The architecture of the past six decades of global aid and health security has been dismantled in a remarkably short span of time. USAID, for many years the primary vehicle for American development and humanitarian assistance, was dissolved in 2025. In January 2026, the United States formally completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization. Other donor governments have made cuts of their own, and the institutions that monitor outbreaks, move food and medicine, and coordinate emergency response are operating with far less money and far fewer people than they had two years ago. The consequences are already being tested in real time, from the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo to displacement crises in Sudan, Gaza, and beyond.

CCWA is glad to be joined by Jeremy Konydyk, President of Refugees International, who has led American disaster and pandemic response efforts under two administrations, to assess what has changed and what comes next. Who fills the aid gaps left by American withdrawal? What does health security look like when surveillance and response capacity have thinned? And what obligations, if any, does the United States retain in a system that it largely built?

Jeremy Konyndyk is President of Refugees International, an independent advocacy organization for displaced people that accepts no government or United Nations funding. He served in the Biden administration as USAID’s lead official for COVID-19, overseeing the agency’s multibillion-dollar pandemic assistance portfolio and the U.S. donation of hundreds of millions of vaccine doses, and later as the administration’s lead official on the global mpox response. From 2013 to 2017, he directed USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, where he led the American response to international disasters. Between his government appointments he was a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, focusing on humanitarian reform and pandemic preparedness.

Please note that this event will be held at the Union Club of Cleveland. All are welcome!