SPEAKER ABSTRACTS AND BIOS
George Amato (Moderator), Ph.D., Director, Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, US
George Amato is the Director of the Sackler Institute of Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History. In addition to administering this interdepartmental scientific program of more than 70 scientists, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, Dr. Amato continues to conduct research in conservation genetics of endangered species. He also serves as an Affiliated Professor in the Richard Gilder Graduate School and is an adjunct professor at Columbia, Yale, and Fordham Universities. Previous to joining the Museum, Dr. Amato spent seventeen years conducting conservation research and programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society, where he was the Director of Conservation and Science until 2005. Dr. Amato has lectured and published extensively on conservation strategies for endangered species, concentrating much of his work on the use of molecular analysis to determine conservation priorities and in developing forensic tools for monitoring the illegal trade in wildlife. Additionally, he is the chairman of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life Conservation Committee and is also a Trustee of the Lemur Conservation Foundation. Dr. Amato is involved in conservation issues on a global scale working on projects in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. He received his B.S. from the University of Connecticut and M.S., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University.
http://genomics.amnh.org/
Felicity Arengo, Associate Director, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, New York, US
Bio: http://cbc.amnh.org/center/staff/stffarengo.html
Michael J. Balick, Vice President for Botanical Science, Director and Philecology Curator, Institute of Economic Botany, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York, US
ETHNOMEDICAL SYSTEMS, BIODIVERSITY, AND PRIMARY HEALTH CARE IN MICRONESIA
Micronesia is a remote part of the world, with a rich ethnomedical tradition and, in many areas, high levels of plant endemism. Island peoples are particularly skilled at discovering and developing technologies for plant utilization, as their resource base is limited by the island’s size and degree of isolation. Micronesian peoples have used plants for many purposes, including provision of primary health care. Since 1997, a research team of local and international researchers—biologists, physicians, traditional healers, conservationists, and specialists in local culture—has been conducting biodiversity and ethnomedical surveys on the islands of Pohnpei and Kosrae in the Federated States of Micronesia and The Republic of Palau. One focus of the program is to inventory the medicinal plants of the region, collecting data on diversity and abundance of species and their uses. We have recently published a book on Pohnpei Island, which details medical uses, dosages, and formulations for 206 species of plants found there, an astonishing 21% of the total flora. Concurrently, we are working on a primary health care manual that incorporates an evidence- based approach to using local plants in health care. The model developed by this program is to incorporate sustainable plant resources and ethnomedical modalities into the state run systems of village dispensaries, clinics, and the hospital. As village dispensaries on many Pacific islands lack prescription pharmaceuticals, traditional medical systems and the plants they use can play an important role in improving health care. With a greater awareness of the importance of local resources in contemporary life comes the realization that these modalities must be managed in a sustainable way, particularly on small islands. Thus, it is clear that improving primary health care depends on maintaining a diverse environment, and biological conservation is now attracting a new and influential constituency—the local physicians in the region.
Bio: http://www.nybg.org/science/scientist_profile.php?id_scientist=1
Jeffrey M. Blander, Co-leader, Technology Innovation Working Group, Harvard Initiative for Global Health, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
Dr. Jeff Blander has over 15 years of experience in deploying services and commercializing medical technologies in developed and developing countries. Jeff is the co-founder and current executive director of the Bienmoyo Foundation (www.bienmoyo.org), a Massachusetts, US IRS registered 501 (c)3 tax exempt organization. The Bienmoyo Foundation provides advisory services on implementing technologies and services to improve management of non-communicable diseases in developing countries. Under Jeff’s leadership, Bienmoyo has developed a pipeline of grassroots projects in resource poor settings and has supported over two dozen graduate and undergraduate student field projects.
Jeff has also taught for ten years at the Health Science and Technology (HST) Division of Harvard University and MIT for a course he co-developed on health care, technology, and business practice. In the Spring of 2008, Jeff launched his second course entitled, HST 939 Designing Technology Innovation for Global Health Practice. The course works closely with sponsors and partners in developing countries to enable teams of students to work on design projects that address "real world" field-based problems. The first year enrollment was over 50 students from across MIT and Harvard, with 14 projects on going in 6 developing country settings. In 2008 Dr. Blander was appointed co-leader of the Technology Innovation Working Group for the Harvard Initiative for Global Health (HIGH). In this position Dr. Blander has the unique role in helping to create partnerships and linkages to strengthen educational and research opportunities for Harvard graduate and undergraduate students as well as junior faculty.
Previously, Jeff served as a Volunteer Country Director for the Clinton Foundation in Jamaica in 2004 and was awarded NIH/Fogarty pre and post doctoral fellowships in global health and clinical research in Tanzania in 2005 and 2008. Jeff has his doctorate and two master’s degrees from Harvard and his bachelors of science from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Bio: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/jeffrey-blander/index.html
Martin J. Blaser, Frederick H. King Professor of Internal Medicine, and Chair, Department of Medicine, and Professor of Microbiology, New York University Langone Medical Center Chair, New York, New York, US
HELICOBACTER PYLORI, A RESIDENT OF THE HUMAN GASTRIC MICRO-ENVIRONMENT THAT BOTH CAUSES AND PROTECTS AGAINST DISEASE
Helicobacter pylori is an ancient bacterial member of the human gastric micro-environment. H. pylori populations are highly dynamic and interactive with the gastric epithelium. The net interchange affects both local and systemic human physiology. As a result of modern lifestyles, H. pylori is disappearing from human populations, and becoming extinct; as such, it now is clear that H. pylori status affects both physiology and disease risk. H. pylori positivity increases risk for both ulcer disease and gastric cancer. With its decline, diseases of the esophagus related to Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and its consequences, including adenocarcinoma of the esophagus, are becoming more frequent, and an extensive body of evidence links these reciprocal events. Similar observations have been made recently about childhood asthma and related disorders. The ways in which H. pylori might protect against disease involve hormonal and chemical regulation, immunologic mechanisms, and/or effects on other residential microbiota. Using the example of H. pylori, secular changes in our micro-environment mimic changes in our macro-environment (e.g., global warming) with unanticipated consequences.
Bio: http://www.med.nyu.edu/medicine/labs/blaserlab/v1-mbr_blaser.html
Julie Burstein, Executive Producer, “Studio 360,” Public Radio International and WNYC, New York City, New York, US
Julie Burstein is the creator and executive producer Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, the Peabody Award-winning weekly national radio program about creativity, pop culture, and the arts. Julie is noted for her ability to create successful new radio programming and live events, her skill at helping talent from other media become effective radio personalities, and for her own engaging on-air presence as guest host on The Leonard Lopate Show. Julie is currently writing a book for Studio 360 about creativity and inspiration, which will be published by Harper Studio in 2010. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Julie studied in Japan on an Asian Cultural Council Arts Fellowship. Her travels helped further her understanding of the connection between our exploration of the natural world and our passion for creative expression. Studio 360 is a co-production of Public Radio International and WNYC, New York Public Radio, and includes an ongoing series on science and creativity that offers listeners a chance to hear about the inspiration scientists have found in art, and artists have found in science. You can find out more at www.studio360.org.
Nora Bynum, Ph.D., Project Director, Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP), and Associate Director for Capacity Development, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, US
Nora Bynum is Project Director of the American Museum of Natural History's Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP) and Associate Director for Capacity Development for the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. Dr. Bynum provides global leadership for the NCEP project, including academic coordination and management of the module development, testing, and dissemination process. For the past 15 years, Dr. Bynum has worked on international capacity building and training in biodiversity conservation and ecology and environmental studies in the Americas, Asia and Africa. She has conducted fieldwork in tropical forests in Indonesia, Peru, Costa Rica and Mexico. Her current research interests are in seasonality and phenology of tropical canopy trees, particularly as it relates to global change, and the scholarship of teaching and learning, particularly in undergraduate and experiential contexts. Dr. Bynum is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and at Duke University, where she has taught for the last several years. Previously, Dr. Bynum was a Fulbright lecturer at the Instituto de Ecología, A.C., in Xalapa, Mexico, where she taught courses on learner-centered methods of teaching conservation, and on global change. Prior to joining the CBC in 2002, she served as Academic Director for the Organization for Tropical Studies. Dr. Bynum serves as Chair of the Board of the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER), and as Director of Education for the Austral and Neotropical Section of the Society for Conservation Biology. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University’s Department of Anthropology and School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Dr. Bynum is the content coordinator for the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Milstein Science Symposium, Exploring the Dynamic Relationship Between Health and the Environment (along with Dr. Andrés Gómez).
