Ending Pandemics presented Salzburg Global a set of publications in Moore’s honor. These publications include Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen; The Great Influenza by John M. Barry; Microbial Threats to Health, edited by Mark S. Smolinski, Margaret A. Hamburg, and Joshua Lederberg; and Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston.

These publications will be kept in Schloss Leopoldskron’s Max Reinhardt Library. Staff at Salzburg Global are grateful for Ending Pandemic’s donation. These books are a wonderful way of honoring the memory of a fantastic and much-missed public health expert.

Melinda is survived by her husband, Andrico Nungovitch, and three children, Petro, Stefano, and Athina.

The Salzburg Global Seminar Program, Finding Outbreaks Faster: Metrics for One Health Surveillance, is part of the Finding Outbreaks Faster multi-year series. This series and program is held in partnership with Ending Pandemics.