Thank you for your interest in the Global Health Symposium!
The 2nd Annual Global Health Symposium was a great success! Thanks to the speakers who volunteered their time and to those who came to be part of the discussion. Stay tuned to this page for information about upcoming symposiums.
Speakers
Thank you to the following speakers who brought their insights to our discussions on the interdisciplinary field of global health!
Aatif Baskanderi, BEng, MTM, MSc
Aatif Baskanderi is a Newfoundlander who received both his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering & Master of Technology Management degrees at Memorial University, and a M.Sc. Social Policy & Development degree at the London School of Economics & Political Science. He has worked and volunteered his time with various engineering, government, and not-for-profit organizations across Canada, US, UK, Palestine, and Sierra Leone. His year in Sierra Leone included working on an interfaith community-based public education project for malaria prevention with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. This involved training and managing 184 faith leaders who then trained 6000+ field volunteers to disseminate malaria prevention information for behaviour change to over 1million Sierra Leoneans across the country. This consisted of a multi-stakeholder approach with local/national government and community partners including Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Inter-Religious Council, universities, NGOs, and religious institutions. Aatif returned to Canada in 2012 to work in the areas of science & innovation policy, including at the Council of Canadian Academies and spending his first 3 years in Calgary leading the UK Science & Innovation Network in the Prairies at the British Consulate-General Calgary managing collaboration on global grand challenges. He currently works as a Startup and Corporate Innovation Strategist & Coach at Innovate Calgary, as well as Co-President of Engineers Without Borders Calgary City Chapter and creating a documentary with his wife entitled, "Salaam B'y - A Story of a Muslim Newfoundlander". |
Dr. Janice Heard, MD, FRCP(C) Pediatrics
Dr. Heard is a community paediatrician who has worked for the last 10 years with vulnerable populations in inner city clinics, in elementary schools and on First Nations reserves, after having spent the previous 18 years working in her own practice and at ACH and RVH, Wood’s Homes and the Child Abuse Clinic. Dr. Heard has a strong interest in global health. She first worked with Healthy Child Uganda, then, ten years ago became a member of the U of Calgary “Laos -Improving Rural Health Initiative”. With this group she teaches Laos family doctors, medical students and residents all things pediatric. Most recently she has been teaching neonatal resuscitation and maternal health using simulation. She has also started the Laos Community Development Initiative, fundraising and aiding in the rebuilding of a school in southern Laos, as well as providing educational materials and student scholarships. |
Dr. Olayemi M. Olabiyi, BSc, MSc, Phd
Dr. Olabiyi has a PhD in public policy and political economy from the University of Texas at Dallas and currently holds a faculty position at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. His research looks at how population health interventions interact with underlying social determinants and risk patterns to improve or worsen both overall population health and population health inequality in developed and developing regions. |
Dr. Dylan R. Pillai, MD, PhD
Dr. Pillai is Associate Professor at the University of Calgary, Medical Microbiologist at Calgary Laboratory Services, and Infectious Diseases physician in the Department of Medicine. He completed his MD and PhD degrees at the University of Toronto and post-doctoral training at Stanford and UCSF. His research interests focus on translational studies related to the treatment and diagnosis of human pathogens such as P. falciparum, S. pneumoniae, and enteric infections. A particular focus has been on point-of-care molecular diagnostics in resource-limited settings in order to improve clinical outcomes. He has strong collaborative links with the University of Gondar, Ethiopia where he is cross-appointed, and is leading studies in infectious disease diagnostics and treatment, teaching laboratory medicine, and mentoring graduate and medical students. Additionally, he has conducted medical research in Peru, Bangladesh and Laos leading to high-impact publications and is pursuing new collaborations in Sri Lanka. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles including prestigious journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and Science. He has garnered over $1.18 million as principal investigator and $6.019 million as co-investigator in competitive funding for his research efforts in the past decade, including two Stars in Global Health grants from Grand Challenges Canada. He has trained several undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral scientists. Dr. Pillai is a member of the College of American Pathologists Microbiology Advisory Committee that conducts external quality assurance for clinical laboratories throughout the world. He is also a member of the Scientific Program Committee in the American Society of Tropical Medicine Hygiene founded in 1903 and the largest of its kind. On a personal note, he is a father of four children, foodie, and enjoys playing tennis, skiing, and swimming. |
Dr. Warren Wilson, BA, MA, Phd
I am a biological anthropologist who tries to understand what influences the health of folks in developing countries. In doing so, I consider health in light of physiology, culture, and evolution. I include culture as decades of research have demonstrated that behaviour strongly influences health and that only by understanding cultural contexts can we begin to provide sustainable solutions. I include evolution as it can explain both why bodies work so well and why many aspects of bodies seem to be so vulnerable to failure. My early work focused on children in urban Colombia (1992-1993), Amerindians in both the Colombian Amazon (1993-1997) and Guyana’s rainforests (1999-2007), and refugees in Canada (2008-2009). From 2010-2013, in collaboration with Jason DeCaro (U. Alabama), I initiated and ran a project documenting health and its predictors among mothers and their children in Tanzania. In 2014, in collaboration with Barbara Piperata (Ohio State U.), Kammi Schmeer (Ohio State U.), Jason DeCaro (U. Alabama), and Comunidad Connect (Nicaraguan NGO), I initiated and continue to run a project exploring maternal and child health in rural Nicaragua. In this we consider the relationship between an array of predictors (e.g. food insecurity, social capital, sociodemographics) and an innovative model which captures the cumulative impact of environmental challenges on overall health (allostatic load). The immediate outcome of the projects in Tanzania and Nicaragua is the identification of barriers to maternal and child health in these regions, which in the long term should lead to the development of new evidence-based and locally-relevant solutions. |
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