Bio: http://cbc.amnh.org/center/staff/stffbynum.html
Jane Carlton, Director of Genomics and Associate Professor of Medical Parasitology, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, US
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION:
HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE AGE OF GENOMICS
Genomics—the study of genomes of living organisms—is an immensely powerful discipline that is being harnessed to examine interactions between human health and the environment. The genomes of thousands of parasites, bacteria, and viruses that cause serious human diseases have been decoded, as have genomes of animals, fungi, and plants, providing insights into evolution, new drug and vaccine targets, and novel methods of disease surveillance. Examples of genome projects will be given, including the Human Microbiome Project, which aims to sequence the DNA of all the microbes found in bodily micro-environments, and environmental genomics projects that are cataloguing microbial diversity.
Bio: http://www.med.nyu.edu/research/carltj01.html
Carlos Corvalán, Senior Advisor, Sustainable Development and Environmental Health, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO), Brasilia, Brazil
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION:
ENVIRONMENTAL BURDEN OF DISEASE: ACTING TO REDUCE CURRENT AND EMERGING THREATS
The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that around one quarter of the global burden of disease could be reduced through existing environmental interventions. This fraction is higher in poor countries and among children. In spite of action in many countries to address current environmental health problems and their inherent inequalities, emerging issues such as ecosystem degradation, depletion of water resources, changes in land use and climate change in particular, are threatening these advances. Recent interest to implement a global agenda for climate change and health is an opportunity to address simultaneously current and emerging issues, and build an integrated agenda for action.
Carlos Corvalán is an environmental epidemiologist with a Masters in Public Health from Sydney University, Australia, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Health from Nijmegen University, in the Netherlands. He joined the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1993 and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in 2008. He is editor and author of the WHO book Decision-making in environmental health – from evidence to action, the WHO report Climate change and human health – risks and responses and of the WHO report Ecosystems and human well-being – health synthesis, which was WHO’s contribution to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He also co-authored WHO’s report on Preventing diseases through healthy environments. For many years he has been giving workshops to representatives from ministries of health and other government officials and experts to promote awareness and action related to protecting health from climate and other environmental changes. Corvalán is a PAHO/WHO Senior Advisor on environmental health and sustainable development based in Brazil.
Peter Daszak, President, Wildlife Trust, New York, New York, US
Peter Daszak is a leader in the field of conservation medicine and a respected disease ecologist. Wildlife Trust is a global organization dedicated to innovative conservation science linking ecology and the health of humans and wildlife. Wildlife Trust’s mission is to provide scientists and educators with support for grassroots conservation efforts in 20 high-biodiversity countries in North America, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Nine years ago Dr. Daszak became the Executive Director of Wildlife Trust’s Consortium for Conservation Medicine (CCM)—a collaborative think-tank of institutions including Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, The University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine Center for Conservation Medicine, and the USGS National Wildlife Health Center. The CCM is the first formal inter-institutional partnership to link conservation and disease ecology. Dr. Daszak’s research has been instrumental in revealing and predicting the impacts of emerging diseases on wildlife, livestock, and human populations.
As Executive Vice President of Health at Wildlife Trust, Dr. Daszak directed a program of collaborative research, education, and conservation policy. The program examined the role of wildlife trade in disease introduction; the emergence of novel zoonotic viruses lethal to humans such as Nipah, Hendra, SARS, and Avian Influenza; the role of diseases in the global decline of amphibian populations; and the ecology and impact of West Nile virus in the U.S. Dr. Daszak holds adjunct positions at three U.S. and two U.K. universities and serves on the National Research Council’s committee on the future of veterinary research in the U.S.
Dr. Daszak has also consulted for other non-profit organizations and governmental agencies such as the OIE ad hoc working group on amphibian diseases, the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. Department of the Interior, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, National Institutes of Health, Australian Biosecurity CRC, DIVERSITAS, Society for Conservation Biology, and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Dr. Daszak has been called upon time and again to advise governmental, commercial, and non-commercial organizations including, NASA and leading pharmaceutical companies, on issues ranging from the environment to national security.
With more than 100 peer-reviewed published papers, Dr. Daszak has also authored book chapters, and his research has been featured in such publications as Nature, Science, The Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Trends in Ecology and Evolution. He is a member of the editorial board of Conservation Biology and is co-editor of the Springer journal EcoHealth, as well as a founding director and treasurer of the International Association for Ecology and Health. He is a recipient of the 2000 CSIRO medal for collaborative research, and his work has been the focus of extensive media coverage, including articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, US News & World Report and broadcast appearances on 60 Minutes II, CNN, ABC, NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” “Morning Edition,” and “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross.
Highlights of Dr. Peter Daszak’s work:
• Uncovering the wildlife origin of the SARS virus
• Identifying the first case of a species extinction caused by a disease
• Discovering a disease responsible for global amphibian population declines
• Calling attention to the global effects of emerging wildlife diseases on conservation and biodiversity
• Demonstrating the link between global trade and disease emergence via aprocess called “pathogen pollution”
• Mapping emerging disease “hotspots” around the globe and instituting surveillance to warn of possible pandemics
Rob DeSalle, Curator, Division of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, US
Bio: http://www.amnh.org/science/divisions/invertzoo/bio.php?scientist=desalle
Andrew P. Dobson, Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, US
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION:
BIODIVERSITY, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND HEALTH
Human health and the health of all the non-voting species is intimately linked to climate and the surrounding environment. In this talk I will give a number of examples of how changes in the environment interact with climate change to create changes in the health of humans, “animal” and plant populations and communities. Understanding the dynamics and impact of these problems requires a significant increase in interactions between ecologists, epidemiologists, and economists. Genomics may also be useful for many post-hoc analyses, but it will never allow us to develop a predictive framework needed to understand the interactions between health, climate, and the environment at the spatial and temporal scales where we need to develop effective management and intervention strategies. So a redistribution of funding priorities is desperately needed if we are to understand this important class of environmental problems.
Bio: http://www.princeton.edu/eeb/people/display_person.xml?netid=dobber&display=Faculty
Pablo B. Eyzaguirre, Senior Scientist, Anthropology and Socioeconomics, Bioversity International Diversity for Livelihoods Programme, Rome, Italy
Coauthors: T.Johns and I.F. Smith, Bioversity International
BIODIVERSITY FOR NUTRITION AND HEALTH: REVERSING THE SIMPLIFICATION OF DIETS AND ECOSYSTEMS
Human health is based on adequate supply of foods containing the energy, nutrients, and functional properties that are essential for good health. Humans have met these fundamental needs through the consumption of a diverse range of plant and animal foods available in a wide range of ecosystems. Dietary diversity has been the basis of good nutrition and health across food cultures by using the food resources available in local ecosystems including agro-ecosystems. Using examples from the ecologies and food systems of West Africa, East Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and South America, the paper describes the range of foods sourced from local biodiversity that are being eroded as ecosystems are simplified and biodiversity is reduced or lost. The concomitant global trends to simplify diets and food systems along with the simplification and erosion of ecosystems have focused attention on the link between biodiversity, dietary diversity, and human health. From the perspective of human health, food-based approaches to improved nutrition depend on the maintenance of dietary diversity. However, such a strategy is at risk as many of the world's ecosystems that provide foods with important nutritional value and health properties are increasingly threatened and diminished. The link between biodiversity as the basis of good nutrition and health may provide a strong incentive and clear rationale to maintain diversity in local ecosystems as it underpins healthy diets and food cultures. Some examples are given of how biodiversity can be sustainably used to address global health problems arising from simplified, high-energy modern diets.
Pablo B. Eyzaguirre is a senior scientist in anthropology and socioeconomics at Bioversity International (formerly IPGRI) in Rome. A citizen of Chile, Eyzaguirre received his Ph.D. in anthropology (1986) from Yale University and is a specialist in social and ecological anthropology, tropical farming systems, and agrarian institutions. He has taught anthropology in the US, and conducted field research on ecology, institutions, and livelihoods in West and Central Africa. Internationally, he has worked in all major regions of the world, and has published widely on culture and environment in agrarian societies, home gardens, ethnobotany, nutrition, agricultural research and natural resource management in developing countries.
