January 27, 2005
Global health conference on campus next month
Dr. Mirta Roses Periago, director of the Pan American Health Organization, will be on campus in mid-February to give the keynote address for the third Western Regional International Health Conference, organized by Puget Sound Partners for Global Health, UW health sciences students from all of the six schools, and the Global Health Resource Center. The conference theme is “Politics, Social Justice and Global Health.”
The interdisciplinary event will feature lectures, panel discussions, and screening of an award-winning documentary on AIDS, “A Closer Walk.” Events will be held from Friday evening, Feb. 18, through Sunday afternoon, Feb. 20, at several campus locations, including the Health Sciences Lobby, Hogness Auditorium, the HUB Ballroom, South Campus Center and Kane Hall.
Periago will speak on Friday evening at 7 p.m. in the HUB Ballroom. Her topic is “From Health for All to the Millennium Development Goals: The Crucial Role of Health Systems for Equity and Social Justice.”
Featured programs on Saturday and Sunday will include discussions of the complex humanitarian emergency response to the recent earthquakes and tsunamis in South Asia, war and ethnic conflict, indigenous people’s health and the status of women’s health around the globe.
On Saturday evening, a panel in Hogness Auditorium at the Health Sciences Center will feature Iraqi health-care professionals talking about the health of Iraq’s people. The topic is “From Basrah to Seattle: Bringing Home the Iraqi War and Occupation.” This session begins at 7 p.m. and is open to the community.
U.S. Congressman Jim McDermott, who represents Washington state’s seventh district, will give the closing address on Sunday afternoon. That session will begin at 1:30 p.m. in Kane Hall with comments from Dr. Paul Ramsey, vice president for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, and Dr. Pat Wahl, dean of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, on plans for the new UW Department of Global Health, to be governed jointly by the two schools.
In addition to the UW schools of medicine and public health, other members of Puget Sound Partners for Global Health are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Institute for Systems Biology, PATH, and the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute.
Registration for the whole conference is $25 for students and $50 for all others. For more information and to register, call 206-616-1159 or see the Web site at http://www.pspgh.org
