Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Want to connect across generations? Join us:

Purpose Prize

Marc Freedman Portrait

The Latest from CoGenerate

Join the fight to save AmeriCorps

Join the fight to save AmeriCorps

AmeriCorps is in jeopardy.  Like so many other critical programs and services, AmeriCorps is at risk of being dismantled by DOGE, with programs shuttered and 85% of agency staff now on administrative leave.  As a result, nearly 40,000 communities across the nation may...

Can Intergenerational Connection Heal Us?

Can Intergenerational Connection Heal Us?

The problems of social isolation and loneliness have been well documented.  We know that too many Americans, particularly young adults and older ones, feel lonely too much of the time. We know how we got here – the decline in membership groups, civic and community...

*

Roger Bernier

National Immunization Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Purpose Prize Fellow 2006

Putting the public in public health

Roger Bernier, 61, an epidemiologist with the National Immunization Program, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), witnessed first hand the deep lack of trust between some citizens and government at a 2001 congressional hearing on vaccinations and the controversy surrounding vaccines and autism. A citizen’s comment–“Your CDC research is dead on arrival”–served as a wake up call to Bernier. He saw the need either to improve the CDC’s relationship with some segments of the public or face even greater erosion in people’s willingness to have their children vaccinated. Bernier’s solution was to attempt to build trust by bringing together citizens and government officials with diverse views to work jointly on developing and analyzing public health policy choices. In 2003 Bernier worked with the Keystone Center in Keystone Colorado to convene a diverse group of citizens and professionals to design a new public engagement model called the Vaccine Policy Analysis CollaborativE (VPACE). In 2005, a consortium of 14 separate organizations worked collaboratively to pilot test the VPACE model on a real-life issue. The pilot project succeeded in bringing the public’s viewpoint to the attention of federal officials in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as they created their pandemic influenza policy guidance in 2005.