He is the author of Agricultural and Environmental Research in Small Countries, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK. 1996. His most recent book is Pablo Eyzaguirre and Olga Linares, (eds), Home Gardens and Agrobiodiversity published by Smithsonian Books, Washington, DC. 2004. He co-edited, ‘Property Rights, Collective Action and Local Conservation of Genetic Resources’ World Development v.35, 9, 2007. Eyzaguirre is past-president of the International Society of Ethnobiology (2004-2006), and advises global agencies, foundations, and corporations on the role of agricultural biodiversity and agrarian communities in food security, conservation, and ecohealth.
Majid Ezzati, Associate Professor of International Health, Department of Global Health and Population,
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION:
EVIDENCE-BASED POLICIES FOR GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH RISKS
Despite the wide awareness of the important role of the environment as a determinant of the population health, there are substantially fewer systematic analyses of which environmental policies and technologies can provide large and equitable improvements in population health. This presentation will use examples of global, national, and sub-national analyses of environmental risk factors and interventions to demonstrate a systematic approach to developing scientific evidence for priority setting and policy implementation.
Majid Ezzati is an Associate Professor of International Health in the Department of Global Health and Population and the Department of Environmental Health, at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research focuses on two closely linked areas: (i) population-level analysis and modeling of the health effects of risk factor exposures and interventions; and (ii) collection and analysis of primary field data on environmental exposures (primarily air pollution), and their sources, health effects, and interventions, in specific developing regions.
1) Air pollution and health in developing countries: Ezzati and his research group conduct field research projects on air pollution and health in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The research includes characterizing and measuring exposure to individual pollutants or to pollutant mixtures in both rural and urban areas, quantifying the role of sources such as biomass use and transportation on air pollution levels and exposure, measuring and quantifying the health impacts of alternative energy technologies, and designing new technological interventions and intervention delivery programs. His recent and ongoing research includes field research in Kenya, Ghana, The Gambia and China, as well as model-based analysis in different world regions.
2) Risk factor exposure and Interventions: Ezzati and his research group analyze the effects of environmental risks, smoking, and nutritional risks on population health and on health disparities globally as well as in specific countries. He led the World Health Organization’s collaborative project on risk factors (titled “the Comparative Risk Assessment Project”) which appeared in the World Health Report 2002: Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy Life and is currently leading the Comparative Risk Assessment component of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors 2005 Study.
Lora Fleming, Professor, Departments of Epidemiology & Public Health and Marine Biology & Fisheries, Miller School of Medicine and Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Miami, Florida, US
UNDERSTANDING THE LINKS BETWEEN HUMAN HEALTH AND THE OCEANS
As the only board certified occupational and environmental medicine physician and epidemiologist in South Florida, Lora Fleming serves in a unique role at the University of Miami. Her areas of research and teaching are Occupational and Environmental Medicine and Epidemiology. As the Co Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) University of Miami Oceans and Human Health (OHH) Center (www.rsmas.miami.edu/groups/ohh/) and the Associate Director of the Florida International University (FIU)-University of Miami NIEHS ARCH Program (http://arch.fiu.edu/), she works in the areas of marine and freshwater toxins, recreational microbes, environmental human health, and epidemiologic issues. Working with various OHH Center colleagues and others, she has created educational materials concerning the human health effects of marine and freshwater natural toxins, and performed research in Ciguatera Fish Poisoning, Florida Red Tides (Brevetoxins) and cyanobacterial toxins; and is currently involved in a NIEHS-funded study of the human health effects of aerosolized red tide toxins (www.mote.org/niehsredtidestudy/) and in a CDC, FL DOH and OHH Center-funded study of the possible human health effects of microbial pollution in recreational beach waters. With a group of interdisciplinary colleagues, she is exploring the health disparities, morbidity, and mortality of US workers in the National Health Interview Survey, funded by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) (www.rsmas.miami.edu/groups/niehs/niosh/), as well as issues of second-hand-smoke on worker health and the prevention of tobacco-related diseases. As Medical Director of the Florida Cancer Data System (www.fcds.miami.edu/), Florida’s incident cancer registry, she works with researchers and students to promote work in cancer epidemiology and prevention, and health disparities in Florida. She teaches physicians and residents, and PhD and Masters of Public Health, medical, law, architecture, and undergraduate students in environmental and occupational health and epidemiology. She also acts as a consultant in occupational and environmental medicine and epidemiology both locally and internationally, and serves on a number of university, state and national taskforces and committees. Dr. Fleming received an MSc from London University, her MD-MPH from Harvard Medical School, and a PhD from Yale School of Medicine.
Bio: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/groups/niehs/center/lora_fleming_cv.htm
Selected publications:
Fleming LE, Kirkpatrick B, Backer LC, Bean JA, Wanner A, Reich A, Zaias J, Cheng YS, Pierce R, Naar J, Abraham WM, Baden DG. Aerosolized Red Tide Toxins (Brevetoxins) and Asthma. Chest 2007;131:187-194.
Laws E, Fleming L, Stegeman J. Overview of NSF NIEHS and NOAA Oceans & Human Health Centers. Mini-Monograph: Research in Oceans and Human Health. Environmental Health 2008; 7(Suppl 2):S1:1-5
Vidal L, LeBlanc WG, McCollister KE, Arheart KL, Chung Bridges K, Christ SL, Caban Martinez AJ, Lewis J, Lee DJ, Clark J, Davila E, Fleming LE. Cancer Screening in US Workers. Am J Pub Health 2009;99:59-65.
Fleming LE, Levis S, LeBlanc WG, Dietz NA, Arheart KL, Wilkinson JD, Clark J, Serdar B, Davila EP, Lee DJ. Earlier Age at Menopause, Work and Tobacco Smoke Exposure Menopause in press.
Boehm AB, Ashbolt NJ, Colford JM, Dunbar LE, Fleming LE, Gold MA, Hansel J, Hunter PR, Ichida AM, McGee CD, Soller JA, Weisberg SB. A sea change ahead for recreational water quality criteria, Journal of Water and Health in press.
Howard Frumkin, Director, National Center for Environmental Health, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, US
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION:
THE ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN HEALTH: THE NEED TO PADDLE UPSTREAM
The links between environment and health have been recognized since the beginning of history. The places in which we live, work and play, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the food we eat, all have impacts on health. In an increasingly complex world, other factors also play a role: the ways we design our communities, the ways we travel, the sources of energy we utilize, the ways we conserve land. This talk provides an overview of the dynamic relationship between health and the environment by focusing on these “upstream” forces, and suggests how the health professions can link with other fields to advance science and health protection.
Howard Frumkin is Director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR) at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. NCEH/ATSDR works to maintain and improve the health of the American people by promoting a healthy environment and by preventing premature death and avoidable illness and disability caused by toxic substances and other environmental hazards.
Dr. Frumkin is an internist, environmental and occupational medicine specialist, and epidemiologist. Before joining the CDC in September, 2005, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Emory Medical School. He founded and directed Emory’s Environmental and Occupational Medicine Consultation Clinic and the Southeast Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit.
Dr. Frumkin previously served on the Board of Directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), where he co-chaired the Environment Committee; as president of the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics (AOEC); as chair of the Science Board of the American Public Health Association (APHA), and on the National Toxicology Program Board of Scientific Counselors. As a member of EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, he chaired the Smart Growth and Climate Change work groups. He currently serves on the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine. In Georgia, he was a member of the state’s Hazardous Waste Management Authority, the Department of Agriculture Pesticide Advisory Committee, and the Pollution Prevention Assistance Division Partnership Program Advisory Committee, and is a graduate of the Institute for Georgia Environmental Leadership. In Georgia’s Clean Air Campaign, he served on the Board and chaired the Health/Technical Committee. He was named Environmental Professional of the Year by the Georgia Environmental Council in 2004. His research interests include public health aspects of urban sprawl and the built environment; air pollution; metal and PCB toxicity; climate change; health benefits of contact with nature; and environmental and occupational health policy, especially regarding minority workers and communities, and those in developing nations. He is the author or co-author of over 160 scientific journal articles and chapters, and his books include Urban Sprawl and Public Health (Island Press, 2004, co-authored with Larry Frank and Dick Jackson; named a Top Ten Book of 2005 by Planetizen, the Planning and Development Network), Emerging Illness and Society (Johns Hopkins Press, 2004, co-edited with Randall Packard, Peter Brown, and Ruth Berkelman), Environmental Health: From Global to Local (Jossey-Bass, 2005; winner of the Association of American Publishers 2005 Award for Excellence in Professional and Scholarly Publishing in Allied/Health Sciences), Safe and Healthy School Environments (Oxford University Press, 2006, co-edited with Leslie Rubin and Robert Geller), and Green Healthcare Institutions: Health, Environment, Economics (National Academies Press, 2007, co-edited with Christine Coussens).
