Symposium to present 2009 Metro Atlanta Homeless Survey

As the recession impacts the social and economic fabric of communities, local governments and agencies will present the results of the 2009 Metro Atlanta Homeless Survey during the 2009 Homeless Symposium Nov. 20 at Georgia State University.

The symposium will be held at 8:30 a.m. in the Speaker's Auditorium at the GSU Student Center, 44 Courtland St. S.E., and will include a summary of the survey and a panel discussion about its results.

"The symposium is designed to get those involved with providing assistance to the homeless to look at the survey results and their meaning, and to discuss the issues surrounding homelessness," said Tim Crimmins, director of the GSU Center for Neighborhood and Metropolitan Studies.

The survey is a project of the Metropolitan Atlanta Tri-Jurisdictional Collaborative on Homelessness and Pathways Community Network. GSU's Center for Neighborhood and Metropolitan Studies, GSU's Department of Sociology, and the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Commission on Homelessness, are joining them in sponsoring the symposium.

The fourth-annual survey represents examines homelessness in the city of Atlanta and Fulton and DeKalb counties. The survey provides a way to look at different factors which might play a role in homelessness in 2009, including the effects of the recession, as well as the efforts in transitioning homeless persons into jobs, counseling and other programs, and those efforts' effects.

Prior to the 2009 survey, researchers completed a census of homeless persons within Atlanta and Fulton and DeKalb counties during a single day in January, and found a total of 7,019 homeless individuals and homeless family members in the three jurisdictions. The total census increased by 20 percent from 2003 to 2009, with a 6 percent increase from 2007 to 2009. The survey helps to flesh out this data, providing context and the factors behind the numbers.

For every survey since 2003, surveyors have gathered a standard set of demographic information, including history and reasons for homelessness, but with each year, researchers also hone in on different sets of specialized issues. This year, researchers also focused on vulnerability, foster care, and criminal history as a barrier to finding jobs and housing, among other issues, said Josie Parker, manager for research and data analysis for Pathways Community Network and a doctoral candidate in sociology at Georgia State.

The symposium is open to the public. For more information, contact Josie Parker at 404-639-9933, ext. 323, or josie.parker@pcni.org.

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Symposium to examine immigration policy and human rights

“Immigration Policy and Human Rights” symposium
8 a.m. June 17
Room 460/465 University Center
404-413-6159

Georgia State University’s Center for Human Rights and Democracy will host a symposium addressing immigration policies and the protection of human rights in the United States and abroad at 8 a.m. June 17 in room 460 of the University Center.

“Immigration policy ranks atop the challenges facing many economically advanced democratic states,” said William Downs, co-director of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy. “The lowering of barriers to the free movement of peoples has host country implications for national security, employment, housing, education and health care. Governments at all levels now confront these challenges in environments of severe budgetary contraction and voter suspicion.”

More than 15 panelists will address political, economic, social and legal issues related to immigration policy, as well as promising policy alternatives. The symposium also will acknowledge the transition from the Bush to the Obama Administration and the recent 60-year anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Deepa Iyer, executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together, will be the keynote speaker discussing “Charting a Path Forward—The Post 9/11 Backlash Against Immigrants and Human Rights Responses.” Iyer is an immigrant who moved to the United States from India when she was twelve years old. Iyer served as a trial attorney at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice where she worked closely on initiatives to address post 9/11 backlash discrimination. She also was the executive producer of a documentary about hate crimes in the post 9/11 environment.

“The post 9/11 atmosphere in America and Europe means renewed difficulties in protecting the fundamental rights of immigrants,” Downs said. “Democracies struggle to address the intolerance that often confronts immigrants, and issues of detention, denial of legal due process, deportation and hate crimes persist.”

Adelina Nicholls, of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and Azadeh Shahshahani, of ACLU of Georgia are among the panelists who will examine “Immigration as a Human Rights Issue.” Other panel topics during the symposium include, “Immigration and Belonging: Divergent Perspectives on Latinos and Human Rights in the United States”; “Immigration Detention”; and “Citizenship and Human Rights Challenges in Europe.”

“Immigrants and refugees seeking a better life and fleeing poverty, hunger, civil war and persecution are among society’s most vulnerable groups,” Downs said. “Research endeavors that explain immigration trends, critically evaluate alternatives for policy reform, and compare the effectiveness of efforts to defend immigrants’ human rights are both timely and necessary.”

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Symposium to Examine Human Rights in Times of Threat March 27

“Human Rights in an Age of Insecurity” symposium
9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 27
Speakers Auditorium, Georgia State Student Center, 44 Courtland St., Atlanta

In times of military or economic threat, public fear can breed indifference when it comes to human rights issues, says Michael Galchinsky, professor of English at Georgia State University, who is coordinating a symposium to address what happens to human rights in democracies that are under threat.

In times of national security threats, democracies have typically blocked the public’s right to information, expanded government surveillance and launched attacks on freedom of speech and the rights of due process and habeas corpus. International human rights issues are often ignored as well, Galchinsky said.

