Global Health
Future challenges: disease and development
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In a wide-ranging conversation as part of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future seminar series Future Challenges, three well-known BU professors discuss global health issues. Gerald Keusch, director of BU’s Global Health Initiative and Medical Campus associate provost for global health, James McCann, a College of Arts and Sciences professor of history, and Randall Ellis, a CAS professor of economics and president-elect of the American Society of Health Economists, agree that the solution to global health issues stretching well into the future will require an interdisciplinary approach and public-private partnerships that consider the biological, social, political, and economic contexts of addressing disease and providing health care in developing countries.
The panelists discuss the need to change the way wealthy donor countries and institutions can set the agenda for how resources are used on health care in developing countries. They argue that wealthy countries and donors typically will focus on treating a few major diseases, while the priorities of local leaders may center on the need for public health infrastructure, such as safe drinking water supplies or improved delivery of health-care services. The panelists also talk about the U.S. health-care system’s high costs for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, where often a marginal improvement can disproportionately increase their cost. In comparison, they point out examples in low- and middle-income countries of low-tech, low-cost prosthetics that have been developed and serve people well.
March 24, 2008, 11:30 a.m.
Pardee House
About the speakers:
Gerald Keusch, a School of Public Health professor, is the director of BU’s Global Health Initiative and the Medical Campus associate provost for global health. He came to BU in 2003 from the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center, where he was the director.
James McCann is a College of Arts and Sciences professor of history and the associate director of development at the African Studies Center.
Randall Ellis is a CAS professor of economics and president-elect of the American Society of Health Economists.
The session was moderated by Pardee Center Director Adil Najam, the Frederick S. Pardee Professor of Global Public Policy and a CAS professor of international relations and of geography and environment.
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