Gaming Public Health Responses
Sat, Aug 22
|https://meet.google.com/bvw-pdio-sem
What happens when the crisis you planned and gamed for doesn’t unfold as expected? Join Dr. Ed McGrady to explore how wargaming can strengthen public health preparedness, from everyday emergencies to pandemics and man-made biological threats.
Time & Location
Aug 22, 2026, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM EDT
https://meet.google.com/bvw-pdio-sem
Guests
About the event
📅 Saturday, August 22, 2026
🕙 10:00–11:00 AM EDT | 7:00 AM PDT | 3:00 PM BST
📍 Online - https://meet.google.com/bvw-pdio-sem
We had plans for a pandemic. We had games for a pandemic. Then the pandemic arrived—and almost nothing went the way we played it.
But public health preparedness goes far beyond once-in-a-century crises. It can mean coordinating patient loads across hospitals, running a vaccine clinic, responding to an outbreak aboard a cruise ship, or preparing for accidental and deliberate biological threats.
In this WWN Talk, Dr. Ed McGrady will explore where gaming genuinely helps public health planning—and where it falls short. We’ll look at how games can support preparedness and decision-making across a range of public health emergencies, as well as what makes designing these games different from more traditional wargames.