The symposium aims to advance the value of solidarity upon which the University of Tromsø is based. We hope to spur national debate in the field by discussing global health initiatives springing out of Tromsø’s academic and professional community, and the aspect of solidarity in responses to global health challenges driven by conflict, migration and neoliberal practices across the world.
We are very pleased to confirm that two distinguished guest speakers graciously have offered to give their input to the debate (see short bios further down):
- Dr. Paul Farmer, who will discuss the tension between human rights approaches and commercialization of health
- Dr. Nils Daulaire, who will discuss options for Norwegian global health support in policy and practice in the light of USA’s change of course as an influential global health actor
The programme further includes presentations and debates under the following headlines:
- Solidarity in health – “Folk-til-folk” (People-to-people) collaboration in practice in north and south
- Social movements: Successful mechanisms to stop austerity measures in health care services
- Migrants and indigenous people: minority health care and structural challenges
The full symposium programme will be issued early December 2017, but you are already invited to register for the event. Continue to registration here.
Please note that hotel rooms should be booked early due to other events scheduled in Tromsø in January (Arctic Frontiers and Tromsø International Film Festival).
The symposium starts at lunch time Monday 22 January.
Follow information about the symposium on the web page of Centre for Arctic and Global Health and on Facebook.
Information about the main speakers:
Paul Farmer
Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer (MD, PhD) has dedicated his life to improving health care for the world's poorest people. He is a founding director of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. The work has become a model for health care for poor communities worldwide: Dr. Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad have pioneered novel community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings.
Dr. Farmer holds an MD and PhD from Harvard University, where he is the Kolokotrones University Professor and the Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School; he is also Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. Additionally, Dr. Farmer serves as the United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.
Dr. Farmer has written extensively on health, human rights, and the consequences of social inequality. His most recent books are In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction, and To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation. Other titles include Haiti After the Earthquake, Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, The Uses of Haiti, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, and AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. Tracy Kidder's book Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, chronicles the development of Dr. Farmer's work in Haiti and beyond.
Dr. Farmer is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Bronislaw Malinowski Award and the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and, with his PIH colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Nils Daulaire
The Honorable Nils Daulaire (MD, MPH) is the Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Senior Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute. Dr. Daulaire previously served in the Obama Administration as Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as the United States Representative on the Executive Board of the World Health Organization, as well as Alternate U.S. Board Member to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. He was one of the architects of the Obama Administration's Global Health Security Agenda, which launched in early 2014. Earlier, he had served in the Clinton Administration as Deputy Assistant Administrator for Policy at the U.S. Agency for International Development, with responsibility for global health and population, girls' and women's education, food security and human development. He was the U.S. government's chief negotiator on health issues at the 1995 Beijing Women's Conference and the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development.
For over a decade between these two appointments, Dr. Daulaire served as president and CEO of the Global Health Council, which represented practitioners, field researchers and advocates in global health and led policy and advocacy efforts to improve maternal and child health, reproductive health and family planning, HIV/AIDS and infectious disease control in the poorest populations around the world. Earlier in his career, Dr. Daulaire worked as a technical advisor on primary health care to numerous ministries of health, including five years residency in Nepal where he conducted groundbreaking field research on community-based management of childhood pneumonia and vitamin A deficiency.
Just prior to coming to Harvard, he spent a year as the Senior Visiting Scholar on Global Health Security at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. Earlier, he was a clinical professor of global health at the University of Washington and visiting professor of community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. He is a member of the prestigious U.S. National Academy of Medicine as well as the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. Daulaire has worked with over 50 countries around the globe and speaks seven languages. He holds a BA degree from Harvard College, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, an MPH from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, and an MD from Harvard Medical School.