This year’s annual Joep Lange Chair & Fellow Symposium took place on October 28, 2021. You can find links to all the session recordings at the end of this article.

Despite being held online, the Joep Lange Chair and Fellow Symposium for the 2021 edition was a great success with over 350 registered participants from 40 different countries over the world. This year’s timely theme was “The Future of Vaccination.” Although not solely focused on COVID-19 vaccinations, speakers were excited to discuss what the pandemic has taught us about vaccine development, distribution, and access. The Joep Lange Chair & Fellows Symposium featured a diverse set of speakers including virologist Prof. Rogier Sanders, Prof. Anna Vassall, Dr. Ellen ‘t Hoen, and director of the Africa CDC Dr. John Nkengasong. Moderating this expert panel was Dr. Roel Coutinho who was a professor in Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases and the first director of the Center for Infectious Disease Control in the Netherlands.  

This year’s speakers had the opportunity to discuss their research on various topics surrounding vaccine development. Prof. Rogier Sander discussed the lessons learned in his many years of HIV vaccine research that led to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Prof. Sander specifically highlighted the importance of how the pandemic helped move RNA vaccines forward, which will eventually help the development of RNA vaccines in the future. Dr. Ellen ‘t Hoen spoke about the legislative gaps, barriers to access, and vaccine patents and manufacturing. She discussed how intellectual property should be better regulated for future pandemic treaties. Health Economist Prof. Anna Vassall spoke about how health services faced substantial financing and constraints early in the pandemic similar to the early stages of the HIV pandemic. The closing speaker, Dr. John Nkengasong discussed vaccine access and distribution in Africa. Most notably, Dr. Nkengasong emphasized the importance of rapid vaccination to ensure that humanity ends the pandemic quickly. Moderator Prof. Coutinho’s expertise in vaccination programs, public health, and epidemiology allowed for a guided discussion across the panelists. Prof. Coutinho addressed panelists individually but questions from the audience as well.  

The 2021 Joep Lange Chair & Fellow Symposium highlighted the importance of how skills and research among different global health fields can be implemented in real-time settings such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Prof. Vassall emphasized the similarity between Joep Lange’s early research of the HIV pandemic and its impact on current health research to the similar research surrounding COVID-19 and its potential future contributions. The symposium underlined once more the importance of looking at previous research regarding pandemics and how this is beneficial and will continue to prove beneficial for our future preparedness.