In 2007, as the world worried about a possible avian flu epidemic, Laurie Garrett, author of “The Coming Plague,” gave this powerful talk to a small TED University audience. Her insights from past pandemics are suddenly more relevant than ever.
About the Laurie Garrett
Laurie Garrett has made a career of uncovering science and policy news that is almost too depressing to know: emerging and re-emerging diseases, and the world’s general inability to deal with them. In the process, she has uncovered gaping lapses in public health and policy.
Garrett is the author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. As a science writer for Newsday, Garrett won a Pulitzer, a Peabody and two Polk awards; in 2004, she joined the Council on Foreign Relations as Senior Fellow for Global Health. She is an expert on public health — and the fascinating ways that health policy affects foreign policy and national security.
Posted October 19, 2009 by Ali Al-Rajhi under Epidemiology
Below, a guest-post by HealthBeat reader Frederick L. Moolten, M.D. Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, he has devoted several decades of his career to cancer research, supported by the NIH and the VA. We love wars. Ever since our nation was forged in the heat of the American Revolution, we have celebrated victories in some (World War II – the “good war”), lamented the agony of others (the Civil War), and debated the merits of more recent ones, including Iraq and now Afghanistan. Our combativeness extends into the realm of metaphor—hence the War On Drugs, the War On Poverty, and the War On Terror (only part metaphorical). None of these has yet outlasted the War On Cancer, which we have been fighting for more than a century. Why have we not yet won?
Posted October 9, 2009 by Ali Al-Rajhi under Epidemiology
I’ve been hit with the “flu-diet” recently and must say it’s a diet I can do without. I feared it was the H1N1, thankfully it was only the seasonal flu as my doctor informed me. In any case, I wanted to share the most recent H1N1 data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Each week CDC analyzes information about influenza disease activity in the United States and publishes findings of key flu indicators in a report called FluView. During the week of September 20-26, 2009, a review of the key indicators found that influenza activity remained elevated in the United States.
Posted October 6, 2009 by Ali Al-Rajhi under Epidemiology
WHO applauds and welcomes the announcement of donations of pandemic vaccine made today by the United States of America, in concert with Australia, Brazil, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The announcement demonstrates the commitment of these countries to fairness in sharing of scarce resources as the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic continues to evolve.
In 2008, the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) celebrated the first 10 years of the National Comprehensive Cancer Control Program (NCCCP). This program was created by a group of public health professionals who recognized that a more collaborative approach was necessary to reduce the burden of cancer in the United States. They believed that coordination among the various sectors involved in cancer control would improve prevention, early detection, treatment, quality of care, and survival. We present a summary of how the movement began, the NCCCP’s accomplishments, the program’s collaboration with the National Partnership for Comprehensive Cancer Control, and current initiatives in the program. We also discuss the vision for the future of this program.
Posted September 21, 2009 by Ali Al-Rajhi under Epidemiology
Ali Al-Rajhi writes with the purpose of informing individuals in the Public Health field about pressing issues in environmental health, public health policy, epidemiology, and behavioral health. Learn more here.