Dr. Frumkin received his A.B. from Brown University, his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.P.H. and Dr.P.H. from Harvard, his Internal Medicine training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge Hospital, and his Occupational Medicine training at Harvard. He is Board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Occupational Medicine, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and Collegium Ramazzini.
Selected publications:
Frumkin H, Frank L, Jackson RJ. Urban Sprawl and Public Health. Washington: Island Press, 2004.
Frumkin H, Ed. Environmental Health: From Global to Local. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2005.
Ellen V. Futter, President, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, US
Ellen V. Futter has been President of the American Museum of Natural History since November 1993. She previously served for 13 years as President of Barnard College, where, at the time of her inauguration, she was the youngest person to assume the presidency of a major American college. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. With a strong record of public service, Ms. Futter is widely recognized as a dynamic voice for education and is an active supporter of women's issues. She has been awarded numerous honorary degrees and awards. Ms. Futter graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, from Barnard College and received a J.D. from Columbia University Law School.
Tony L. Goldberg, Professor of Epidemiology, Department of Pathobiological Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, US
ECOLOGY AND MOLECULAR EPIDEMIOLOGY OF HUMAN-PRIMATE DISEASE TRANSMISSION IN WESTERN UGANDA
Infectious diseases transmitted between humans and non-human primates pose a serious threat to human health, animal health, and primate conservation. By adopting a combined molecular and ecological approach, the Kibale EcoHealth Project endeavors to understand how human behavior, primate behavior, and land use patterns alter infectious disease transmission among primates, people, and domestic animals in and near Kibale National Park, Uganda. Molecular epidemiological analyses of bacterial and protozoan pathogens indicate that anthropogenic disturbance to primate habitats and ensuing ecological overlap between people and primates is the primary force driving interspecific transmission of gastrointestinal pathogens in this system. Specifically, genetic similarity between populations of E. coli bacteria and the protozoan parasite Giardia duodenalis from people and primates are highest in the most disturbed habitats and decline with decreasing intensities of habitat disturbance. Human health and human behavior modify these effects, with factors such as experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms and tending livestock being associated with elevated genetic similarity between human and primate bacterial populations. Human-to-primate transmission is also enhanced by forest fragmentation and close interaction among species, due to such factors as research and tourism, as evidenced by molecular analyses of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in wild primates in such areas. For example, the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in populations of endangered mountain gorillas in Bwindi-Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, declines among populations with decreasing ecological overlap between humans and apes. Serologic and molecular studies indicate that primates in this region have been exposed to previously uncharacterized poxviruses and retroviruses, raising both conservation and public health concerns. Using molecular tools to identifying specific links between habitat disturbance and human-wildlife pathogen exchange will facilitate targeted interventions that should lead to improved conservation planning and public health.
Tony Goldberg’s research and teaching focus on the ecology, epidemiology and evolution of infectious disease, combining field and laboratory studies to understand how pathogens in dynamic ecosystems are transmitted among hosts, across complex landscapes, and over time. Dr. Goldberg has conducted numerous projects around the world that use molecular epidemiological methods to track the movement of pathogens, from viruses to bacteria to protozoa. Dr. Goldberg is Director of the Kibale EcoHealth Project, a long-term investigation of infectious disease ecology and epidemiology in the region of Kibale National Park, Uganda. This project has helped define the role of tropical forest disturbance in facilitating microbial transmission between people and wild non-human primates. Dr. Goldberg is also Principal Investigator of a new grant from the NSF/NIH Ecology of Infectious Diseases program to investigate the role of fine-scale habitat variation in the transmission, amplification, and evolution of West Nile virus in suburban Chicago. Dr. Goldberg conducts additional research on rapidly evolving viral diseases of domestic pigs, and on the health and conservation of aquatic and marine organisms. The overall goal of his research program is to discover generalized mechanisms that govern pathogen transmission, evolution, and emergence, and to improve the health and wellbeing of animals and humans while helping to conserve the rapidly changing ecosystems that they share. Dr. Goldberg earned his doctorate from Harvard University, where he studied the biogeography, genetics, and conservation of chimpanzees, and he earned his DVM and MS in Epidemiology from University of Illinois. Dr. Goldberg holds appointments in the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies and the Center for Global Health at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and as Honourary Lecturer in Zoology at Makerere University, Uganda.
Andrés Gómez, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, US
Andrés Gómez is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC), at the American Museum of Natural History. He received a Ph.D. in ecology from Columbia University and a D.V.M. at the Universidad de La Salle in Bogotá, Colombia. His research has been mainly focused on understanding health in an ecological context, and on the applications of disease ecology in conservation biology. He has also worked on several large-scale spatial analyses for conservation and on indicators of environmental performance. Before coming to New York he worked for the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park’s Conservation and Research Center. He has conducted field work in the U.S., Mexico, China and Colombia.
Dr. Gómez is the content coordinator for the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Milstein Science Symposium, Exploring the Dynamic Relationship Between Health and the Environment (along with Dr. Nora Bynum).
Bio: http://cbc.amnh.org/center/staff/stffgomez.html
Donna Green
, Research Fellow
, Climate Change Research Centre
, University of New South Wales
, Australia
CLIMATE IMPACTS ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
Indigenous people are incredibly resilient. For millennia, indigenous people have lived in a wide range of ecosystems across the world, gradually adapting to a naturally changing climate. In the last couple of hundred years, however, many remote indigenous communities have struggled to keep up with changes to their way of life brought by colonisation, industralisation and globalisation. The outcome for many of these communities has been devastating. Not only do many of these communities have some of the lowest socio-economic indicators in their respective countries, these changes have affected their physical and psychological health. Unfortunately, unless bold actions are taken to mitigate climate change and prepare culturally appropriate adaptive strategies, it is likely that the direct and indirect impacts of climate change will further negatively impact their culture and ability to live on their land. Indigenous Australians living in remote communities in the north and central regions of the country are likely to be disproportionately disadvantaged by the adverse impacts of climate change. Their vulnerability is heightened due to at least three factors: existing non-climate stresses, a culture that does not necessarily differentiate between natural and human systems in relation to the concept of “health,” and a connection between the need to ensure the well-being of country.
Donna Green is a research scientist in the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia. In this position she leads a programme that uses indigenous and non-indigenous knowledge to understand climate impacts on remote communities. Her research focuses on human-environment interactions, specifically on social and economic vulnerability, adaptation and risk. Dr. Green’s current work builds on ten years’ experience working in the areas of energy, environment and sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region. This work involved translating scientific findings into policy, project management and local capacity building. She was a contributing author in the UN World Energy Assessment and for the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report WGII (Australia and New Zealand chapter). Dr. Green has a BSc(hons)BA from UNSW in environmental science and science and technology studies, and a PhD from the University of Berkeley, California, in Political Ecology.
Peter Hudson, Director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and Willaman Chair of Biology, Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, US
EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED IN DISEASE EMERGENCE
Can we predict the emergence of novel infectious diseases? Where do they come from? Why do they become virulent? And what leads to their emergence? The simple answer is we simply don’t know because these are rare events and the data are lacking. There again greater insight could be obtained if we look at the variation between individuals, and seek to identify the functional groups or individuals responsible for transmission and some of the mechanisms responsible for making an individual highly infectious.
