Giving Compass' Take:

• 80,000 Hours interviews Dr. Tom Inglesby about the importance of funding research to safeguard the world against pandemics.

• Among the questions presented: What can you do to protect and support funding for the Global Health Security Agenda, among other initiatives dedicated to preventing catastrophe?

• Here's how debunking myths about the 1918 flu pandemic can help us in the future.

If your job is to prevent catastrophes, success is when nobody has to pay attention to you. But without regular disasters to remind authorities why they hired you in the first place, they can’t tell if you’re actually achieving anything. And when budgets come under pressure you may find that success condemns you to the chopping block.

Dr. Tom Inglesby, Director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, worries this may be about to happen to the scientists working on the "Global Health Security Agenda."

In 2014 Ebola showed the world why we have to detect and contain new diseases before they spread, and that when it comes to contagious diseases the nations of the world sink or swim together. Fifty countries decided to work together to make sure all their health systems were up to the challenge. Back then Congress provided 5 years’ funding to help some of the world’s poorest countries build the basic health security infrastructure necessary to control pathogens before they could reach the US.

But with Ebola fading from public memory and no recent tragedies to terrify us, Congress may not renew that funding and the project could fall apart.

But there are positive signs as well — the center Inglesby leads recently received a $16 million grant from the Open Philanthropy Project to further their work preventing global catastrophes. It also runs the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Fellowship to train the next generation of biosecurity experts for the US government. Inglesby regularly testifies to Congress on the threats we all face and how to address them

Read the full article about preventing global catastrophic risks by Robert Wiblin at 80000hours.org.