Bernard Kouchner, cofounder of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), addressed the Global Health: A Bridge to the Future conference. Photos by Albert L’Etoile

Participants from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, including doctors, scientists, politicians, composers, filmmakers, and poets, discussed how to eliminate inequity, prejudice, and inefficiencies in health care systems worldwide. Bernard Kouchner, founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders); John Abele, founding director of Boston Scientific; and Robert Pinsky, former three-term U.S. poet laureate and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, were featured speakers.

The conference — which was co-sponsored by the School of Public Health and BU’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Alan and Sherry Leventhal Fund for Leadership and Innovation at Boston University — kicked off GHI’s second year. “It put Boston University in the spotlight,” says Gerald T. Keusch, director of GHI. “Suddenly, there was newfound visibility for Boston University with multiple audiences, at home and abroad, aided by the live Webcast and the eight hours of programming on WBUR.” Then in December, GHI hosted a conference on cholera and bacterial infections for the United States–Japan Cooperative Medical Science Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, as well as a seminar on emerging infectious diseases, co-organized by Keusch and sponsored by the National Science Foundation, for senior scientists and policy makers from the U.S., China, and Korea.

BU Professor Robert Pinsky, former three-term U.S. poet laureate, at the conference

This year, in a GHI-funded pilot interdisciplinary research program, John Gerring and Strom Thacker, Arts and Sciences professors of political science and international relations, respectively, are working with SPH Associate Professor Jonathon Simon and Assistant Professor William Macleod at the School of Public Health to explore the relationship between governance and public health policies in sub-Saharan Africa. The inaugural Distinguished Scholar in Global Health, Sima Samar, former minister for women’s affairs in Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet, and currently director of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, will teach and lecture on campus in May and October. The second scholar, Nirmal Ganguly, director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research, will be in residence the following year.

	John Abele, founding director of Boston Scientific, at the conference

Through GHI’s partnerships with BU’s schools and colleges, students are increasingly being prepared to be “global citizens,” as GHI’s mission stipulates. The new Boston University Student Global Health Organization — which includes undergraduate and graduate students from both campuses — has sponsored a discussion on obstetric fistula in Niger, hosted an event about careers in global health, and participated in the Rx for Child Survival Campaign, which provides antibiotics and vaccinations to children in developing nations.

In addition, the GHI is encouraging current and former BU students to bring their experiences working in foreign health care systems back to campus. Kevin Fiori (SPH’03), a former Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, spoke last semester about volunteering with a group that provides services to people infected with HIV. The GHI was founded in 2004 in response to opportunities created by the increasing connections between School of Public Health faculty and colleagues in developing countries. Now, working with faculty from several BU schools and colleges, Keusch, former associate director for international research at the NIH and director of its Fogarty International Center, and GHI Deputy Director Constance Cramer have identified five priority research areas that effectively link the University’s resources: basic science; urbanization, environment, and population; innovation systems; political institutions, governance, and health systems; and communications, health journalism, and the arts. Each area plays a vital role in GHI’s mission, Cramer says, and collaborating with the School of Public Health and with faculty and students in multiple departments across the University will ensure that each goal is well addressed in both scientific discovery and the application of new knowledge internationally.

Jennifer Jackman (left); Sima Samar, director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission; and School of Public Health Dean Robert F. Meehan chat during a break in November's conference. As the first Distinguished Scholar in Global Health, Samar will be on campus to teach and lecture in May and October.

The Bridge to the Future conference asked its participants the questions, “Where do we want to be with respect to global health and health disparities by the year 2050? And what do we need to do to get there?”

The GHI, many responded, has started the process simply by starting the dialogue.

— Jessica Ullian