News Article
October 4, 2011
Institute Celebrates 5-Year Anniversary, Looks Ahead to Emerging Global Health Challenges
More than 300 people helped the Duke Global Health Institute celebrate its fifth anniversary on Monday. The day-long event served as a milestone in the Institute’s history and highlighted Duke’s efforts to address health disparities at home and around the world.
The symposium, titled “Global Health 2020: Acting Today to Improve Tomorrow,” and evening reception provided a great opportunity for faculty, students, trainees, staff and friends of DGHI to celebrate and reflect on the Institute’s achievements and look ahead to what the future holds. (WATCH VIDEO FROM THE SYMPOSIUM HERE.)
“The Duke Global Health Institute has not just thrived at Duke; it has thrived so much that is has come to illustrate the aspirations of this university. It illustrates the kind of connectivity we seek with one another,” said President Richard Brodhead, who traveled to DGHI sites in Tanzania, Uganda and China this summer. “When I want to describe a program that shows how the university puts together the domains of knowledge and takes what is learned and reach out in the domain of human need and be of use, I can always find an example from DGHI. So to everyone who has made it so: fantastic. Let’s come back for the tenth anniversary and it will be ten times better.”
World leader in health and DGHI advisory board member Peter Piot opened the symposium with his keynote address entitled “Global Health 4.0.” He emphasized that global health has evolved greatly in recent years, and now includes an expanded scope of health issues beyond tropical diseases and AIDS. Academic institutions like Duke are responsive to this change.
“Let me congratulate Mike Merson and all your colleagues at the Duke Global Health Institute on an incredible job,” said Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “What the Institute and Duke is trying to do is quite unique in terms of global health both in terms of the “what” and “how,” and really pushing the boundaries of the practice of global health. DGHI is really anticipating the big problems of our time.”
The keynote was followed by three panel discussions with Duke faculty and their partners whose work is reducing health disparities in places like China, East Africa, India, Haiti and South America. Discussion was focused on chronic diseases, environmental health issues, and building capacity to strengthen health systems – all of which are topics of growing global importance and concern.
ABC News’ Senior Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser facilitated the discussions. “It was truly a privilege to moderate the panels,” said Besser. “My takeaway from the symposium is there are certainly enough questions to keep the Institute going for many, many decades. There is much to be done and Duke has the expertise to address these important health disparities.”
Provost Peter Lange and Chancellor Victor Dzau also gave remarks during the symposium.
“It’s the intersection of Duke’s three priorities, interdisciplinarity, globalization and knowledge to serve society, that both makes the Duke Global Health Institute so powerful and makes our broader commitment so powerful,” said Lange. “Whether you are a student or faculty, when you get in the field, you recognize that the problem is not just having the right technology; it’s not having the right cure. It’s being able to bring all of the factors together to bring that technology or cure to be delivered. That’s so critical, and that’s why the blending of the three has made DGHI so powerful on campus.”
“DGHI has already accomplished a lot, but in many ways, it is just the beginning,” said Dzau. “One of the most significant added values of an Institute such as this, being located at a university such as Duke, is the unprecedented human capital. We are in a unique position of having world-class experts while also developing future experts and leaders, where knowledge is not only created but shared and can be applied for the human good.”
The day was capped off with an evening reception at the Doris Duke Center, where DGHI and ABC News partners unveiled a special video presentation showcasing the Institute’s work, students presented posters on their fieldwork and research, and Dr. Merson announced the winners of the Student Fieldwork Photo Contest.