Peter Hudson is the Director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and the Willaman Professor of Biology at the Pennsylvania State University. He earned his B.Sc from the University of Leeds and his D.Phil from Magdalen College, Oxford University, where he worked in the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, part of the Department of Zoology with Professor Chris Perrins. He investigates the dynamics of infectious disease in wildlife, how diseases spread through wild animal populations and how they impact host dynamics. His passion is to undertake revealing field experiments and applies theory to understand how parasites interact with their hosts, other natural enemies and climatic conditions to affect the dynamics of hosts. He demonstrated that parasites are the cause of population cycles in red grouse, and showed how parasites shared between hosts can lead to localized host extinction. More recently he has been investigating how parasites interact through the host’s immune system to cause variation in susceptibility and transmission.
Dr. Hudson has published more than 200 scientific papers and four books on the ecology of infectious disease. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008. He won The Carlton Herman Award from the U.S. Wildlife Disease Association in 2005 and the Laurent Perrier Award for Game Conservation in 1985. In 2002, he was named an honorary member of the British Falconers Club in recognition of his research on grouse and their natural enemies. In 1992, his book, titled "Grouse in Space and Time" was named "Book of the Year" by The Guardian in the United Kingdom. Dr. Hudson also is founding director of the Penn State Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and a faculty affiliate of the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment. He moved to the US and Penn State from the University of Stirling in 2002.
Selected publications:
Hudson, P.J. Dobson, A.P. & Newborn, D. (1998). Prevention of population cycles by parasite removal. Science 282, 2256-2258
Mougeot, F., Redpath, S.M., F. Leckie & P.J. Hudson. (2003). Population cycles in space. Nature 421, 737-739
Cattadori, I.M., Haydon, D. & Hudson, P.J. (2004). Parasites and climate synchronize red grouse populations. Nature 433 737-741
Lello, J. B. Boag, A. Fenton, I. R. Stevenson, & P. J. Hudson. (2004). Competition and mutualism among the gut helminths of a mammalian host. Nature 428, 840-844
Boots, M., Hudson, P.J. & Sasaki, A. (2004). Virulence in spatially structured populations. Science 303: 842-844
Patrick L. Kinney, Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, US
AIR POLLUTION, CLIMATE CHANGE AND HUMAN HEALTH: IMPACTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Fossil fuel combustion is responsible for the bulk of anthropogenic climate change, as well as for a substantial global burden of disease and premature mortality due to direct health effects of air pollutants like fine particles and ozone. Furthermore, these pollutants play a variety of roles in climate forcing and are in turn influenced by climate via changes in pollutant dispersion, transport, and atmospheric reactions. Because of these complex feedbacks, policies aimed at climate mitigation will affect air quality and visa versa. This talk will examine the current evidence for these interactions, and will illustrate an approach for integrated assessment of climate mitigation and human health.
Bio: http://www.mailmanschool.org/msphfacdir/profile.asp?uni=plk3
Marc Levy, Deputy Director, Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University, New York, New York, US
Marc Levy is Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He also serves as an adjunct professor in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is a political scientist specializing in the human dimensions of global change. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed works on environment-security connections, environmental sustainability, emerging infectious diseases, the geography of poverty, and the effectiveness of international environmental institutions. He serves as Lead Project Scientist of the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center; and directs the Earth Institute’s Cross-Cutting Initiative on Environment-Security Linkages. He has served on a number of global environmental assessments and frequently advises national governments and international organizations on global change issues. Before coming to CIESIN in 1998 Mr. Levy had teaching appointments at Princeton University and Williams College.
Bio: http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/levy.html
Thomas E. Lovejoy, Biodiversity Chair, The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, Washington, DC, US
Thomas Lovejoy is an innovative and accomplished conservation biologist who coined the term “biological diversity”. He currently holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment based in Washington, DC. He served as President of the Heinz Center from 2002-2008. Before assuming this position, Lovejoy was the World Bank’s Chief Biodiversity Advisor and Lead Specialist for Environment for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation. Spanning the political spectrum, Lovejoy has served on science and environmental councils under the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations. At the core of this many influential positions are Lovejoy’s seminal ideas, which have formed and strengthened the field of conservation biology. In the 1980s, he brought international attention to the world’s tropical rainforests, and in particular, the Brazilian Amazon, where he has worked since 1965. Lovejoy also developed the now ubiquitous “debt-for-nature” swap programs and led the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems project. He also founded the series Nature, the popular long-term series on public television. In 2001, Lovejoy was awarded the prestigious Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. In 2009 he was the winner of BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology Category.
Lovejoy holds B.S. and Ph.D (biology) degrees from Yale University.
Amy Luers, Program Manager, Environment & Vulnerability Mapping, Predict and Prevent, Google.org, Mountain View, California, US
Amy Luers is the environment program manager for Google.org’s Predict and Prevent Initiative. Prior to joining Google.org, Amy managed the Climate Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists California's office and spent 10 years working on water, health and development issues in Latin America and California. Amy is co-founder and former executive director of a Agua Para La Vida, a small NGO dedicated to supporting rural water supply in support of rural development in Latin America. Her research and publications have focused on issues of vulnerability and adaptive capacity to global environmental changes and on climate policy. She holds a Ph.D. in environmental science and an M.A. in international policy studies, both from Stanford University, and a M.S. and B.S. in environmental resources engineering from Humboldt State University.
Pim Martens, Professor of Sustainable Development, International Centre for Integrated Assessment and Sustainable Development, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
GLOBALISATION AND HUMAN HEALTH: SUSTAINABLE HEALTH IN A CHANGING WORLD
From a public health perspective, globalisation appears to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, accelerated economic growth and technological advances have enhanced health and life expectancy in many populations. At least in the short-to-medium term, material advances allied to social modernisation and various health-care and public health programmes yield gains in overall population health. On the other hand, many aspects of globalisation are jeopardising population health via, amongst others, the erosion of social and environmental conditions, the global division of labour, and the exacerbation of the rich-poor gap between and within countries, and the accelerating spread of consumerism. A major manifestation of the increasing scale of the human enterprise is the advent of global environmental changes. The health of a population, if it is to be maintained in a “sustainable state,” requires the continued support of clean air, safe water, adequate food, tolerable temperature, stable climate, protection from solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and high levels of biodiversity. The processes of social-economic change, demographic change, and global environmental change in today's world oblige us to broaden our conception of the determinants of population health. We must be increasingly alert to the influences on population health that arise from today's larger-scale social-economic processes and systemic environmental disturbances. We will present a framework to conceptualise the health risk of global (environmental) changes and will present future developments according to a set of scenarios.
Bio: http://www.icis.unimaas.nl/personal/pim.html
Howard P. Milstein, Chair, President and CEO of New York Private Bank & Trust, New York City, New York, US
Howard P. Milstein has attained noteworthy success in numerous entrepreneurial ventures—generally involving real estate, banking, hotels, marketing, and finance - separately and in various combinations. Currently Chair, President and CEO of New York Private Bank & Trust and its operating bank, Emigrant Bank (the country's largest privately held bank), he also Chairs and operates all the Milstein family's real estate companies, including: Milstein Properties, Milford Management, and the Milford Agency, along with all Milstein Brothers real estate companies.
Mr. Milstein's philanthropic activities are as prolific as his business activities. He is particularly active in the fields of medical research and healthcare delivery. For more than a decade, he has served led the New York Blood Center, first as Chairman of the Executive Committee and currently as Chairman of the Board. The New York Blood Center supplies blood to more than 20 million Metro area residents through the 200 hospitals it serves. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of the American Skin Association serves on the Board of the United Hospital Fund and the Niklaus Children's Health Care Foundation. At the Weill Cornell Medical College, where he has served on the Board for more than 20 years, the Abby and Howard Milstein Core Facility and Program in Chemical Biology is finding cures for the most lethal infectious diseases on the planet, including TB and Malaria. At Rockefeller University, the Milstein Medical Research Program is, likewise, doing groundbreaking work in melanomas. Earlier, Mr. Milstein's sponsorship enabled the Doctors Without Borders symposium, "No Time to Wait: Overcoming Gaps in TB Research in Drug Development." The Milstein family funded the pioneering research in interferon and later went on to name the Milstein Hospital Building of New York Presbyterian Medical Center, the Milstein Institute for Surgical Science and the Milstein Laboratories to conduct research in Alzheimer's Disease, diabetes and cancer. These gifts reflect nearly 50 years of active support for New York (and earlier, Columbia) Presbyterian Medical Center by three generations of Milsteins. The Milstein family is also providing substantial research support to the National Cancer Institutes of the NIH. In addition, Mr. Milstein has provided the seed funds for the Smithsonian History of Skin Project.
