UGA Symposium to Address Ways to Bridge the Global Health Care Divide

The University of Georgia College of Public Health and the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute will host the second annual Global Health Symposium titled “Social Determinants of Inequalities in Health II: Continuing the Global Conversation” on March 24-25 at the Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.

Co-sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Health Scholars Program, the event will bring together national and international public health experts with the purpose of gaining a better understanding of how socio-economic status, socio-political environment, race and ethnicity contribute to inequalities in health across the globe.

“This meeting represents the college’s first step toward future collaborations on understanding the social determinants of inequalities in health with researchers from abroad, in conjunction with the W.K. Kellogg Health Scholars program,” said Dionne Godette, assistant professor of health promotion and behavior in the College of Public Health, planning committee chair and former Kellogg Health Disparities Scholar.

“We are looking forward to hosting current and former Kellogg Health Scholars as well as representatives from federal, state and local organizations concerned with fostering change around inequities in health,” she added.

Panels and presentations during the two-day afternoon program will target issues ranging from international to national and state level health inequalities, as well as the impact of discrimination on health access, human rights and immigrant health. A poster session featuring research from student and faculty participants also will be held, with awards going to the best graduate student and postdoctoral fellow posters.

Dr. Ichiro Kawachi, professor of social epidemiology and chair of the Department of Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, will deliver the keynote address, “Social Determinants of Health Inequities: The Global Problem,” at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 24.

Kawachi has published over 350 papers as well as several books on the social and economic determinants of population health, and serves as the editor of the social epidemiology section of the international journal Social Science & Medicine. Since 2000, he has served as the director of the Kellogg Scholars in Health Disparities program at Harvard.

The Kellogg Health Scholars Program is funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and managed by the Center for the Advancement of Health. This two-year post-doctoral fellowship program seeks to develop new leadership in the effort to reduce and eliminate health disparities and to secure equal access to the conditions and services essential for achieving healthy communities.

There is a registration fee of $15, and the symposium is open to the public. See www.globalhealth.uga.edu for registration, maps and hotel information.

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