Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and dengue fever: The names conjure images of sickened people far from our shores and equally as far from our public consciousness.
These diseases sound far away, but they're not. They're at our shores; they're inside our borders; they affect Americans in America.
What can we do about them?
Top global health experts will gather Thursday to discuss solutions for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) which are surfacing more in some areas of the Southern U.S., especially in Texas.
Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and lead author of new editorial, "Chagas Disease: 'The New HIV/AIDS of the Americas'," published in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, will open the forum. Joseph McCormick, MD, regional dean of University of Texas in Brownsville, will then direct a plenary lecture called "Fifty years of global health in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Texas."
Panelists include leading global health experts and researchers:
- Jon Andrus, MD, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization;
- Maria Elena Bottazzi, PhD, director of product development, Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, Baylor College of Medicine;
- Rebecca Rico Hesse, PhD, MPH, of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute.
- Susan Fisher-Hoch, MD, professor of epidemiology, Baylor College of Medicine;
- Bruce Lee, MD, associate professor of medicine, epidemiology and biomedical informatics, University of Pittsburgh;
- Harold Margolis, MD, chief, Dengue Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
- Peter Melby, MD, director, Center for Tropical Diseases, University of Texas Medical Branch;
- Sue Montgomery, MPH, epidemiologist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
- Kristy Murray, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics at NSTM;
- and Jesus Valenzuela, PhD, chief of the Vector Molecular Biology Section, National Institutes of Health.
Join us at Baylor College of Medicine on June 7 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to hear from the experts how NTDs are also public health threats shared by the U.S., Mexico and Central America. This event aims to raise awareness of this serious global health trend and demonstrate the need for the development of new prevention, control and treatment tools and strategies.
For more information, please visit www.researchamerica.org/event_detail/id:144. Registration is required.
You can join the conversation on Twitter under the hashtag #txglobalhealth.
Tags: Chagas, dengue, global health, Global Health Research, NTDs, Peter Hotez, Texas
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2012 at 10:23 am and is filed under Basic Research/Basic Science, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Global Health Research, National Institutes of Health, Prevention & Public Health, Research!America, global health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
