The University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Student Alliance for Global Health and Creighton University Medical Center will host the Second Annual Midwest Global Health Conference on Saturday.
The conference, titled, “Local Practices, International Perspectives: Developing a Global Conscience at Home and Abroad,” will be held Nov. 4, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the Durham Research Center, located at the corner of 45th and Emile streets on the campus of UNMC. Registration is $10 for students and $20 for faculty and staff.
The Midwest, as defined the U.S. Census Bureau, includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The target audience of the conference is medical and health students throughout this region, although announcements are circulated nationwide and there are no restrictions on attendance.
The inaugural conference last year verified that the Midwest region has extensive resources of health science professionals with international experience as clinicians, researchers, missioners and activists. This year’s roster of speakers continues this tradition. There will be two keynote addresses and 12 breakout presentations.
Some of the presentations will include:
- Morning keynote presentation “Global Health & Medicine: Just Do It!” – Keith Brown, M.D., medical director, Belize Institute for Tropical and Wilderness Medicine
- Closing keynote presentation “The Other Side of the Mirror: The Face of Refugees in African Settlement Camps” – Valda Boyd Ford, RN MPH, director of UNMC Community and Multicultural Affairs and founder/CEO of Center for Human Diversity
- “Health Provisions in the Developing World” – Jumoke Omojola, MPH Program Technician, UNO/UNMC MPH Program; Elizabeth Rogers, fourth-year medical student, UNMC; and Kate Venable, M.D., internal medicine/pediatrics resident at University of Illinois-Peoria
- “Travel Abroad and Practice Here: Lessons Learned about Cultural Competency” – Shannon DeShazo, M.D., family medicine resident, Urban Underserved Track, UNMC
- “Needs Assessment on HIV Transmission among Sudanese and Bantu Somali Women in Omaha” – Anna Odipo-Nyambo, clinical research associate, preventative and societal medicine, UNMC
- “Guiding Cross Cultural Healthcare: Respect and Justice” – John Stone, M.D., Ph.D, adjunct professor, Center of Health Policy and Ethics, Creighton University Medical Center, Center for Health Policy and Ethics
- “A Model of Health Care in a Developing Country in Partnership with Creighton University” – Joseph Lynch, medical director of ILAC at Creighton University and association professor of medicine, division of cardiology, Creighton University
Some of the other conference presentations will cover exchanges between nursing students in China and Omaha, a surgeon’s international experiences, anti-malarial drug research, Creighton medical students from Project Cure, health and global travel, the ethics of outsourcing clinical trials and public health and maternal child care.
In addition, there will be poster presentations on global health issues and advanced educational opportunities.
“This type of conference is held annually at various locations on the east and west coasts, where there is a proliferation of medical schools,” said Sara Pirtle, coordinator of UNMC International Studies and Programs. “Here in the Midwest, there is much greater distance between medical schools and there has been no effort, up until last year, to have a global health conference in the Midwest.
“In September 2005, UNMC hosted the first Midwest Global Health Conference over a two-day weekend and attracted more than 150 participants. This year we are doing a one-day conference with the anticipation of planning a two-day conference again for next year. There is simply nothing else like this occurring in the Midwest.”
Click here or contact Joanna Quigley at jquigley@unmc.edu or Sara Pirtle at 402-559-2924 for full conference details, including schedule, registration and lodging information.