CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Infectious disease expert Mosoka P. Fallah, one of five “Ebola fighters” honored as a Person of the Year by Time in 2014, will be among the speakers at an upcoming symposium at the University of Illinois.
“Health in Africa and the Post-2015 Millennium Development Agenda,” May 20-22, will explore the health threats and opportunities facing sub-Saharan Africa.
Researchers will examine the progress made toward the United Nations’ eight millennium development goals over the past 14 years, and will identify new health objectives, targets and indicators for the future. Issues such as food security, nutrition and health; infant, child and maternal health; and aging and noncommunicable/degenerative diseases will be explored in panel discussions.
“The scale of the challenges facing Africa demands an extraordinary response, and necessitates bringing together an interdisciplinary group of researchers to advance recommendations,” said Juliet Iwelunmor, a professor of kinesiology and community health, who is coordinating the event along with Diana Grigsby-Toussaint, a professor in the same department, and geography professor Ezekiel Kalipeni.
“The conference will bring together more than 50 research experts from around the world, and give the academic community a voice in establishing health priorities in Africa,” Iwelunmor said. “With Carle Illinois College of Medicine establishing the nation’s first engineering-based medical school on campus, addressing core-critical issues in global health is a step toward making the campus a leader in global health concerns.”
Fallah will give a plenary talk on the use of mobile health – also called “mhealth” – technology in battling the Ebola epidemic in his native Liberia. Fallah was instrumental in coordinating the responses of community leaders in the region.
Collins O. Airihenbuwa, a professor and the department head of biobehavioral health at Pennsylvania State University, will give the event’s second plenary talk, discussing the role of culture in bridging global health inequities. Airihenbuwa is the lab director of the Global Health and Culture Project at Penn State, studying health and behavioral issues among African and African-American populations.
“We are very fortunate to have someone such as Mosoka Fallah, who has really been in the trenches at the forefront of the response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and will speak to us about his experience building community resources to track the disease and curb its spread,” said Grigsby-Toussaint, who also is a professor of nutritional sciences. “The diverse group of conference participants hopefully will allow us to find synergy across discipline-specific theories and concepts as we strive to meet the call for global health action as part of the post-2015 development agenda.”
The National Science Foundation is a major sponsor of the conference, along with several units at Illinois, including the Illinois Strategic International Partnership, International Programs and Studies, the department of kinesiology and community health, and the department of geography and geographic information science.
The symposium will be held in the Hawthorn Suites Conference Center, 101 Trade Center Drive, Champaign.
The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. To register, or for more information, visit the conference website, http://www.healthinafricamdg.com/.
Editor’s note: To reach Juliet Iwelunmor, call 217-333-2307; email jiwez@illinois.edu. To reach Diana Grigsby-Toussaint, call 217-333-9207; email dgrigs1@illinois.edu.
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