03/14/13  Portland, Ore.

OHSU's Global Health Center Student Interest Group is hosting the 10th Annual Western Regional International Health Conference — “Global Health in Changing Environments” — April 5 through 7 in Portland.

The conference will address a wide range of topics in global health from genetics to human rights. It provides an opportunity for students, educators and community leaders representing diverse disciplines to come together to discuss, debate and explore the relationships between human health and changing environments.

Human health and well-being are constantly impacted by changing environments. Those changing environments include earthquake, war, social conflict, famine, displacement, industrialization and resource extraction, to name a few.

The Western Regional International Health Conference, which began as a student-inspired, student-run conference, now draws hundreds of students, faculty, staff, residents and community members from the western half of the United States and Canada.

This year’s conference topics will include:

• Sharing the world's resources: water wars, food insecurity, environmental pollution;
• Human rights and health: trafficking, domestic violence, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender health, homelessness;
• Migrants, refugees and displacement: refugee and immigrant health, health care affordability, legal issues and policy with migrant heath care;
• Ethics in global health: benefits and drawbacks of non-governmental organizations, global research ethics;
• Changing patterns of disease: emerging infectious diseases, changing burden of disease; and
• Technology and health: cell phones, telemedicine, genomics and global health.

Those outside of the health professions are strongly encouraged to participate. Understanding the forces that shape health across the globe requires the energy and ideas of many diverse minds working towards common goals.

Register for the conference.

When

Friday evening, April 5, to Sunday noon, April 7, 2013

Where

6:30 p.m., April 5, at the Portland Art Museum; beginning 9 a.m., April 6 and 7, in the Auditorium of the OHSU Marquam Hill campus.

Welcome

Melody Rose. Rose was appointed interim chancellor of the Oregon University System this month. The chancellor is hired by the State Board of Higher Education and entrusted to carry out the policies of the board as its chief executive officer, overseeing $5.5 billion in state assets distributed across seven public universities.

Keynote

Howard Frumkin, M.D., M.P.H., Dr.P.H., dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health. Frumkin is also special assistant to the Director for Climate Change and Health at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is former chair of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and former director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the CDC.

Frumkin will present his keynote address — “Sustainable Cities: The New Human Habitat” — at 6:30 p.m. on April 5 at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave., Portland.

Immediately before the WRIHC conference, Frumkin also will present the 3rd Annual Kathryn Robertson Memorial Lecture in Global Health, at noon on April 5, in the Vey Conference Room, 11th floor of OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.