Katherine E. Bliss is a senior fellow and Director, Immunizations and Health Systems Resilience, with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, where she draws on her background in the social sciences and foreign policy in leading research focused on global support for health programs in low- and middle-income countries. She is particularly interested in how political and cultural perspectives on gender, equity, and innovation shape approaches to such health challenges as HIV/AIDS; vaccine-preventable diseases; and access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Trained as a historian, Katherine spent the early part of her career teaching at the university level and publishing books and articles on public health and gender relations in twentieth-century Mexico. A Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship enabled her to shift her focus to global health policy, placing her at the U.S. Department of State, where she worked on environmental health issues and the development of foreign policy approaches to pandemic preparedness.
At CSIS, Katherine has previously served as deputy director and senior fellow within both the Americas Program and Global Health Policy Center, where she oversaw a multi-program project on the influence of the BRICS countries on the global health agenda and directed the Project on Global Water Policy. Her recent work has examined the impacts of the pandemic on maternal and child health services, as well as the challenges facing immunization programs within fragile or conflict-affected settings. Katherine received her A.B. in history and literature, magna cum laude, from Harvard College and her Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. She completed a David E. Bell Fellowship at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies