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  • Fundamental choices for the future of public health - what is COVID-19 exposing?

Fundamental choices for the future of public health - what is COVID-19 exposing?

  • 21 Apr 2021
  • 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
  • Webinar

This webinar is organized by the Centre for Global Health (Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto) and will take place virtually so please be sure to register in advance to receive the link TWO HOURS before the event.

ABOUT THE TALK

Dr. Rene Loewenson, keynote speaker, will deliver a talk titled "Fundamental choices for the future of public health - what is COVID-19 exposing?" it will be followed by reflections from discussants as well as a Q&A from the audience.

Public health is the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts of society. So how will we judge the public health response to COVID-19? In this lecture, Dr Rene Loewenson, - a Zimbabwean epidemiologist with over 30 years of experience in research, policy, law and training from local to national and international level on equity, social determinants and social participation in public health and health systems - scrutinises the diversity of public health responses to the pandemic. In some settings, for example, people have been objects of centralised speedily imposed border closures, lockdowns and quarantines, enforced by security forces in communities and with poorly managed consequences such as rising gender violence, while in others local health and social systems have worked with civil society networks and communities to apply prevention and support measures, including for migrant workers. The gap between the extraordinary progress in vaccine technology and the extraordinary inequity in vaccination access and coverage globally points to deficits in what is understood globally and locally by “the organised efforts of society”.

What therefore have we learned from COVID-19 to guide our future understanding of and approaches in public health? Rene will examine in the lecture the contrasting histories, trajectories and drivers of different approaches to public health that suggest that rather than a singular notion, a ‘battle for ideas’ has infused public health policy and practice within regions and globally, with different approaches dominating at particular times. She draws on the analysis to suggest opportunities and levers for taking the learning from COVID-19 to advance the features of a comprehensive public health framework needed to prevent and tackle further pandemics, a crisis of climate and environmental degradation, social inequality and other sustained threats to population health and survival from local to global level.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Dr Rene Loewenson is an epidemiologist, public health practitioner and director of Training and Research Support Centre, Zimbabwe. She has since 1980 implemented research, participatory action research, policy analysis, training and mentoring of work and has led various international research consortia on equity in health, social determinants of health and health systems, on social participation in health, on policy change in family and child health and wellbeing and on public health law and practice. She is a founder member of EQUINET and cluster lead of its Equity Watch work, co-ordinates the International Shaping health consortium working on various aspects of social participation and policy analysis in health. She has been a member/ chair of national and global bodies on health, including the national Public Health Advisory Board, and on various WHO advisory, scientific and technical committees including on Health Systems Research Strategy, on Equity analysis and Research; and on AIDS and was an advisor to WHO’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.

DISCUSSANTS

Lisa Forman is the Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and Global Health Equity and an Associate Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. She is an international human rights law scholar whose research explores how the right to health may contribute to advancing health equity, including in relation to access to medicines, universal health coverage, global health policy, pandemic responses and COVID-19. Her research has produced over 100 publications and has been supported by the CIHR, the European Commission, the World Health Organization and the Lupina Foundation. Lisa has worked with the Ugandan Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development, Care Peru, the Canadian HIV Legal Network, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines and the UN appointed Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. She is a member of the Global Health Law Consortium and the Ontario COVID-19 Health System Response Bioethics Table. Lisa is a dual citizen of South African and Canada, and qualified as an attorney of the High Court of South Africa, with a BA and LLB from the University of the Witwatersrand. Her graduate studies include a Masters in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University and a Doctorate in Juridical Science from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law.

Sharmila Mhatre joined the Open Society Public Health Program in July 2016. This global program supports work to make health a public good and inclusive of the most vulnerable populations of society. Her expertise in health systems and policy research in low- and middle-income countries is founded on over 20 years of experience leading, designing and managing multi-sectoral health programs with government, donor, and civil society collaborators in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.

Prior to joining Open Society, Mhatre worked at Canada’s International Development Research Centre for over a decade where she headed the Governance for Equity in Health Systems program (2010-2016). The program supported leading scholars, policymakers, and civil society organizations from low- and middle-income countries to redress health inequities and improve health services, systems, and policies.

Working as a research fellow with the Community Information and Epidemiological Technologies, a nongovernmental organization (1996-2003), Mhatre worked in the areas of primary health care, community-based information systems, and the prevention of sexual violence and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Prior to this position, she worked with UNICEF. Currently, she is a board member of the British Medical Journal Global Health. Mhatre holds a PhD in health services research from the University of Toronto (1994).

MODERATED BY

Erica Di Ruggiero is Director for the Centre for Global Health, Director of the Collaborative Specialization in Global Health, and Associate Professor, Social and Behavioural Health Sciences Division and Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (University of Toronto). Prior to joining the university, she was the inaugural Deputy Scientific Director with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research-Institute of Population and Public Health. She led the design, implementation and evaluation of research, partnership and knowledge translation initiatives to address priorities including health equity, environments and health, global health and population health intervention research. She has served on the Management Committee for the Innovating for Maternal and Child Health Program in Africa, as Honorary Vice President, American Public Health Association and chair, Canadian Public Health Association. She has also previously held adjunct and status faculty appointments at the University of Toronto. Erica obtained her BSc in Nutritional Sciences, a Masters of Health Science (community nutrition) and a PhD in public health sciences from the University of Toronto. Her research addresses the evaluation of population health interventions (policies, programs), their health and health equity impacts, work and health policies, the assessment of global policy agenda-setting processes in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, the evaluation of global health research capacity building, and of knowledge utilization and exchange strategies to influence public health decision-making at national and global levels.

About The John R. Evans Lectureship in Global Health

The John R. Evans Lectureship in Global Health was established by Dr. David Naylor, when he was The University of Toronto’s Dean of Medicine. The lectureship acknowledges the major role Dr. Evans played in the University of Toronto’s history and his global contributions to the advancement of human health and well-being.


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