“People’s fear sometimes makes them consider human rights to be luxuries rather than entitlements,” he said. “We can see this in real concrete ways: Human rights watchdog groups get less money from the public at this time, they are able to place their information in fewer newspapers, and they have the ear of fewer government officials.”

What makes this especially difficult, Galchinsky said, is that at times of increased insecurity, human rights groups are most needed. With recent economic woes taking center stage, advocacy groups are now also needed to keep an eye on the financial welfare of those in the United States and abroad.

“In our country, we’ve often talked about civil and political rights, but not so much economic, social and cultural rights, which are a big deal in other parts of the world, especially the underdeveloped countries,” he said. “With the global economy tanking, it’s a good time to begin thinking about economic rights and social welfare.”

The symposium aims to address economic and other human rights issues from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint, inviting speakers who have extensive legal knowledge as well as those who have been involved as activists. Keynote speaker Elisa Massimino is CEO and executive director of Human Rights First and has been an advocate for international human rights for nearly 20 years.

In conjunction with the daylong symposium, a photographic exhibit titled “In Black and White: Political Violence in Argentina (1969-1985)” will be on display in the Gallery Lounge, Room 346 of the Student Center, March 22 through 27.

The time is ripe for examining human rights issues in Atlanta. The city is in the midst of finalizing plans to build the Center for Civil and Human Rights, and Georgia State is creating its own Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

“It makes a lot of sense that this conversation is happening here in Atlanta with its strong history of civil rights, and it was Dr. King who sought very much to link civil rights at home to human rights everywhere,” Galchinsky said. “We feel like this is the time to be having this conversation, and it needs to be in Atlanta.”

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Number of grandparents raising grandchildren likely to rise, Georgia State conference reveals

The number of grandparents raising children or helping to take care of children is likely to increase during the current recession, and support for these grandparents is even more critical, experts said this week during a symposium sponsored by Georgia State University.

Georgia State’s Symposium on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren brought together more than 100 experts and advocates for grandparents from around the United States and Canada to address challenges facing these caregivers and those who work for them. The symposium was sponsored by the National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.

The most recent U.S. government estimates show that 2.5 million children are being raised by their grandparents. In Georgia, more than 164,000 children live in households headed by grandparents, and more than 98,000 live in households with grandparents without either parent present.

Advocates and researchers of grandparents caring for grandchildren are concerned that as states look for ways to trim budgets, needed financial and health care resources — especially critical as many grandparent care givers live close to or in poverty — may be cut.

“This will be a very difficult economic time, and it will last for a while. In the face of the downturn, we need to be very proactive for our families,” said Debbie Whitley, director of National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren and associate professor of social work at Georgia State.

Increasing the urgency is the economic situation, which will likely lead to more grandchildren being raised by their grandparents or living in households where grandparents aid in care giving, said Esme Fuller-Thomson, associate professor of social work at the University of Toronto and speaker at the symposium.

“Adding to several risk factors, there is a growing issue of unemployment and foreclosures of homes, as a lot of adult children are moving back home because they don't have a house anymore, or they don't have a job,” Fuller-Thomson said.

There is historical precedent, also, for grandparents raising grandchildren during tough times, she said.

Fuller-Thomson explained that African-American grandparents in 1940 — just before the United States’ entry into World War II, while the country was still reeling from the Great Depression — were taking care of grandchildren at higher rates than today, where nearly 29 percent of African-American women over 45 will take care of a grandchild for more than six months at some time in their lives.

Georgia State has long been an advocate for grandparents raising grandchildren. Since 1995, Project Healthy Grandparents has provided resources for grandparents raising grandchildren, and has served more than 635 families, including over 1,451 children.

The National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren was founded in 2001 to inform service professionals, decision makers and the general public on the unique social and health service issues confronted by grandparents raising grandchildren.

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Baby Doe Rules Examined at Georgia State Law Review Symposium

When should medical treatment be provided for a seriously ill infant? What if aggressive treatment causes enduring pain? And what happens if doctors and parents disagree about whether treatment should be given?

These are just a few questions that have been debated in medicine for more than 25 years, ever since the Reagan administration issued the “Baby Doe Rules” in response to the case of a Bloomington, Ind., infant with a reparable birth defect who was allowed to die without surgery.

The Baby Doe Rules, which will be the focus of the 2009 Georgia State University Law Review Symposium Friday (Feb. 13), conditions the grant of federal funds for any state’s child protective services program on the assurance that it can respond to reports of medical neglect. Those reports may include the withholding of medical treatment from disabled infants with life-threatening conditions.

“The early controversial cases involved infants who had relatively straight forward medical needs,” said Charity Scott, director of the Center for Law, Health and Society in Georgia State’s College of Law. “By contrast, the hard cases today often involve extremely premature infants – at the cusp of viability, at 22 or 23 weeks gestational age when born – who have multiple medical needs. Other hard cases today involve infants who have genetic abnormalities that can cause severe physical and mental impairments. Doctors and parents struggle with whether or how a child’s uncertain prognosis for the future should impact their decisions about treatment."

Advances in medical technology over the past 25 years have played a significant role in improving the health outcomes of infants who may have died because no treatment was available a generation ago, Scott said.

