WVU School of Medicine’s Global Health Week begins Oct. 21

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University School of Medicine Global Health Program is partnering with the WVU School of Public Health Office for Public Health Practice to sponsor this year’s Global Health Week.

The lectures will feature a speaker at noon each day starting Monday, Oct. 21 through Friday, Oct. 25 in the WVU Health Sciences Learning Center, room 1905.

“The world is a global community,” Melanie Fisher, M.D., M.Sc., director of the Global Health Program, said. “We are all linked to each other. What happens in one area regarding health affects everyone, so we are all in this together to improve the health of others globally.”

The lecture schedule and featured speakers are as follows.

•  Thuy Bui, M.D., will discuss “Approaching Patient Care from Social Determinants of Health Framework” on Monday. Dr. Bui is a clinician-educator at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine. She is the medical director of the UPMC Program for Healthcare to Underserved Populations, a service-learning, student- and volunteer-based community outreach and free clinic program. She is also the director of the Global Health Internal Medicine Residency Tract at UPMC.
•    Larry Schwab, M.D., will present “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things” on Tuesday. Dr. Schwab is a part-time professor in the WVU Department of Ophthalmology. Author of the textbook “Eye Care in Developing Nations,” Schwab works with the international and national campaigns to ban landmines. He also teaches and trains healthcare workers in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
•    Henry G. Taylor, M.D., M.P.H., will speak about “The Influence of Global Public Health on U.S. Healthcare” on Wednesday, in conjunction with Public Health Grand Rounds. Dr. Taylor is a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Health Policy and Management. A faculty member in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview, Taylor also serves as the deputy health officer for the Cecil County Health Department.
• P. Mona Khanna, M.D., M.P.H., will discuss “Raising the Profile of Global Disaster Medicine: A TV Physician’s Perspective” on Thursday. She is a visiting clinical associate professor and Center for Global Health affiliate at the University of Illinois. Known as Dr. Mona, she is an Emmy Award-winning medical journalist, who serves as the medical contributor to Fox 32 Chicago.
• Josephine Reece, M.D., will present “Global Health: the Who, What, When, Where and Why? A Personal Perspective” on Friday. Dr. Reece is an assistant professor in the WVU Department of Medicine. A graduate of the WVU School of Medicine, Reece completed a medicine and pediatrics residency at WVU in 2012. She recently returned to WVU from Baylor College of Medicine’s Texas Children’s Global Health Corporation, which is stationed in Liberia, Africa.

Lectures are open to all health professions students, residents, faculty, staff and the Morgantown community. Continuing education credits are available through the schools of Dentistry, Nursing and Medicine. For more information, contact Jacque Visyak at jvisyak@hsc.wvu.edu or 304-293-5916.

For more information on the Global Health Program, visit www.hsc.wvu.edu/som/tropmed.