The Future of Global Health, with Dr. Sonia Sachs

The final event of this year's Forum on Global Health and Human Rights will be held this Monday, April 27,2009 at the WinterGarden Lobby of the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York at 6pm.  We are lucky to have Dr. Sonia Sachs of the Millennium Villages Project at the Earth Institute at Columbia Universisty as our speaker!  This promises to be an exciting event and we hope you can make it!

Bangladesh and Arsenic in Drinking Water

The Forum on Global Health & Human Rights presents its next event for the topic of Water as a Human Right vs. Water as a Commodity.

Join us to for the talk "Poison in the Well: Exposure, Effects, and Remediation of Arsenic in Bangladesh" by Dr. Joseph Granziano , Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Pharmacology at the Mailman School of Public Health. 

When: Thursday, April 9
Where: Hammer 404
Time: 6:30 pm

Dinner will be provided!!

Click here to read more about Dr. Graziano's research

Joseph H. Graziano, Ph.D. 
Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Pharmacology
Associate Dean for Research
The Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University
Director, The Columbia University Superfund Basic Research Program 

Dr. Graziano has been a faculty member at the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Columbia University since 1979, and was Chairman of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health from 1991-2002, when he became Associate Dean for Research.  He was the founding director of Columbia University's NIEHS Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan.  He is widely known as an expert on childhood lead poisoning, and his laboratory developed the drug (Succimer) that is now widely used to treat this condition. In 2000, Dr. Graziano became the founding director of the Columbia University Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP), entitled Health Effects and Geochemistry of Arsenic and Lead. The Columbia SBRP involves faculty from four schools of Columbia University, and includes geochemistry, hydrology and remediation research at four U.S. Superfund sites, as well as studies of arsenic metabolism and toxicity in families exposed to naturally occurring high concentrations of arsenic in drinking water in Bangladesh.  His most recent research has discovered that both arsenic and manganese exposures are associated with cognitive deficits in children. He is currently a member of the NIEHS Council, and a member of the NIH Council of Councils.

Screening of Road to Ingwavuma with Filmmaker!

The 2nd Annual Forum on Global Health and Human Rights** presents:

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, Barbara Rick, and executive director of Artists for a New South Africa, Sharon Gelman, host a viewing of their documentary, "Road to Ingwavuma, "  a chronicle of  the mission of artists such as Samuel L. Jackson and Carlos Santana as they travel to see the extreme poverty and progress in South Africa in  the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Where:  Hammer 301
When:  Wednesday, March 18th at 7 PM

Food will be provided!

Click HERE for more information on Road to Ingwavuma


**The Forum on Global Health & Human Rights is organized by the International Health Organization and Physicians for Human Rights, with the support of the Clincal Practice Program, AMSA, Lamda Alliance, and the Family Medicine Interest Group. 

Funding for International Health Projects

Come join us for our first event in our module on Funding for International Health Projects:

A Discussion with Karen Schmidt, Deputy Director of the Access Project and Millennium Village Rwanda.

Wednesday, March 11

1pm-1:45pm

Hammer Health Sciences Building, Room 305

Lunch will be provided!

Click here for more information on the Access Project

Human Trafficking Events

Physicians for Human Rights presents two events on Human Trafficking:

1.  Film Screening: 

Carissa (20 min) 

Tuesday, February 17th, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m. 

Hammer Rm. 310 

Dinner will be served 

 

Carissa is a short documentary about a young girl who was a victim of sex trafficking in Fresno, California. She was able to turn her life around and is now a national spokesperson on the issue of youth homelessness and sex trafficking. Come hear her story. Director David Sauvage. http://carissaproject.com

Free dinner and screening, followed by a short discussion activity. 

 

2. Speaker: 

Florrie Burke*, M.Ed., MA, LMFT 

Wednesday, February 18th, Noon – 1 p.m. 

Hammer Rm. 324 

Lunch will be served 

 

Florrie Burke will be discussing trafficking and modern day slavery, using a human rights approach, and illustrating with cases from NY. She will also address the importance of medical professionals as intermediaries and as responders to trafficked victims' health needs.

**Please RSVP for each event to fwc2109@columbia.edu so there is enough food for everyone.**

*Bio: Florrie Burke, M.Ed., MA, LMFT, is a consultant on Modern Day Slavery to both governmental and non governmental agencies. She was most recently the Senior Director of International Programs at Safe Horizon in New York City where she oversaw both the Anti-Trafficking Program and Solace Program for Survivors of Torture and Refugee Trauma.  She is a founding member and currently the Coordinator of the Freedom Network Training Institute and trains social service providers, law enforcement and government entities across the country.  She has done extensive training and consultation on Human Trafficking issues, trauma and torture both nationally and internationally.  Ms. Burke is a current Co-Chair of the Freedom Network USA, a nationwide group of social and legal service providers working with survivors of human trafficking.  Ms. Burke has served as an Expert Witness on several high profile cases of Human Trafficking.  She is a member of the Expert Initiative on Human Trafficking at the UNODC in Vienna and is part of three working groups developing materials for first responders and others who may encounter Human Trafficking.  Ms. Burke has been working with trafficked persons since 1997 when she designed and implemented specialized social services to sixty deaf Mexicans who were held in slavery in a peddling ring in NYC.  Ms. Burke also designed and implemented a model for Community Trauma Response following the attacks on September 11th.  In 2007 Ms. Burke received the National Crime Victims Recognition Service Award from the Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime and was honored by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor and was awarded the Annual Paul and Sheila Wellstone Award by the Freedom Network USA

Doctors Without Borders Lecture

A physician with MSF (Doctors without Borders) will be speaking at Weill Cornell on Tuesday, February 10th at 4pm.  All Columbia students welcome.

Dr. Buddhima Lokuge is a medical practitioner with MSF/Doctors Without Borders in New York. As US manager of the organization's Access to Essential Medicines Campaign, he coordinates nutrition-related policy and advocacy for MSF in the US.  Dr. Lokuge has field experience with MSF in India and Afghanistan, where he ran MSF's malnutrition programs in hte district of Ghazni.

He will speak about MSF's work in areas devastated by malnutrition.  This ongoing crisis contributes to 3.5 to 5 million deaths in children under five each year, and leads to long term disability for many, and poor health and educational outcomes for many more.

February 10th, 4pm

Weill Auditorium

Weill Cornell Medical College

1300 York Ave, NY NY

Impact of Malnutrition on Maleconomics in Developing Countries

For those of you who expressed interest in our first module, "Hunger, Malnutrition and the Global Food Crisis," see below for an event hosted by IHO as part of their Tropical Medicine Rounds.

IHO is very pleased to announce that December's Tropical Medicine Rounds will be the first part of a doubleheader with Dr. Richard Deckelbaum, Professor of Pediatrics, Professor of Epidemiology, and Chair of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia.

Dr. Deckelbaum's December talk will be on the links between malnutrition and economic development in poor countries, drawing on his experience as a public health nutritionist, advisor to Jeffrey Sachs' Earth Institute, and member of several US government and UN advisory panels.

In January's talk, he will discuss therapeutic nutrition: how to assess poorly nourished children in the field, how to institute therapeutic feeding programs, and the health consequences of pediatric malnutrition.

His first talk, titled "Impact of Malnutrition on Maleconomics in Developing Countries," will be

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9
HAMMER 303
5:15 PM

Read about Dr. Deckelbaum