At the Skoll World Forum earlier in April, Task Force co-founder and former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Bill Foege and Dr. Larry Brilliant, Chairman of the Board of Ending Pandemics, debuted the trailer for a new documentary series on lessons learned from smallpox eradication.

The documentary series called Becoming Better Ancestors features Task Force experts and global health peers in a series that documents nine key lessons from the successful eradication of the first-ever human disease to be wiped from this planet, smallpox. On May 8, 1980, the World Health Organization announced the official eradication of smallpox which had plagued millions of lives for centuries. Foege, a leader of the eradication effort, has long emphasized the need to utilize successful strategies from the eradication effort for current global health challenges. 

“Becoming better ancestors may be the final act of love,” said Foege, and this series seeks to codify lessons learned so that we can contribute to that final act.

The documentary series is a part of a virtual learning series produced by the Center for Global Health Innovation to share information on how we can prepare for the global health threats of today and those in the future. The series features Task Force CEO Dr. Dave Ross; Dr. Carl Reddy, director of the Task Force’s TEPHINET program; Ms. Vivian Singletary, director of The Task Force’s Public Health Informatics Institute; and Dr. Angela Hilmers, former director of Science at TEPHINET. The episodes will be released at various changemaker events in 2022 and shared online at no charge. Watch the trailer.