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Harvard professor addresses global health

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by Carl Jaeger

Thursday, February 8, 2007

An assistant professor of medicine from Harvard Medical School spoke Wednesday evening on current economic and political issues of global health for University of Wisconsin medical students.

Dr. Joia Mukherjee addressed the large mix of students and professionals at the UW Health Sciences Learning Center with her lecture, "New Paradigms in Public Health and Human Rights."

"Health has always been global," Mukherjee said. "There have always been global aspects of health, yet as a field, it has just started."

Mukherjee addressed issues, diseases and epidemics in third-world countries and said most of public health is decided based on cost effectiveness.

But teaching citizens in third-world countries about how to feed themselves and their children, Mukherjee said, is not enough.

"You can teach them all you want about feeding their kids," Mukherjee said. "But they don't have the means to feed them."

Mukherjee said that students in non-medical professions are also able to help solve global health problems by staying aware of what is happening with different bills in Congress.

"I think students could be very active — even if domestic — in making sure that our government knows that it is important for us to be better global citizens," Mukherjee said.

Mukherjee is also the medical director of Partners in Health, an organization that provides medical services and social work to poverty-filled areas around the world, including Peru, Haiti and Rwanda.

Partners in Health focuses on HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, women's and children's health, and according to Mukherjee, it also provides food, water and shelter for underprivileged regions.

Cynthia Haq, director of the Center for Global Health and a UW professor of medicine and public health, said issues of global health have changed in the last years, and improving global health involves many beyond the medical field.

"The message is that the needs for global public health are enormous, and the exciting news is that resources are now being mobilized to make action possible," Haq said. "We need input from all sectors of society, not just from health professionals."

Mukherjee spoke as part of the third annual Global Health Symposium focusing on interdisciplinary approaches to improving global health, and Haq said she supported ideas of merging across professions to achieve these improvements.

"[The symposium] is a chance to bring everybody together and share what were doing, but also to share new ideas," Haq said. "There are things that teachers, engineers and agriculturalists can do to improve global health."

Haq also said the symposium serves as a means to bring some of these new ideas back to UW so we can then "activate" them.

Mukherjee's lecture was followed by numerous panel discussions, including speakers about infectious diseases, chronic illnesses, women's health and global health partnerships.

UW graduates, Mukherjee said, generally have great passion for the field.

"[UW] is full of progressive thinkers," said Mukherjee. "They all have a deep love of University of Wisconsin."

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