CCST Hosts Resilience Workshop Exploring California’s COVID-19 Policy Challenges

On February 18th, as part of CCST’s disaster resilience initiative, “Toward a Resilient California,” CCST brought together a group of experts and thought leaders from government, academia, and healthcare for a panel discussion and facilitated workshop about pandemic-related challenges the State is facing, “Exploring California’s COVID-19 Policy Challenges.”

The event opened with a panel discussion moderated by CCST Executive Director Amber Mace and featured Assemblymember Bill Quirk, Chair of the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety & Toxic Materials; Julianne McCall, PhD, Co-Director of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine at the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research; and Marko Mijic, Deputy Secretary of Program and Fiscal Affairs at the California Health and Human Services Agency. The panelists discussed the range of pandemic-related challenges they are facing and the opportunities for experts to engage.

Following the panel discussion, the attending group of experts took part in breakout discussions to dive deep into different pandemic related challenges. These discussions were facilitated by Sacramento State University’s Carlsen Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship with facilitators Jessie Becker Alexander, Brian Gladden, and Boniface Michael, and The Lean Innovator founder Dan Casas-Murray.

The experts invited represented a broad range of academic and governmental institutions: Caltech, UC San Diego and UC San Diego Health, UC Riverside, California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, UCLA, Stanford University and the Stanford University School of Medicine, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UC Berkeley, the National Academy of Engineering, and UC Irvine.

The workshop is the first in a series to bring together key stakeholders toward assisting California’s long-term pandemic and disaster response.

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About the California Council on Science and Technology
The California Council on Science and Technology is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization established via the California State Legislature — making California’s policies stronger with science since 1988. We engage leading experts in science and technology to advise State decision makers — ensuring that California policy is strengthened and informed by scientific knowledge, research, and innovation.