Mr. Milstein graduated from Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences in 1973 with a degree in Economics summa cum laude - the first time Cornell had awarded highest honors in that field. In 1977, he went on to receive Law and Business Degrees in a joint program from Harvard University. He also serves on a number of other Boards, including: Cornell University, The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, National 9/11 Memorial Foundation, Economic Club of New York, National Board of the Smithsonian Institution, and the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C. He is also in leadership positions in various Jewish communal organizations and serves Harvard Law School on its Visiting Committee and on the Executive Committee of the Dean's Advisory Board.
Walter Mugdan, Director, Emergency and Remedial Response Division U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 2, New York, New York, US
Walter Mugdan has served since 2008 as Director of the Emergency and Remedial Response Division for Region 2 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he manages a staff of about 200 remedial project managers, on-scene coordinators, hydrologists, risk assessors and others. The Division is responsible for implementing the “Superfund” hazardous waste site cleanup program in the region (which covers New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands). From 2002 to 2008 Mr. Mugdan served as Director of the Division of Environmental Planning and Protection, where his staff of about 180 scientists, engineers and planners managed the region’s air, water, hazardous waste and environmental review programs. From 1995 to 2002 he served as Regional Counsel, where he headed a staff of 80 attorneys in the Office of Regional Counsel. For the prior ten years, he served as Deputy Regional Counsel. Mr. Mugdan joined EPA in 1975 as a staff attorney, and subsequently served in various supervisory positions in the Office of Regional Counsel, including Chief of units responsible for Superfund, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act and the Clean Air Act. In 1998, Walter spent eight months on a temporary detail as Acting Director of Region 2's Division of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, where he managed a staff of 150 engineers, scientists and field inspectors.
Walter has authored numerous publications on environmental law topics, particularly on hazardous waste regulation and remediation. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on these subjects. From 1991 to 1997, he was an Adjunct Professor at Pace University Law School, where he taught a course on Superfund law. Since 1992 Walter has been the Director of EPA’s annual Trial Advocacy Institute. From 2002-2007 Walter served as an officer of the Environmental Law Section of the New York State Bar Association, including a one-year term as Section Chair. He has been a member of the Section’s Executive Committee since 1985 and, for 17 years, served as Co-Chair of that Section's Hazardous Site Remediation Committee.
He earned his JD (1975) and BA (1972) degrees from the University of Michigan.
Karen E. Nelson, Director of Human Microbiology and Metagenomics, Department of Human Genomic Medicine, The J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, Maryland, US
GENOMIC AND METAGENOMIC APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF PATHOGEN GENOMES AND THEIR EVOLUTION
In the mid 1990s the real launch of the genomic era began with the availability of the complete genome sequence of Haemophilus influenzae. Since that major success, there have been numerous examples of genomes from organisms that represent all the domains of life, including the completion of hundreds of microbial genomes that represent both pathogenic and non-pathogenic species (hundreds of partial genomes are also available). The genomes have given tremendous insight into microbial evolution, lateral gene transfer, and approaches that microbes use to adapt to new niches. This sequencing work also laid the foundation for generating genome sequence information from whole environments without using a first culturing step, a field of research now known as “metagenomics,” and the study of the human microbiome is now a major worldwide initiative. The evolution and adaptations of pathogenic species as we continue to learn from genomic and metagenomic studies will be presented.
Bio: http://www.jcvi.org/cms/about/bios/knelson/
Michael J. Novacek, Senior Vice President and Provost of Science, American Museum of Natural History
Michael Novacek has served since 1982 as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History where he is currently Senior Vice President and Provost of Science and Curator of Paleontology. Awarded a doctoral degree (with honors for outstanding graduate research) at the University of California, Berkeley (1978), his studies concern patterns of evolution and relationships among extinct and extant organisms. His interests have ranged from paleontological evidence to new data on DNA sequences. He has led paleontological expeditions to Baja California, the Andes Mountains of Chile, the Yemen Arab Republic, and Gobi Desert of Mongolia in search of fossil dinosaurs and mammals. Dr. Novacek is the author of more than 190 titles, including articles in the international scientific journals Science and Nature and popular books
Dr. Novacek oversees a staff of 200 scientists, graduate and postgraduate fellows, and technicians who have responsibility for one of the world’s largest natural history and cultural collections (32 million specimens and artifacts). In the Fall of 2006 the State of New York authorized the Museum to grant Ph.D. s in Comparative Biology in its new Gilder Graduate School. The Museum is the only institution of its kind in the country to have Ph.D.-granting status. Dr. Novacek has served as President of the Society of Systematic Biologists, and the Bioadvisory Committee for the National Science Foundation. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received Honorary Doctorates from Long Island University in 1996 and Beloit College in 2006. He is also the recipient of the Roy Chapman Andrews Distinguished Explorer Award (2003) and The Explorer’s Club Lowell Thomas Award (2005).
Camille Parmesan, Associate Professor, Section of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, US
HUMAN HEALTH IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE: INSIGHTS FROM THE WILD
The World Health Organization has concluded that human-driven climate change has already affected human health. While some consensus has developed about future direct effects of climate change (e.g. impacts of increasing floods, more heat waves, and fewer cold snaps), there is much less consensus on how more complex impacts, such as disease incidence or food quality and availability, may develop. Part of the difficulty in developing projections for disease impacts is that data is skewed towards incidence of disease in human populations, rather than the ecology of diseases and their vectors in the wild. However, 66% of human pathogens also use wild animals as hosts. Poleward range shifts of up to 2000km, and upward range shifts of up to 400m, have been detected in meta-analyses of hundreds of insects, birds, and mammals over the past 30 to 130 years. Many species in each of these groups act as reservoirs or vectors of human diseases. It is likely, then, that climate change has already had a significant effect on the geographical range of many vector species and associated pathogens. Substantial evidence already exists that many vector-borne diseases are sensitive to climate variations. However, differences in disease incidence in climatically similar regions make it clear that models which consider climate alone without incorporating societal aspects of disease growth and transmission are likely to over-estimate disease expansion with climate change. Conversely, the rate of climate change is expected to increase rapidly in coming decades, which might lead to an underestimation of health impacts. Careful consideration should, therefore, be given to maximizing the chances of detecting early effects of climatic changes on disease distributions and dynamics in the wild, as well as on incidences in human populations. More subtle effects of climate change are also possible. Local food resources may be impacted in multiple ways by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and associated climatic and sea level changes. Both subsistence and commercial fish populations may be reduced by loss of coastal nursery grounds due to rising sea level and by loss of tropical coral reefs. Terrestrial crops may be impacted by more than geographic shifts of growing regions. For example, studies of insect/plant interactions indicate a lowering of nutritional value of plants grown in a high CO2 environment sufficient to significantly impact insect growth, with obvious implications for human crops.
Camille Parmesan received her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin in 1995. She then took a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California. She is currently an Associate Professor in Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Parmesan’s early research spanned multiple aspects of the behavior, ecology and evolution of insect/plant interactions in natural systems. Since 1992, however, the focus of her work has been on biological impacts of anthropogenic climate change in natural systems. Her field work has focused on documenting continental-scale range shifts of butterfly species across both North America and Europe and linking these to regional climate change. Her more recent research has concentrated on global-scale syntheses and meta-analyses of biological responses to climate change across all taxonomic groups. These syntheses have documented the global nature of climate change impacts, spanning all living organisms from microbes to plants to charismatic animals in terrestrial, freshwater and marine systems.
The intensification of global warming as an international issue led Dr. Parmesan into the interface of policy and science. She has given presentations for White House and Congressional seminar series, has been involved in several U.S. and international assessments of climate change impacts, and has provided formal testimonies at the national level (e.g. for the US House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming), as well as at the state level. She has also been active in climate change programs for many international conservation organizations, such as IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature), the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), and the National Wildlife Federation, and served on the Science Council of the Nature Conservancy. She has been involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in varying capacities for more than a decade (e.g. as Lead Author, Reviewer), and shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to IPCC.