"Should aggressive treatment be given, and for how long? Some difficult questions affecting that decision include: What’s the likelihood that an infant’s treatment will be successful? Will it cause suffering? How long can the infant live with treatment? What will the infant’s quality of life be in the future? Whether the anticipated future quality of life of an infant should be taken into account in deciding whether to treat the child remains a controversial issue. And who should be the final decision-maker in conflicted cases is a perennial dilemma," Scott said.

From bioethicists to lawyers and doctors, more than a dozen experts from across the United States will lead discussions on the evolution of the Baby Doe Rules and the current status of decisions involving premature and other medically at-risk infants at the symposium themed, “The 25th Anniversary of the Baby Doe Rules Perspectives from the fields of Law, Health Care, Ethics, and Disability Policy.” Among the distinguished experts are Burke Balch, director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics; Dr. Mark Mercurio, director of the Yale Pediatric Ethics Program and an attending neonatologist at the Yale-New Have Children’s Hospital; and Mary Crossley, dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

At the conclusion of the symposium, which is being held in partnership with the Emory University Center for Ethics and the student-led Law Review, participants will better appreciate the roles of parents, health care providers and the government in treatment decisions for extremely ill newborns; learn ways of resolving conflicts over the care of very sick newborns, including mediation and communications skills; and understand how principles from different perspectives, influence and interact in decision making regarding treatment. The Georgia State University Law Review will publish a symposium volume on the topic in spring 2009.

“The Baby Doe Rules raise really difficult legal, medical, ethical, and policy issues,” Scott said. “The symposium is honored to host the nation's leading experts in all of these fields. It is an extraordinary opportunity in our community to come together to engage in multidisciplinary reflection and thoughtful debate about these controversial issues in the care of seriously ill infants.”

For more information, visit the symposium Web site: www.babydoesymposium.org.

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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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UGA Odum School of Ecology Hosts Aquatic Conservation Science Symposium

The University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology will host “Aquatic Conservation Science: Merging Theory and Application” on Oct. 3-4. The symposium is being held in honor of the careers of emeritus faculty members Judith L. Meyer and Gene Helfman.

The one-day symposium will feature individual talks and a panel discussion and includes internationally renowned speakers on aquatic conservation science. Speakers will represent areas of expertise including ecosystem and fisheries science, aquatic conservation policy and water resource management.

“The professional legacies of Gene and Judy are wide and deep,” said Laurie Fowler, co-director of the Odum School’s River Basin Center. “Gene has written the world's leading textbook on the conservation of fishes. His involvement in endangered species has resulted in both the advancement of science and much greater protection. And besides being an internationally recognized aquatic scientist, Judy has applied her expertise to the better development of federal, state and local policies through leadership on boards ranging from those established by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. EPA and much more.”

A poster session and opening reception will kick off the event at 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 3 in the Odum School lobby. The formal sessions will begin Saturday, Oct.4 at 8 a.m. in the Odum School auditorium. Speaker presentations will occur throughout the day and the event will culminate with a banquet.

There is a registration fee of $100 for non-students and $55 for students. Registration forms must be completed by Monday, Sept. 8. To register or for more information, please see: http://www.rivercenter.uga.edu/helfmeyer.htm.

With roots that date back to the 1950s, the UGA Odum School of Ecology offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as a certification program. Namesake Eugene P. Odum is recognized internationally as a pioneer of ecosystem ecology. The school is ranked tenth by U.S. News and World Report for its graduate program. The Odum School is the first standalone school of ecology in the world. For more information, see http://www.ecology.uga.edu.
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UGA’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases to Host Global Health Research Symposium

The University of Georgia’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases will host an international research symposium, “Global Health through Research,” on Sept. 19 and 20 at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel on the UGA campus. The symposium will be held in conjunction with the 18th Annual Molecular Parasitology/Vector Biology Symposium.

To recognize and help celebrate the center’s tenth anniversary, symposium organizers planned the event as an expanded version of their traditional annual meeting. The program will feature ten of the world’s most prominent researchers who study human parasites and the insect vectors that spread them.

“This will be an exciting conference packed with cutting-edge presentations from the best investigators in the field,” said Boris Striepen, a symposium organizer. “We are also eager to present the outstanding work of UGA students and postdoctoral researchers to this highly accomplished audience.”

Scheduled speakers will discuss a wide range of scientific issues, including how parasites conquer their hosts, secure nutrients, and outwit the immune system to cause deadly diseases. Wielding sophisticated tools of molecular biology and genome science, these researchers work to reveal the parasites’ tricks and to develop urgently needed drugs and vaccines. Diseases to be discussed include malaria, sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis and several other diseases associated with AIDS.

The Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases is a university-wide, interdisciplinary center established in 1998 to foster research, education and service related to tropical and emerging infectious diseases. Over the past decade CTEGD has grown into one of the nation’s preeminent institutes for tropical disease research. The center’s 18 members include faculty from eight UGA departments and four colleges. The center also benefits from the participation of adjunct faculty from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

by Helen Fosgate
University of Georgia

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