Protecting Health Care in Zones of Conflict: A Webinar

Panelists Leonard Rubenstein (author of the recently released Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Health Care from the Violence of War) and Joanne Liu will discuss attacks on health workers, patients, and hospitals in conflict settings around the world, along with urgent actions that need to be taken to help ensure safe access to and delivery of health care. The discussion will be moderated by Robert Lawrence.

Speakers:

Joanne Liu, Professor at the School of Population and Global Health, McGill University and former International President, Me´decins Sans Frontie`res

Dr. Joanne Liu has served as International President of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from 2013 to 2019. At the helm of MSF, she has been a leading voice on medical humanitarian crises, namely in the Ebola outbreak of West Africa and attacks on hospitals and forced displacement crises, and has engaged with world leaders at the highest levels. Dr. Liu’s role builds on a career of field work with MSF, including over 20 medical-humanitarian field assignments. Dr. Liu trained at McGill University School of Medicine in Montreal. She holds a Fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine from New York University School of Medicine and an International Master’s in Health Leadership, also from McGill University. Dr. Liu’s operational work has ranged from introducing comprehensive care for survivors of sexual violence, to developing a telemedicine platform for connecting doctors in rural areas with specialists worldwide. Dr. Liu remains a practicing doctor, both in the field with MSF and also through hospital shifts in her home town of Montreal. She is currently a Professor at the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University with a focus on pandemic preparedness and response and health emergencies.

Leonard Rubenstein, Professor of the Practice, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Prof. Leonard Rubenstein is Professor of the Practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Director of the Program in Human Rights, Health and Conflict. He is also a core faculty member the Berman
Institute of Bioethics and the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins in 2009, he was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, and
before that Executive Director and then President of Physicians for Human Rights. He has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and LL.M. from Georgetown Law School. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Congressional Minority Caucuses’ Healthcare Hero Award and the Sidel-Levy Award for Peace of the American Public Health Association. He has appeared before Congress, the World Health Assembly and the UN Security Council.

Robert Lawrence (Moderator), Center for a Livable Future Professor Emeritus, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and member of the National Academy of Medicine

Robert Lawrence is the Center for a Livable Future Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Professor Emeritus of
Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Lawrence graduated from Harvard Medical School, trained in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and served for three years as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the University of North Carolina and as director of the Division of Primary Care at Harvard Medical School and chief of Medicine at the Cambridge Hospital, he helped develop community health service and training programs.

Dr. Lawrence chaired the first U.S. Preventive Services Task Force from 1984-89 and served on the successor Task Force from 1990-96. From 1991 to 1995, he served as Director of Health Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation. He served as associate dean for professional education and programs at JHBSPH from 1995-2006, established the Center for a Livable Future in 1996, and served as its director until 2015. As a founding member of Physicians for Human Rights and former member of the Board of Directors, Dr. Lawrence has participated in human rights investigations on behalf of PHR or other human rights groups to Chile, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, South Africa, and Kosovo. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences

Please visit NASEM’s Protecting Health Care in Zones of Conflict: A Webinar project page for more information. Register on Eventbrite here.