Parmesan has received several awards of distinction for her work in climate change and conservation: the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Achievement Award in Science; named as "Outstanding Woman Working on Climate Change," by IUCN; and named as “Who’s Who of Women and the Environment” by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in honor of “International Women’s Day”. Her work has been highlighted in hundreds of scientific and popular press articles, such as in Science News, the New York Times, the London Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, Science ét Vie, Audubon magazine, National Public Radio, Earth&Sky, the BBC film series "State of the Planet" with David Attenborough, CNN, CBS Evening News, ABC Nightline with Peter Jennings, ABC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, and ABC’s “Nature’s Edge” series with Bill Blakemore.
Publications related to the AMNH conference:
Sala, O, C Parmesan, L Myers, Editors. (2009) SCOPE Assessment: Biodiversity, Global Change and Human Health: from Ecosystem Services to Spread of Disease (Island Press).
Parmesan, C. and P. Martens. (2009) Climate change, wildlife and human health. Ch. 14 in: SCOPE Assessment: Biodiversity, Global Change and Human Health: from Ecosystem Services to Spread of Disease. O. Sala, C. Parmesan and L. Myers (Eds), Island Press.
Parmesan, C, SM Skevington, J-F Guegan, P Jutro, S Kellert, A Mazumder, M Roué, M Sharma. (2009) Biodiversity and Human Health: The Decision Making Process. Ch. 4 in: SCOPE Assessment: Biodiversity, Global Change and Human Health: from Ecosystem Services to Spread of Disease. O. Sala, C. Parmesan and L. Myers (Eds), Island Press
Meyerson, FAB, LA Meyerson, C Parmesan, OE Sala. (2009) Human health, biodiversity and ecosystem services: the intertwined challenging future. Ch. 16 in: SCOPE Assessment: Biodiversity, Global Change and Human Health: from Ecosystem Services to Spread of Disease. O. Sala, C. Parmesan and L. Myers (Eds), Island Press.
Sala, O, LA Myers, C Parmesan. (2009) Changes in biodiversity and their consequences for human health. Ch. 1 in: SCOPE Assessment: Biodiversity, Global Change and Human Health: from Ecosystem Services to Spread of Disease. O. Sala, C. Parmesan and L. Myers (Eds), Island Press.
Jonathan Patz, Professor of Environmental Studies & Population Health Sciences, and Director, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, US
Jonathan Patz, MD, MPH, is a Professor and Director of Global Environmental Health at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He Co-chaired the health expert panel of the US National Assessment on Climate Change and was a Convening Lead Author for the United Nations/World Bank Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. For the past 15 years, Dr. Patz has been a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) – the organization that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
He is President of the International Association for Ecology and Health and has written over 85 peer-reviewed papers and a textbook addressing the health effects of global environmental change. He has been invited to brief both houses of Congress, served on several scientific committees of the National Academy of Sciences, and currently serves on science advisory boards for both CDC and EPA. In addition to his sharing in the 2007 Nobel Prize, Dr. Patz received an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellows Award in 2005, shared the Zayed International Prize for the Environment in 2006, and earned the distinction of becoming a UW-Madison Romnes Faculty Fellow in 2009.
He has earned medical board certification in both Occupational/Environmental Medicine and Family Medicine and received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University (1987) and his Master of Public Health degree (1992) from Johns Hopkins University.
Susan Perkins, Assistant Curator, Invertebrate Zoology and Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, New York, US
Susan Perkins is an assistant curator and professor in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology and the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History. She is an evolutionary parasitologist who is interested in the systematics, genomics, and biogeography of microorganisms. Her primary research focus is the malaria parasites, primarily in the genus Plasmodium. Her past work on this group dealt with molecular approaches for uncovering a cryptic species of lizard malaria, phylogeographic analyses of lizard malaria in the Caribbean and the two largest molecular phylogenic studies of malaria parasites to date. Current projects include mitogenomic studies of the parasites, multi-gene systematic work, and gathering new species and specimens of these parasites through fieldwork conducted worldwide. In addition to her work on malaria, she has also done research on bacterial endosymbionts in blood-feeding leeches, genomic studies of St. Louis Encephalitis viruses, and parasitic nematodes.
She received her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Vermont in 2000, had two consecutive postdoctoral appointments at the American Museum of Natural History in 2000 and 2001, and was an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from 2001-2004. She is currently an assistant curator and professor in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology and the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History.
Oliver G. Pybus, Royal Society University Research Fellow, University Lecturer (elect) in Evolutionary Biology, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
PHYLODYNAMICS: INTEGRATING THE EVOLUTIONARY AND ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE
Many micro-organisms, particularly RNA viruses, evolve so quickly that their evolutionary and epidemiological dynamics occur on a similar timescale and interact in complex ways. Understanding and measuring this relationship is the key goal of the new field of phylodynamics, which combines ideas from phylogenetics, ecology, population genetics, and immunology. Evolutionary and epidemiological processes are typically combined by placing them on a common timescale or spatial frame of reference, an approach that can be applied at hugely different biological scales, from studies of global pandemics to investigations of pathogen evolution within a single organism. I hope to explain and illustrate the range of empirical questions open to phylodynamic analysis, with an inevitable bias toward RNA viral infections of humans.
Oliver Pybus is an evolutionary biologist of infectious disease based in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. He is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Tutor in Biology at New College, Oxford. Broadly, his research concerns the evolutionary dynamics of RNA viruses, particularly the hepatitis C virus, and the interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes in determining pathogen behaviour. He also develops new analysis tools for genetic epidemiology, made freely available from http://evolve.zoo.ox.ac.uk. His other interests include beer, soccer and neolithic funerary monumentation.
Selected publications:
Pybus OG, Barnes E, Taggart R et al. 2009. The genetic history of the hepatitis C virus in East Asia. Journal of Virology 83:1071-82
Rambaut A, Pybus OG, Nelson MI et al. 2008. The genomic and epidemiological dynamics of human influenza A virus. Nature 453:615-9
Belshaw R, Gardner A, Rambaut A, Pybus OG. 2008. Pacing a small cage: mutation and RNA viruses. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 23:188-93
Tee KK, Pybus OG, Li X et al. 2008. Temporal and spatial dynamics of the HIV-1 circulating recombinant forms 08BC and 07BC in Asia. Journal of Virology 82:9206-15
Recker M, Pybus OG, Nee S, Gupta S. 2007. The generation of influenza outbreaks by a network of host
immune responses against a limited set of antigenic types. PNAS 104:7711-6
Pybus OG, Rambaut A, Belshaw R et al. 2007. Phylogenetic estimation of deleterious mutation load in RNA viruses and its contribution to viral evolution. Molecular Biology & Evolution 24:845-52
Katzourakis A, Tristem M, Pybus OG, Gifford RJ. 2007. Discovery and analysis of the first endogenous lentivirus. PNAS 104:6261-5
Kent H. Redford, Director, Wildlife Conservation Society Institute, and Vice President, Conservation Strategy, Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York, US
Kent Redford is Director of the WCS Institute and Vice President of Conservation Strategy. He completed his Bachelor's Degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz and his doctorate at Harvard University. He held post-doctoral fellowship and faculty appointments at the University of Florida, in the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. Working with colleagues, he established interdisciplinary graduate programs in conservation and development, focusing on students from tropical countries. He directed the Parks in Peril Program and ran the conservation science department in the Latin American Division at The Nature Conservancy. While there, he helped develop guidelines for ecoregion-based conservation in the United States and abroad. Kent also worked with Goldman Sachs to facilitate the donation of a private protected area, a 650,000 acre property on Tierra del Fuego.
Peggy M. Shepard, Executive Director, West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc., New York, New York, US
Peggy Shepard is executive director and co-founder of West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc. (WE ACT). WE ACT is a nationally recognized organization in the field of community-based participatory research in partnership with the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Founded in 1988, WE ACT was New York’s first environmental justice organization created to build community power to improve environmental health, policy and protection in communities of color. Ms. Shepard is a co-investigator of the Columbia Children’s Environmental Health Center’s Community Outreach and Translational Research Core and community partner of the NIEHS Center for Environmental Health In Northern Manhattan at Columbia. She is a recipient of the Jane Jacobs Medal from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2008, the 10th Annual Heinz Award For the Environment, and the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in 2004. A former Democratic District Leader, she represented West Harlem from 1985 to April 1993, and served as President of the National Women’s Political Caucus-Manhattan from 1993-1997. She currently serves as a member of the National Academy of Sciences America’s Climate Choices committee, which will draft a report of recommendations to Congress in late 2009.
