Health care reform, emergency preparedness, traffic safety and obesity are just a few of the common global health issues to be tackled by researchers, health care providers and policymakers from the U.S. and Israel at the fourth annual Global Health Symposium to be held Sept. 7-8 at UGA.
The conference, “Globalization of Health Care: Common Problems-Seeking Common Solutions,” will be hosted by the College of Public Health’s Center for Global Health, with support from the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute. The symposium will showcase the center’s ongoing partnership in research and education with the University of Haifa in Israel. The $5 cost to attend the symposium, which is open to the public, covers attendance for both days, including lunch and breaks. The deadline to register online at http://globalhealth.uga.edu/2011/ is Sept. 6.
“Israel is a fascinating, developed country with a successful health care system that can be a model to seek best practices,” said Dr. Richard Schuster, professor of health policy and management and director of the Center for Global Health. “With universal health care coverage, Israel has substantially lower infant mortality rates, lower cardiovascular death rates and dramatically lower health care costs than does the U.S.”
The symposium will get under way at the Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, with a welcome from College of Public Health administrators as well as representatives from the Office of Consulate General of Israel in the Southeast. Keynote speaker Kavita Pandit, UGA’s associate provost for international education, will discuss the internationalization of education at UGA and set the stage for topics to be addressed through the remainder of the symposium.
The symposium will continue Sept. 8 at Reception Hall of the Tate Student Center, where faculty from UGA and the University of Haifa will discuss a global health topic from each country’s perspective.
Relationships between Israeli organizations and the public health college are helping the Center for Global Health carry out its mission of identifying best practices of health care, as well as supporting their dissemination, adaptation and adoption throughout the world in order to improve health care for all, said Schuster.
“We, as nations, share similar health problems, and working together to seek common solutions is valuable,” Schuster said. “The center is hopeful that continuing student and faculty exchanges, joint teaching and research between the two universities will foster further collaborations between the two nations.”
UGA and the University of Haifa recently signed a cooperative agreement. In addition to this joint conference, a UGA graduate study-abroad opportunity in global health will be offered jointly at the University of Haifa in the summer of 2012. This new partnership also is exploring mutual research interests.
The symposium is supported through gifts from UGA alumni Harold S. Solomon and Milly Pincus Solomon, as well as from the Israeli Consulate General of the Southeast in Atlanta.