July 16, 2019

Vaccines have been a vital asset in reducing childhood mortality and morbidity. They have saved millions of children’s lives around the world and are one of the most cost effective public health measures.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the life-saving properties of vaccines there has been an increase in vaccine hesitancy in many parts of the world. This has resulted in a deadly resurgence of preventable infectious diseases that is claiming an increasing number of children’s lives.

Join us on Tuesday, July 16 at 3pm ET for a webinar by two global leaders in the field of vaccines and vaccine hesitancy to learn about this challenge and what we can do to enable children to access the vaccines they need to protect them from an array of preventable and potentially lethal diseases.

SPEAKERS:

Dina Borzekowski, Ed.D, Ed.M, Research Professor, Behavioral and Community Health; Interim Director, The Global Health Initiative, University of Maryland

Dina L.G. Borzekowski is the interim Director of the Global Health Initiative and a Research Professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health. Her educational degrees are from Cornell University (B.S., Biology), Columbia University (M.S., Communication, Computing and Technology), and Harvard University (Ed.M., Educational Media; Ed.D., Developmental Psychology).

Borzekowski’s topics of expertise include: Health Communication, Global Health, Maternal and Child Health, Adolescent Health, and Research Methods. Borzekowski has over 70 papers and chapters in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies.

In her professional career, Borzekowski’s has focused on children, media and health. She has conducted research in around 32 countries exploring how young people use media and how media impacts on the health and development of children and adolescents. Additionally, Borzekowski has had experience producing and evaluating media, including work with Sesame Workshop, MTV, and Ubongo Kids. She has recently introduced the term “constancy” to describe the constant state of media in children’s lives.

Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine, Professor, Pediatrics and Molecular & Virology and Microbiology, Co-Head, Section of Pediatric Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine
Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D. is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine where he is also the Co-Director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD). He is an internationally-recognized physician-scientist in neglected tropical diseases vaccine development. Dr. Hotez obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics from Yale University in 1980, followed by a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Rockefeller University in 1986, and an M.D. from Weil Cornell Medical College in 1987. Dr. Hotez has authored more than 500 original papers and is the author of 3 single-author books, most recently Vaccines Did Not cause Rachel’s Autism (Johns Hopkins University Press). Dr. Hotez was President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and he is founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2011 he was awarded the Abraham Horwitz Award by the Pan American Health Organization of the WHO. In 2014-16 he served in the Obama Administration as US Envoy, focusing on vaccine diplomacy initiatives between the US Government and countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2018 he was appointed to serve on the Board of Governors for the US Israel Binational Science Foundation. He has served on infectious disease task forces for two consecutive Texas Governors. For these efforts in 2017 he was named by FORTUNE Magazine as one of the 34 most influential people in health care, and in 2018 he received the Sustained Leadership Award from Research!America.

MODERATOR:

Keith Martin, MD, Executive Director, CUGH
Dr. Martin is a physician who, since Sept. 2012, has served as the founding Executive Director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) based in Washington, DC.

Between 1993-2011, Dr. Martin served as a Member of Parliament in Canada’s House of Commons representing a riding on Vancouver Island. During that time he held shadow ministerial portfolios in foreign affairs, international development, and health. He also served as Canada’s Parliamentary Secretary for Defense. In 2004, he was appointed to the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. His main areas of focus are in global health, foreign policy, security, international development, conservation and the environment. He is particularly interested in strengthening human resources capabilities and scaling up initiatives in low-income settings that improve environmental sustainability and human security.

As a parliamentarian, Dr. Martin created CanadaAid.ca, an online platform to facilitate partnerships between universities, governments, multilateral institutions, NGOs, and the private sector. In 2006, Dr. Martin founded Canada’s first all-party Conservation Caucus in Parliament and developed an online conservation site to help mainstream sustainable conservation and environmental practices into development initiatives to achieve positive outcomes for the environment and people.

Dr. Martin has been on numerous diplomatic missions to areas in crisis including Sudan, Zimbabwe, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Colombia, and the Middle East. He served as a physician in South Africa on the Mozambique border during that country’s civil war. He has travelled widely in Africa, visiting the continent 26 times. Dr. Martin is the author of more than 150 editorial pieces published in Canada’s major newspapers and has appeared frequently as a political and social commentator on television and radio. From 1997-2000, he created and moderated the nationally syndicated, current affairs television program, Beyond Politics. He is currently a board member of the Jane Goodall Institute, editorial board member for the Annals of Global Health and an advisor for the International Cancer Expert Corps. He has contributed to the Lancet Commission on the Global Surgery Deficit, is a current commissioner on the Lancet-ISMMS Commission on Pollution, Health and Development and is a member of the Global Sepsis Alliance. Dr. Martin is based in Washington, DC, which is the home of CUGH’s Secretariat.