Frontline Dispatch Series

Previous Events

Author Talk with Charlotte Blease

Speaker: Charlotte Blease, PhD, Health Informaticist and Associate Professor at Uppsala University

Date: July 1, 2026 at 3:00PM - 4:00PM

Join Dr. Ken Mandl, Director of the Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP) at Boston Children’s Hospital, for a conversation with Dr. Charlotte Blease — philosopher, Associate Professor at Uppsala University, and former Harvard Medical School researcher — on her acclaimed book Dr. Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us—and How AI Could Save Lives.

Jeremy Walsh

Speaker: Jeremy Walsh, Chief AI Officer at U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Date: December 3, 2025 at 1:00PM - 2:00PM

Talk Title: Transforming the FDA into a Real Time Regulatory Environment

Dr. Wanda Barfield

Speaker: Wanda Barfield, MD, MPH, FAAP, RADM USPHS, Director, Division of Reproductive Health at Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

Date: November 10, 2022 at 4:00PM - 5:00PM

Talk Title: Maternal and Infant Health Data Equity and Modernization: Are We There Yet?

Dr. Christopher Longhurst

Speaker: Christopher Longhurst, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Digital Officer at UC San Diego Health

Date: April 4, 2022 at 4:00PM - 5:00PM

Talk Topic: Interoperable Pandemic IT Innovations in California at Population Scale.

Accelerated Drug Approval and Aducanumab - Aaron Kesselheim

Speaker: Aaron Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School

Date: September 23, 2021 at 4:00PM - 5:30PM

Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, former member of the FDA’s Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee who resigned over the agency’s approval of Aducanumab, will speak about the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway, how it is implemented, and how it was applied in the controversial Aducanumab case – which he dubbed the “worst drug approval decision in recent U.S. history.” Dr. Kesselheim will also give suggestions for the future. This should be a fascinating talk with wide implications for all future accelerated drug approval pathways.

Dispatch from Israel: COVID-19 Vaccines and the Delta Variant: What we know so far

Speaker: Ben Reis, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Computational Health Informatics Program at Boston Children's Hospital

Date: July 22, 2021 at 3:00PM - 4:00PM

The Delta (B.1.617.2) variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has rapidly emerged as the dominant strain spreading in many countries worldwide. Dr. Ben Reis led a discussion reviewing the latest findings on the Delta variant, with a focus on the effectiveness of approved COVID-19 vaccines against this emerging viral strain. Dr. Reis reviewed the evidence available from scientific publications, preliminary studies and public health reports, in the context of the inherent challenges involved in real-world vaccination effectiveness studies.

Previous Events

Gallery