Identifying Global Health Threats and Accelerating Local Solutions

ASLM2016 speakers will provide scientific plenary sessions, symposia, and round table discussions on addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs), promoting global health security, and expanding partnerships to identify health threats and accelerate local solutions.

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ASLM2016 Speaker Highlights

ASLM2016 Opening Keynote Speaker & Global Health Security Plenary Speaker
Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, Regional Director for Africa, World Health Organization (WHO)
Dr. Moeti from Botswana is the first woman WHO Regional Director for Africa. She aims to build a responsive, effective and result-driven regional secretariat that can advance efforts towards universal health coverage and accelerate progress toward global development goals, while tackling emerging threats. Dr. Moeti is a public health veteran, with more than 35 years of national and international experience. She joined WHO’s Africa Regional Office in 1999 and has served as Deputy Regional Director, Assistant Regional Director, Director of Non-communicable Diseases, WHO Representative for Malawi, and Coordinator of the Inter-Country Support Team for the South and East African countries. Prior to joining WHO, she worked with UNAIDS as a Team Leader of the Africa and Middle East Desk in Geneva (1997-1999); with UNICEF as a Regional Health Advisor for East and Southern Africa; and with Botswana’s Ministry of Health as a Clinician and Public Health Specialist. Notably, at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, she led the WHO Regional Office for Africa’s efforts on treatment scale-up in the context of the ‘3 by 5’ initiative and established a regional HIV laboratory network resulting in a significant increase in the number of individuals accessing antiretroviral therapy.

Partnerships and Smart Investments to Turn the Tide of Global Health Threats (Plenary Speaker)
Dr. Eric Goosby, UN Special Envoy on Tuberculosis (TB)
Dr. Goosby is a Professor of Medicine and Director of Global Health Delivery and Diplomacy, Global Health Sciences, at the University of California, San Francisco. From 2009-2013, he served in the Obama Administration as Ambassador-at-Large and U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, overseeing the implementation of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and also led the State Department’s Office of Global Health Diplomacy. In January 2015, Dr. Goosby was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to be the UN Special Envoy on Tuberculosis (TB). As Special Envoy, he works to promote awareness of TB, both to encourage people to get tested, and send a message to world leaders that more resources are needed to make the world free from TB.

What Does Global Health Security Mean for Africa: Looking Back and Current Realities (Plenary Speaker)
Dr. Kevin De Cock, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Kenya
Dr. De Cock is the Director of CDC Kenya, and most recently was the Director of CDC’s Center for Global Health in Atlanta, USA. He joined CDC in 1986 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer in the Special Pathogens Branch, Division of Viral Diseases. Dr. De Cock was the founding Director of CDC’s collaboration on HIV with Cote d’Ivoire, Projet RETRO-CI, from 1988-1993. From 2006–2009 he was Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Department of HIV/AIDS and previously served as Director of the CDC Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention – Surveillance and Epidemiology in the United States. He has published over 350 papers and book chapters.

Global Health Security, Public Health Institutes, and Laboratory Networks (Symposium #2 Co-Convener)
Dr. Jordan Tappero, Division of Global Health Protection, US CDC
Dr. Tappero is Director of the Division of Global Health Protection (DGHP), US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He is a global leader in emergency response and recovery. Dr. Tappero was sent to Liberia in 2014 as the first CDC Lead for Public Health and Medical Response for the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. From September 2014 to January 2015, as Deputy Incident Manager for the Ebola response he assisted with directing day-to-day international and domestic Ebola response activities out of CDC’s Emergency Operations Center. As the Incident Manager for CDC’s emergency response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake and cholera epidemic, he led response efforts and thereafter directed CDC’s Health Systems Reconstruction Office for Haiti from 2010 through 2012. In 2009, he was detailed for six months to the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), as CDCs senior advisor for the H1N1 Flu Pandemic.

Antimicrobial Resistance: A Global Threat (Symposium #1 Co-Convener)
Dr. Iruka Okeke, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Dr. Okeke is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and an MRC/DfID-supported African Research Leader. She studies diarrhoeal pathogens, bacterial drug resistance, and laboratory practice in Africa. Dr. Okeke received postgraduate and postdoctoral education at Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, the University of Maryland, USA, and Uppsala Universitet, Sweden. She has since held Branco Weiss and Institute for Advanced Studies (Berlin) fellowships as well as academic positions in Nigeria, the UK, and the USA. Dr. Okeke has consulted on drug resistance, to APUA, the WHO, the Center for Global Development, the United States Pharmacopoeia, and other organisations.

Antimicrobial Resistance: A Global Threat (Symposium #1 Co-Convener)
Dr. Keith Klugman, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Professor Klugman is the Director of Pneumonia at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, USA. He is the Emeritus William H. Foege Chair of Global Health at the Hubert Department of Global Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. In addition, he serves as an Honorary Professor in the Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Professor Klugman has made major contributions to the field of pneumococcal disease. His work, including the demonstration of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine efficacy in the developing world, has led to interventions that have saved millions of lives especially in Africa. He has published more than 500 scientific papers which have been cited more than 25,000 times to date.

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