A former journalist, Ms. Shepard was a reporter for The Indianapolis News, a copy editor for The San Juan Star, and a researcher for Time-Life Books. She has served as an editor at Redbook, Essence, and Black Enterprise magazines. Ms. Shepard began a career in government as a speechwriter for the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal and Director of Public Information for Rent Administration. She served as the Women’s Outreach Coordinator for the New York City Comptroller’s Office.
She has served as a member of the National Children’s Study Advisory Committee to the National Institutes of Health, and the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council of the National Institutes of Health. She served on the Committee on Ethical Issues in Housing-Related Health Hazard Research Involving Children, Youth, and Families, a project of the National Research Council, which published its report in 2006. Ms. Shepard served as a guest editor of a special supplement of Environmental Health Perspectives, Advancing Environmental Justice Through Community-Based Participatory Research, which was published in April 2002.
Ms. Shepard is a board member of the NYS and NYC Leagues of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense Fund, NY Earth Day, Audubon NY, the Children’s Environmental Health Network, and the Public Health Association of New York. She is an advisory board member of Mt. Sinai’s Children’s Environmental Health Center, the Environmental Leadership Project (ELP), Center for Excellence In Environmental Toxicology, University of Pennsylvania, and the NIEHS Public Interest Partners.
Selected publications:
Vasquez V., Minkler M., Shepard P. Promoting Environmental Health Policy Through Community Based Participatory Research: A Case Study from Harlem, New York, Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 2006, Vol.83, No.1 doi:10.1007/s11524-005-9010-9.
Ethical Considerations for Research on Housing-Related Health Hazards Involving Children. Committee on Ethical Issues in Housing-Related Health Hazards Involving Children, Youth and Families, Bernard Lo and Mary Ellen O'Connell, Editors, National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2005).
The Challenge of Preventing Environmentally Related Disease in Young Children: Community-Based Research in New York City; Airborne Concentrations of PM (2.5) and Diesel Particles on Harlem Sidewalks: A Pilot Study; Urban Air Pollution and Health Inequities: A Workshop Report ,contributor; all articles which were published in Environmental Health Perspectives between 1999 and 2002.
Community Revitalization and Public Health: Issues, Roles and Relationships For Local Public Health Agencies, June 2002, The National Association of County and City Health Officials,Chapter V, Environmental Justice and Brownfields.
Shepard P., Northridge M. et. al. Preface: Advancing Environmental Justice through Community-Based Participatory Research, Environmental Health Perspectives 2002; Vol.110, Supp.2:139-140.
Northridge M., Shepard P., et. al. Commentary: Diesel Exhaust Exposure Among Adolescents in Harlem: A Community-Driven Study, American Journal of Public Health, 1999, 89: 998-1002
Northridge M., Shepard P., Comment: Environmental Racism and Public Health, American Journal of Public Health 1997; 87: 730-731
“Issues of Community Empowerment: Urban Environmental Justice," Fordham Urban Law Journal, 1994; 21: 739-755.
Eleanor J. Sterling, Director, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, US
Eleanor Sterling is the Director of the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC). She oversees strategic planning and project development, leads fundraising efforts, and manages a multidisciplinary staff of over 25. In her capacity as a conservation biologist, Dr. Sterling also conducts fieldwork, studying the distribution patterns of biodiversity in tropical regions of the world and translating this information into recommendations for conservation managers, decision-makers, and educators. She has extensive expertise developing environmental education programs and professional development workshops, having trained teachers, students, and U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in a variety of subjects related to biodiversity conservation. In 2000, in partnership with colleagues from around the world, Dr. Sterling launched the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners, a global initiative that primarily targets undergraduate- and graduate-level educators in developing countries who will train the next generation of conservation biologists. The project has had training workshops in Bolivia, Vietnam, Lao PDR, Mexico, Peru, Rwanda, The Bahamas, the Solomons Islands, and Madagascar.
Dr. Sterling has more than 25 years of field research experience in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where she has conducted surveys and censuses, as well as behavioral and ecological studies of primates, whales, and other mammals. She is considered a world authority on the aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascarensis), a nocturnal lemur found only in Madagascar. She has studied biodiversity and the history of land use in Vietnam, leading to the publication in 2006 of the award-winning Vietnam: A Natural History, co-authored with two CBC colleagues and published by Yale University press.
Dr. Sterling has served as an adjunct professor at Columbia University since 1997, and is the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology. She sits on the Board of Governors of the Society for Conservation Biology and is the Chair of the Society's Education Committee. She received her B.A. from Yale College in 1983 and her M. Phil and Ph.D. in Anthropology and Forestry and Environmental Studies from Yale University in 1993. Dr. Sterling joined the CBC in 1996 as Program Director and was named the Director of the Center in 2000.
Bio: http://cbc.amnh.org/center/staff/stffsterling.html
William C. Sullivan, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Environmental Council, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, US
FORGING NEW CONNECTIONS AMONG ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCHOLARS
There is wide recognition that the environments in which we live, work, and play impact human health both positively and negatively. In spite of this recognition, however, there are few opportunities for scholars from Medicine, Public Health, Environmental Design, and the Environmental Sciences to collaborate while teaching about the environmental health challenges of this new millennium.
A unique partnership is working to address this paucity of interaction among environ¬mental health scholars. Our collaboration involves the National Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors. Our purpose is to engage scholars from a variety of disciplines, prepare instructional materials (e.g., case studies, exercises, lectures), and develop a learning community of scholars who will interact with each other and share resources. This talk considers our progress to date, and invites your participation as we move forward.
William Sullivan is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Environmental Council at the University of Illinois. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan with a concentration in Environment and Behavior. His research examines the psychological and social benefits of environmental design, and citizen participation in environmental decision-making. Lately, he’s focused his attention on issues related to environmental sustainability and the role of public institutions in creating sustainable, healthy places. Sullivan is president-elect of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors.
Bio: http://web.mac.com/wcsulliv/
Gary W. Yohe, Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, and Visiting Professor of Economics, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, US
ON PRIORITIZING RISK-REDUCING STRATEGIES IN A DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT
Risk-based analyses of how humans might respond to dynamic sources of external stresses by reducing exposure (through mitigation) and/or sensitivity (through adaptation) have become increasingly popular. Based on first principles of economic efficiency, these analyses explain why people buy insurance, diversify their portfolios and, perhaps most generally, try as hard as they can to “hedge their bets” in confronting uncertain futures by adopting robust strategies. This presentation will demonstrate how the statistical definition of risk can prioritize alternative responses across sectors, space, and time even with limited information and thereby identify (2) cost effective collections of robust strategies when resources are tight and information is sparse. It will build on a decision-support tool derived by the New York Panel on Climate Change to characterize climate-related vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure. The template was designed to illuminate critical tradeoffs across a wide range of possible responses and across multiple vulnerabilities that all make claims on the same resource base. While climate change was the motivation for its creation, it can also be applied to environmental and health risks derived from any external source of dynamic stress. Of course, as we have learned from the recent financial meltdown, it is important to emphasize reducing risk cannot guarantee that catastrophic consequences will be avoided.
Gary Yohe is the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University; he has been on the faculty at Wesleyan for more than 30 years. He is currently a visiting professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, and received his PhD in Economics from Yale University in 1975. He is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles, several books, and many contributions to media coverage of climate issues. Most of his work has focused attention on the mitigation and adaptation/impacts sides of the climate issue. He is a senior member of the IPCC that was awarded a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Involved with the Panel since the mid 1990’s, he served as a Lead Author for four different chapters in the Third Assessment Report that was published in 2001 and as Convening Lead Author for the last chapter of the contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report. It that Assessment, he also worked with the Core Writing Team to prepare the overall Synthesis Report. Dr. Yohe is a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, the standing Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change of the National Academy of Science and the Adaptation Panel of the National Academy of Science recently released initiative on America’s Climate Choices.