The 28^th Annual Norris and Margery Bendetson Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) International Symposium, organized by the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL), Tufts University, Boston officially commenced with a workshop led by experts in global health and security on  21 st February 2012. EPIIC is a year long, interdisciplinary colloquium designed to prepare students for active engagement with their world through the rigorous study of critical global issues. Each year EPIIC culminates in an international symposium that brings together a vast range of practitioners, academics and journalists from around the world engaged in today’s most urgent issues. Leading global health practitioners and experts arrived from around the world to discuss issues such as food insecurity, sexual violence, mental health, bio-terrorism and more. The Symposium from 21^st to 24^th February 2013 took an intensive and multidisciplinary look at Global Health and Security in today’s world. The four day event was made up of a series of student moderated panels that focused on this year’s theme,”Global Health and Security” The symposium featured dozens of prominent panel speakers including Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, coordinator for Threat Reduction programs for the US Department of State as well as Surgeon general of Israel Yitshak Kreiss and Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist; Author, The Coming Plague. A number of Tufts faculty members from various graduate programmes and Tufts students who partook  in the EPIIC programme this year also spoke

IGL Director Sherman Teichman, who founded the EPIIC programme at Tufts said that he chose this year’s theme not only because it is a crucial issue but also because it resonated with the expertise of other departments and schools of the university. This year’s conference covers a variety of issues ranging from global health and security to women’s issue. Tufts has a huge number of    students interested in community and global health, development, international collaboration and security all directly relevant to the symposium. Some of the panels include “A state of well-being-Metal health and security”, “Food Insecurity: Hunger, the Environment and Conflict” and “Bystanders, Perpetrators and Survivors: A global Health perspective on Sexual Violence”. IGL Associate Director Heather Barry explained that this year’s theme was relevant in the light of the changes around the world. “If you take a look at climate change and look at populations and everything that’s happening, the interconnectedness, you realize that how health is provided for globally becomes really important”.

C-NES’ Communications Officer Bhaswati Goswami, represented the organization at the symposium and took part on the panel on 24 th February at the session: “Bringing care where it’s needed most: health care delivery system” to discuss the possibility of sustainable health care systems in developing countries. She presented the organizations unique Boat Clinic health outreach initiative on the remote Brahmaputra River islands to a packed Sunday afternoon crowd at the Cabot Intercultural Centre, Fletcher School at Tufts Medford Campus. The presentation was widely appreciated as was C-NES’ work in the other areas for the overall development of the Brahmaputra river island communities in Assam. The panel had expert panelists from across the globe: Zheng Xie,Lecturer,Department of Public Health, Peking University, Jean Kagubare, Principal Technical Advisor, Rwanda, David Chiriboga, former Minister of Health, Ecuador and Anne Goldfield, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. The panel was moderated by EPIIC Colloquium member JessicaMuganza, a freshman.

The Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award was presented to Anne Goldfeld, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of the Cambodian and Global Health Committees, to begin the event. Goldfield discussed her work on expanding access to HIV and tuberculosis care in Cambodia. “We began the work with the philosophy that everybody wants to be well, no matter what their economic level, and that with access to medicines and the proper support, you can complete a difficult therapy,” she said. Former Minister of Health in Ecuador David Chiriboga presented on  the topic of Western health care for the indigenous people of a town in Ecuador called Zumbahua. “The most important aspect of our work there was the respect for the people,” he said. “It was because of the trust that we built between each other that western medicine was able to work there.” Lecturer at Peking University,   Zheng Xie emphasized that people should re-evaluate the relationship between development and health. “In developing countries, we had emphasized for a long time that health contributed to development, but recently we have thought that health should benefit from development,” Xie said. Jean Kagubare, principal technical advisor of management sciences for health and former director of the Health Planning Institute in Rwanda, insisted on the importance of non-governmental organization (NGO) goals for successful global health projects.

Bhaswati Goswami, discussed how the success of the boat clinic which services the northeastern state of Assam in India, relies on common goals and a relationship with the government, the success of the initiative as well as the challenges before the health teams. The previous day, on  23^rd  February she conducted a break out session with a group of students from Tufts  on the Boat Clinics and other C-NES activities which found good response from the group who were keen on coming to intern with the organization. There was active interaction with the students who wanted to know various aspects of the health outreach programme, about the beneficiaries and also about North east India.

 

Communications Officer, C-NES Bhaswati K Goswami who recently attended the International Symposium on Global Health and Security at Tufts University, Boston is quoted by Tufts Daily .

