Dalla Lana School of Public Health

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This will be the first keynote in a series of upcoming lectures from The Institute for Pandemics focused on future pandemic readiness.  This keynote features  Dr. Kim Prather from UCSD as well as an international roundtable.

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Understanding how communicable diseases spread is the key to their control.

During the current SARS-2 coronavirus pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that aerosol transmission is the dominant mode of spread of disease. However, public health authorities and many hospitals remain reluctant to acknowledge the airborne nature of SARS-2 coronavirus transmission.

In her inaugural keynote address, Dr. Kimberly Prather, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry and Distinguished Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at University of California, San Diego, will discuss the science behind aerosol transmission of viral infectious diseases, and the body of evidence that now demonstrates dominant airborne transmission of our current pandemic, as well as the implications of aerosol for pandemic control, including her own work to make schools in San Diego safer.

Dr. Prather’s address will be followed by a roundtable of international experts in the fields of engineering, medicine and architecture, who will discuss the challenges in knowledge translation posed by this paradigm shift, as well as the institutional and cultural barriers it has highlighted. The roundtable will also discuss implications of aerosol transmission for the built environment and building design, with reference to both the current pandemic and future pandemic threats.

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Keynote Speaker: Kim Prather, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry and Distinguished Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at University of California, San Diego.

Panel Members:

• Trish Greenhalgh – Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences and Fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford. She studied Medical, Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge and Clinical Medicine at Oxford before training first as a diabetologist and later as an academic general practitioner. She has a doctorate in diabetes care and an MBA in Higher Education Management.
• Sara Jensen Carr – Assistant Professor of Architecture and the Program Director for the Master of Design in Sustainable Urban Environments at Northeastern University. Her work and research on the connections between urban landscape, human health, and social equity has been recognized by the Graham Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, and has been published in Preventive Medicine, LA+, The Avery Review, Places Journal, and Hawai’i Journal of Medicine and Public Health, among others.
• Victor Leung – Infectious diseases physician and medical microbiologist. He is the Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Control, and the Physician Lead for Antimicrobial Stewardship at Providence Health Care in Vancouver.
• Matthew Oliver – Deputy Registrar and Chief Regulatory Officer of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta, regulating engineering and geoscience in Alberta for 72,000 members.

Please click on the following link at 1 p.m. to join the event: https://phesc.zoom.us/j/87573265441?pwd=dmxMb2hFMEhLSVFUeW5nRkFOYS9sdz09