Michael Merson on The AIDS Pandemic: Searching for a Global Response, 3/28
ISHPSS
History of the Health Sciences Lecture, March 28, 2023, 6pm
The AIDS Pandemic: Searching for a Global Response
Michael Merson, M.D., Clinical Professor of Global Health, School of Global Public Health, New York University
When: Tuesday, March 28, 2023, 6-7pm
ONLINE ONLY
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC; REGISTRATION REQUIRED:
https://library.cumc.columbia.edu/events/history-health-sciences-lecture-0
The AIDS pandemic has been the most devastating pandemic in modern history, and while prevention and particularly treatment have had a huge impact, it has been a very long struggle to get where we are today. Dr. Michael Merson, former Director of the World Health Organization’s Global Program on AIDS, will discuss how governments, UN agencies, civil society, and the private sector – for better or for worse – responded to the pandemic over the course of its history. He will focus to a large extent on WHO’s Global Program on AIDS (GPA), which led the global response to the pandemic from 1987 until 1995. The Program was closed down in 1995 at the peak of HIV infections because of concerns over its performance, displeasure with the reelection of an unpopular Director General, and feuding between UN agencies. In its place, UNAIDS was established to bring about an enhanced and more coordinated and multisectoral response. Soon after, PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria were established. Dr. Merson will touch upon the lessons we should have learned to help us better respond to other pandemics.
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Michael Merson is currently Clinical Professor of Global Health at NYU School of Global Public Health. He is the William Joklik Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Global Health at Duke University, where he served as the founding director of the Duke Global Health Institute and as Vice President and Vice Provost for Global Affairs and as Vice Chancellor for Duke-National University of Singapore Affairs. Prior to this he joined the faculty at Yale University as its first Dean of Public Health. Before entering academia, between 1980 and 1995, Dr. Merson served as director of the World Health Organization (WHO) programs on Diarrheal Diseases and Acute Respiratory Infections, and subsequently the WHO Global Program on AIDS.
Dr. Merson has authored over 180 articles, is the senior editor of the leading global health textbook Global Health: Disease, Programs, Systems, and Policies and co-author of The AIDS Pandemic: Searching for a Global Response on the history of the global response to AIDS. He has served in advisory capacities for UNAIDS, WHO, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, World Bank, World Economic Forum, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and been an advisor to various private sector entities on the COVID-19 pandemic. He has two honorary degrees and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
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