 

The Agenda

GLOBAL HEALTH and SECURITY

The Norris and Margery Bendetson 28^th EPIIC International Symposium

February 21-24, 2013

Thursday, February 21

• Workshop Report: A Response to the Report on Privacy and Progress in Whole Genome Sequencing from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, 7:00pm

• Food Insecurity: Hunger, the Environment, and Conflict, 7:30pm

Jason Clay, Senior Vice President, Market Transformation, World Wildlife Fund

Ron Haviv, Photojournalist; Founding Photographer, VII, worked on Starved for Neglect series with MSF

Noel W Solomns, Program Director for Central America, Nevin Scrimshaw International Nutrition Foundation

Irwin Rosenberg, Jean Mayer University Professor and Senior Scientist and Interim Director, Neuroscience and Aging Laboratory, Friedman School of Nutrition, Tufts University

 

Peter Walker, Rosenberg Professor of Nutrition and Human Security and Director of the Feinstein International Center, Friedman School of Nutrition, Tufts University; former Director of Disaster Policy, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

 

Friday, February 22

• Bystanders, Perpetrators and Survivors: A Global Health Perspective on Sexual Violence, 9:30am

Hassa Blake, Co-Founder, Focal Point Global

Dimitrios Bouras, Photojournalist, Greece, currently working on HIV/AIDS

Jennifer F. Klot, Senior Advisor, Social Science Research Council, and directs initiatives on Gender, Security and HIV/AIDS

Nawal Nour, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; MacArthur Genius Fellow, 2003; Primary Author, Female Genital Cutting, Clinical Management of Circumcised Women**

Susannah Sirkin, Deputy Director, Physicians for Human Rights

• Lunch Break, 11:30am

• The Nexus of Water and Disease, 12:30pm

Junaid Ahmad, Director of Sustainable Development, Middle East and North Africa, World Bank

Jeffrey Griffiths, Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts School of Medicine; Chair, Drinking Water Panel, Environmental Protection Agency

David M. Gute, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tufts; former Assistant Commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Public Health

Daniele Lantagne, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tufts University; former Public Health Engineer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Janine M. H. Selendy, Founder, Chairman, President and Publisher, Horizon International, Yale University; Editor, Water and Sanitation Related Diseases and the Environment: Challenges, Interventions and Preventive Measures

Student Presentation

Village Zero Project: Maia Majumder, David Meyers, Tara Kola

• Drugs for Survival: The Pharmaceutical Industry, 2:30pm

Victoria Hale, Founder & Chair Emeritus of One World Health; Founder, Medicines360**

Jerome Kassirer, former Editor, New England Journal of Medicine; Professor of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine

Eric Liebler, Vice President for Scientific, Medical and Governmental Affairs, ElectroCore Medical; Cofounder, Nautilus Neurosciences*

Karin Mack, Team Lead, Unintentional Drug Deaths, National Center for Injury Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Suerie Moon, Research Director and Co-Chair, Forum on Global Governance for Health, Harvard Global Health Institute and Harvard School of Public Health; Member, Board of Directors of MSF-USA and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative-North America**

• Dinner Break, 4:45pm

• Symposium Introductions and Keynotes, 6:30pm

Gwythian Prins, Director, Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events and Research Professor, London School of Economics

 

 

• Zoonoses and Pandemics: The Next Big One, 8:00pm

Scott F. Dowell, Director, Division of Global Disease Detection & Emergency Response, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist; Author, The Coming Plague

Christos Lynteris, Andrew Mellon & Isaac Newton Interdisciplinary Research Fellow, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge

Kristine Smith, Associate Director of Health and Policy, EcoHealth Alliance

Saul Tzipori, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases and Agnes Varis University Chair in Science and Society, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Tufts University*

 

Saturday, February 23

• A State of Well-Being: Mental Health and Security, 9:00am

Barbara Lopes Cardozo, Founding Member, Doctors Without Borders – Holland; Psychiatric Epidemiologist, International Emergency and Refugee Health Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Justine Hardy, Founder, Healing Kashmir

Giuseppe Raviola, Director, Program in Global Mental Health and Social Change, Harvard Medical School; Director of Mental Health, Partners In Health

Terri Tanielian, Senior Social Research Analyst, RAND, where she co-directed Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery**

• Violence: A Global Public Health Challenge, 8:00pm

Kassam Dawood, former National Security Adviser, Iraq

Richard Horton, Editor, The Lancet**

Bernard Lown, IPPNW*

Gregg Nakano, former Development Outreach Coordinator, Center for Disaster and Humanitarian Assistance Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences; former Military Liaison Officer, Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, USAID

