On Topic: Navigating Crises with Raj Panjabi

Dr. Raj Panjabi will be at Alphabet City on Monday, October 19, for a conversation about how we handle crises. He's a physician and one of the world's leading experts in health care, public policy, and pandemics, and he's spent the last two decades studying epidemics and community health around the globe. He's currently on faculty at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

For a few years, Panjabi worked at the highest levels of the U.S. government. From 2021 to 2023, he served in the Biden-Harris Administration as White House Senior Director and Special Assistant to President Biden, the top pandemic and health official at the National Security Council. That means he spent a good chunk of the last few years in the White House Situation Room, managing the country's response to global health crises in real time.

The talk draws on that experience, but it doesn't stop at the White House. Panjabi pulls from his time in hospital emergency rooms and from the moments of violence and illness his own family has faced. It's part of City of Asylum's On Topic series, which looks at how people respond when crisis hits — whether that's a sudden illness, a global disruption, or a career upheaval. His book, Safer: A Playbook - Turning Fear into Action and Crisis into Community, distills those experiences into eight practical "plays" for protecting what matters most at home and at work.

Writer Katie Booth will moderate the conversation. It runs from 7 PM to 8 PM at Alphabet City, 40 W. North Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15212. Admission is free, with both in-person and livestream tickets available.