PERSPECTIVES: LUNCH WITH THE LANCET with Bill Roedy
If global health had rock legends, Bill Roedy would be in its hall of fame. The former MTV boss, who ensured that the music channel network went global, joined forces long ago with the UN to invent innovative ways of raising HIV awareness among young people. Now, he has taken on the challenge of raising the profile of vaccines, by becoming the GAVI Alliance's first global Envoy.
When we meet in London, a minute away from MTV Europe's headquarters, Roedy is in the midst of a media whirlwind to talk about What Makes Business Rock, his part-memoir, part-business bible. The book is likely to interest even someone who has zero interest in building a multi-billion dollar business empire, because much of Roedy's advice is not just about how to work but also about how to live: “be slow to take credit, quick to take blame”, he says.
In person, Roedy isn't quite as I'd predicted. He's as charming and engaging as you'd expect from a man who often has to calm down irate megastars, but is also extremely polite and respectful. But then there's nothing predictable about a man who has lived as many lifetimes as Roedy has. He was once a Vietnam platoon leader, later in charge of US nuclear missile bases in Italy, before graduating with an MBA from Harvard and joining the world of television. For Roedy, raised by a single mother in Miami who struggled to make ends meet, TV was an “escape capsule”.
Roedy was head of MTV Europe when, with MTV colleague Georgia Arnold, he created the Staying Alive campaign in 1998 to teach young people about how to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS. The popular soap operas that Staying Alive makes drive home key messages about safe sex and dealing with the stigma of HIV. Being entertaining is one thing, but an independent evaluation by Family Health International shows that the programmes are educational too.
Now, Roedy wants to use the lessons he's learned about HIV awareness to promote vaccines. “We need to turn up the volume on the message. This is a compelling story, because you give a vaccination, you save a life. 5 million lives have been saved in 10 years. That's extraordinary.” Nevertheless, anti-vaccination critics have been increasingly vocal, especially in the USA. Does Roedy ever worry about that? “You can never ignore it, you can't get complacent.”
“Think global, act local” is a phrase that has enormous resonance with the way vaccination needs to be rolled out. But at MTV, Roedy says, “we went local before local was cool”. Rather than shove western music wholesale into countries like India and China, they tweaked each local channel so that it would “respect and reflect local culture”. That sounds like a fine approach to global health too.
