The 2023 Global Health Symposium, “One Planet, One Health,” convenes from 4:30-8:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 4, in the Health Sciences Learning Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The annual symposium brings together faculty, staff, clinicians, students and community members to share their global health work with campus and the wider community. The evening is co-hosted by the UW-Madison Global Health Institute (GHI) and the Office of Global Health in the School of Medicine and Public Health. This year’s symposium program will be live and live-streamed, with a reception following in the Health Sciences Learning Center atrium.

Built around the theme “One Planet, One Health,” the symposium will explore how the concept of One Health makes a difference in our lives, the life around us and the planet. It will celebrate the collaborations needed to tackle the global health challenges of our time: Addressing the determinants of health and disease. Learning from communities and colleagues. Preventing the next pandemic. Addressing climate change. Finding solutions that lead to equitable, sustainable health for all.

GHI Director Jorge Osorio, an international expert in epidemiology, virology and vaccines and professor of Pathobiological Sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine, will present the keynote address. In a panel discussion, UW experts will examine how the health of humans, animals, plants, the environment and the planet are interconnected. Poster presentations will showcase global health work across disciplines. Poster abstracts from UW-Madison faculty, staff, students, and UW-Madison partners will be considered. Applications are being accepted through March 22. Please see the links on the right to submit.

Watch this page for more details.

Keynote speaker

GHI Director Jorge Osorio is a professor in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine. He has had a lengthy career in medical sciences, including virology, field epidemiological studies, vaccinology, antivirals and vector control programs. He helped found the Colombia-Wisconsin One Health Consortium, a joint effort between the University of Wisconsin and Universidad Nacional in Colombia that studies diseases and One Health issues. The center was recently renamed as the GHI One Health Center|Colombia and will be a model for similar centers that will be established in Western Africa and India.

Osorio also founded VaxThera, a Colombian-based company that will produce vaccines and biologicals for Colombia and the region. He was also a co-founder and chief scientific officer of Inviragen, a biotechnology company that developed a novel chimeric tetravalent dengue vaccine that recently completed successfully Phase 3 clinical trials. He also developed vaccines against chikungunya, influenza, rabies, plague and many other emerging infectious diseases.

Osorio also has served as vice president of Research and vice president of Government Affairs for the Vaccine Business Division of Takeda Pharmaceuticals. His industry career also included positions at Heska Corporation (Ft. Collins, Colorado), Merial LTD (Athens, Georgia), and Chiron-Powderject Vaccines (Madison, Wisconsin). He has more than 30 years of research and industry experience with more than 130 scientific publications in international journals and 32 patents.

Symposium Moderator

James Conway director, Office of Global Health, School of Medicine and Public Health.

Conway is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine & Public Health, where he serves as Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program Director and Director of the Office of Global Health, as well as Associate Director for the UW-Madison Global Health Institute and Medical Director for UW Health Immunization Programs. He is responsible for coordinating global health educational programs involving health professional students at UW-Madison, and oversight of international programs in the UW School of Medicine & Public Health.

Dr. Conway has spent much of his career working to improve immunization systems and address vaccine hesitancy in the US and abroad.  He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, where he serves as a Global Sustainability advisor, and received an AAP Special Achievement Award in 2009 for his global immunization projects and another in 2016 for HPV advocacy.  He is a member of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society Vaccine Advocacy Committee and has served on the American Board of Pediatrics- SubBoard of Pediatric Infectious Diseases since 2018 and elected Chair for 2022-23.

His most recent project involves serving as a Technical and Global Sustainability Advisor for a collaborative program between the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers of Disease Control, working to simultaneously strengthen pediatric professional societies and immunization programs in over a dozen high priority countries in Africa and Asia.

He has served on the UW System & UW- Madison Emergency Operations Committees as well as the State Disaster Medical Advisory Committee on COVID-19 vaccines since early in the pandemic. He also has been a scientific advisor to healthcare and public health organizations regionally and internationally, while working on an array of COVID-19 vaccine development projects.

The panel discussion

UW-Madison experts from across campus will discuss how their work contributes to One Health. From fields as diverse as human medicine and engineering, veterinary medicine and Indigenous wisdom, education and agriculture, panelists will showcase the wealth of knowledge needed to address the complex determinants of global health.

Panelists:

Lyric Bartholomay, Associate Professor, Department of Pathobiological Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine
Director, Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Disease. Bartholomay is a vector biologist with interest in disease agents that include nematode parasites and arboviruses. She and her lab are studying mosquito-pathogen interactions with an emphasis on innate immunity in the mosquito host and are working to translate that knowledge into novel mosquito control methods.

Claudia Irene Calderon is an affiliated professor at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and a Teaching Faculty in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Wisconsin. She has experience working on the intersections between gender, indigeneity, healthy and sustainable food systems. Calderón uses participatory approaches that combines indigenous knowledge, farmer-driven and science-based innovations to support agroecological transitions in rural and indigenous territories of Mesoamerica.

 

Ann Evensen is professor and director of Global Health for the UW Department of Family Medicine and Community Health and the Faculty Director for the UW Graduate/Professional & Capstone Certificates in Global Health Online. Evensen is a faculty member in the UW Family Medicine Residency and sees patients at UW Verona clinic. She cares for obstetric and newborn patients at UnityPoint Meriter and St. Mary’s Hospitals. Evensen earned her medical degree from the UWSMPH and completed her residency at Valley Family Medicine in Renton, Washington. Her primary global health partnership is with India’s EMRI Green as an advisor to their emergency obstetric program development. She has led UW graduate/professional level field courses in India and Uganda, assisted with the development of Family Medicine as a specialty in Ethiopia, and has served as an external examiner for Family Medicine residencies in three countries. She was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in 2019 and received the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Humanitarian of the Year Award in 2018

Girma Tefera is a vascular surgeon at University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin. He joined the American College of Surgeons, Division of Member Services, as the new Medical Director of the Operation Giving Back Program in February 2015. His clinical research interests include abdominal aortic aneurysm treatment with endovascular stent graft and other complex aneurysmal diseases of the thoracic and abdominal aorta. Additionally, Dr. Tefera has led several global health funded initiatives in health care system strengthening and education in Ethiopia. He has lead the University of Wisconsin’s efforts in the development of Emergency medical services and vascular and endovascular surgery services in Ethiopia. His current global health outreach efforts through the ACS focusses on the development of Global Surgery Education Centers of Excellence in low and middle income countries. He is a devoted mentor to medical students, residents and vascular fellows.

Giri Venkataramanan, Keith and Jane Nosbusch Professor; Department Electrical and Computer Engineering; Director, Wisconsin Electric Machines and Power Electronics Consortium. Venkataramanan’s research program covers the major aspects of power conversion systems in different application areas of electric power generation, distribution, transmission and utilization systems. The horseshoe, the water wheel, the windmill, the steam engine … systems for energy transport and power conversion have always been at the forefront of human imagination. Rooted in that tradition, modern electrical power converters have evolved through the interplay of historical, social, environmental and technological factors, among others. Venkataramanan and his group use careful empirical study, reinforced with analytical modeling to elucidate the role of these factors in determining the shape and form of electrical power converters.