Leading global public health scientists to inaugurate research school and lecture in Umeå
NEWS
Professors Robert Beaglehole and Ruth Bonita, eminent public health scientists at the World Health Organization (WHO), will visit Umeå University on Wednesday 27 February to hold a public lecture and together with the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Bengt Järvholm, to officially open a new nationally-financed Research School in Global Health. The media is welcome to attend the inauguration ceremony and succeeding luncheon.
Event programme:
10:00 am. Inauguration of the Research School in Public Health at the Umeå International School of Public Health (UISPH). Professor Bengt Järvholm, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and Stig Wall, Professor of Epidemiology and Health Care Research, and others. Followed by a public lecture by Robert Beaglehole and Ruth Bonita: Global Public Health: The Challenges Ahead
The locale is Lecture Room B, 9th Floor, Dentistry Building, Norrlands University Hospital. The lecture is expected to conclude at 11:45 a.m. To be immediately followed by a lunch mingle in the Epidemiology and Public Health Science sector in the old section of Norrlands University Hospital.
Representatives from the media are welcome to attend the event on the ninth floor and the luncheon.
Professor Bengt Järvholm, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Phone: +46 (0)90-785 22 41 Mobile: +46 (0)70-619 22 41 E-mail: bengt.jarvholm@envmed.umu.se
Robert Beaglehole – brief biography:
Robert Beaglehole is trained in medicine, epidemiology and public health in New Zealand, England and the USA before becoming a Public Health Physician. He was Professor of Community Health at the University of Auckland, New Zealand (1988-1999).
He joined the staff of the World Health Organization in 2000 and between 2004 and 2007 he directed the Department of Chronic Disease and Health Promotion. He developed an integrated and stepwise approach to the prevention and control of chronic diseases and led the development of the Bangkok Charter on Health Promotion in a Globalized World.
He left WHO in February 2007 having reached the UN retirement age and returned to live in New Zealand. He is now co-director of International Public Health Consultants and Professor Emeritus of the University of Auckland.
Over the last year he has coordinated a series of five papers on chronic diseases for the Lancet, published on line on December 4, 2007. Together these papers significantly advanced the evidence base for interventions to prevent and control chronic diseases. Details can be found at www.lancet.com
He has co-edited the 5th Edition of the Oxford Textbook of Public Health, due late 2008 and with Ruth Bonita the 2nd Edition of Global Public Health, Oxford University Press, due late 2008.
Professor Beaglehole is international advisor to the Centre for Global Health Research at Umeå University as of 2008.
Ruth Bonita – brief biography:
Ruth Bonita is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and a co-director (with Robert Beaglehole) of International Public Health Consultants Limited (i-PHC), a New Zealand based agency addressing health policy in New Zealand, the Pacific, and globally. She gained her interest in cardiovascular disease prevention, management and surveillance through her research on the epidemiology and management of stroke which has spanned almost three decades.
Between 1999 and 2004 she was Director of the Department of Surveillance in the Noncommunicable Disease Cluster at the World Health Organization, Geneva, and in the office of the Assistant-Director General, Evidence for Information and Policy during 2005.
During her tenure at WHO, she was involved with mapping the advancing epidemics of stroke and other chronic diseases and the major risk factors which predict them. She devised and led the development of a simplified surveillance system, the WHO STEPwise approach to Surveillance (WHO STEPS), suitable for collection of standardized data in low and middle-income countries where the gaps in information for policy are the greatest.
She co-edits with R Beaglehole the 2nd Edition of Global Public Health, Oxford University Press, due late 2008 and is a co-author o the third edition of Basic Epidemiology (WHO 2008).
She is a member of Advisory Board of Ageing and Life Course programme of work at Umeå University, where she is 1996 was awarded Honorary Doctor of Medicine.