Merrill Singer, Professor of Anthropology and Public Health, University of Connecticut

Gary Slutkin, Professor, Epidemiology and International Health, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health; Founder and Executive Director, Cure Violence**

Richard Sollom, Deputy Director at Physicians for Human Rights

• Lunch Break, 1:00pm

• Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: How Significant a Threat?, 2:30pm

Hillel W Cohen, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology & Population Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University

Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist; Author, The Coming Plague

Amb. Bonnie Jenkins, Coordinator for Threat Reduction Program, US Department of State

Ali Khan, Director of Public Health Preparedness and Response, Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention

Sam R. Telford III, Professor of Infectious Disease and Global Health, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Tufts University

• Breakout Sessions, 4:30pm (still tbd)

• Dinner Break, 6:30pm

• Health and Human Rights in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies, 8:00pm

Ezra Barzilay, Lead Epidemiologist, Health Systems Reconstruction Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Commander, U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps

Marine Buissonnière, Director, Open Society Public Health Program; former Secretary-General, Médecins Sans Frontières International (MSF)*

Daniel Holmberg, Senior Humanitarian Adviser, Sudan, USAID

Brigadier General Yitshak Kreiss, Surgeon General, Israel

Jennifer Leaning, Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health

Richard Sollom, Deputy Director at Physicians for Human Rights

 

Sunday, February 24

• Health Care Delivery Systems: Bringing Care where it’s Needed Most, 1:00pm

David Chiriboga, former Minister of Health, Ecuador; former President, Health Council of the Union of South American Nations.

Lachlan Forrow, Director of Ethics Programs and Director of Palliative Care Programs, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston

Anne Goldfeld, Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Disease, Harvard School of Public Health; Cofounder, Cambodian Health Committee

Bhaswati Goswami, Communications Officer and Program Management Unit for boat clinics, Centre for North East Studies

Jean Kagubare, Principal Technical Advisor, Management Sciences for Health; former Director, Health Planning Department, Rwanda

Mona Mowafi, Epidemiologist; Research Fellow, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health; Cofounder and President, Egypt Negma**

Ali Sindi, Minister for Planning, Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq; former Deputy Minister of Health and Social Affairs; former Head, Health Sector Committee, UN Oil for Food Program

 

Student presentations

• Kosovo
• Kerala
• Cambodia
• Rwanda
• Colombia

• New Technologies at the Juncture of Health and Security, 3:30pm

Ira M. Herman, Professor and Director, Tufts Center for Innovations in Wound Healing

Hugh Herr, Associate Professor, MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology and Director of the Biomechatronics Group, MIT**

Daphne Moffett, Deputy Director, Health Systems Reconstruction Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

David Walt, Robinson Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Walt Lab, Tufts University

Someone from Johns Hopkins mHealth – waiting for recommendation from the head of it

 

Professional Workshop

A Response to the Report on

Privacy and Progress in Whole Genome Sequencing

from the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues

 

Thursday, February 21, 9am-4pm

Conveners

Juan Enriquez, Founding Director, Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project; Board Member, Excel Venture Capital

Jonathan Moreno, Professor of Medical Ethics and the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania; former President, American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities

Participants

George Annas, Professor of Medicine and Law, Boston University

Jason Bobe, Executive Director of PersonalGenomes.org; Director of Community, Personal Genome Project

Robert Green, Founder, Genomes 2 People (G2P); Faculty, Research Institute Division of Genetics, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Christian Macedonia, Program Manager, Defense Sciences Office, DARPA; former Chief of the Medical Staff, 115th Combat Support Hospital, Iraq

Debra Matthews, Bioethicist; Assistant Director for Science Programs, Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University

Mike Rugnetta, Writer, Science Progress

Kayte Spector-Bagdady, Associate Director, Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues; Lead Staffer, Privacy and Progress Report

Nancy Wexler, Geneticist; Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology, Columbia University School of Medicine

 

Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award Lecture

New Global Health Challenges

Peter Piot

 

Tuesday, February 26, 8:00pm, Cabot Auditorium

Peter Piot MD, PhD is the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Professor of Global Health. He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1995 until 2008.  Professor Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, and led research on AIDS, women’s health, and public health in Africa. He was a Scholar in Residence at the Ford Foundation and a Senior Fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He held the 2009 chair “Knowledge against poverty” at the College de France in Paris.