2024 Global Health Symposium was April 10, 2024

DR. JAMES CONWAY

DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEALTH OFFICE, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Dr. James 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 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.

DR. JORGE OSORIO

DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEALTH INSTITUTE

Jorge Osorio, DVM, Ph.D., M.S.,  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.

Osorio is also the Co-director of a Colombia-Wisconsin One Health Consortium, a joint effort between the University of Wisconsin and Universidad Nacional in Colombia that is studying emerging diseases and one-health issues.

He 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.

ERIN BARBATO

DIRECTOR IMMIGRANT JUSTICE CLINIC, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN LAW SCHOOL

Erin M. Barbato is the Director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She teaches second and third year law students to represent individuals in removal proceedings and with humanitarian-based immigration relief. The work often involves representing people seeking refuge in the United States. Previously, Erin worked as an immigration attorney at a non-profit organization and in private practice as well. 

Prior to attending law school, Erin volunteered as a teacher at El Centro del Muchacho Trabajador, a non-profit organization in Quito, Ecuador. While in Quito, she worked with families and recently resettled refugee families living at or below the poverty line. 

The Wisconsin Law Journal recognized Erin in 2010 as an Up and Coming Lawyer for her dedication to representing immigrants and pro bono service. In 2013, she received the Lee and Lynn Copen Family Justice Award from Women and Children’s Horizons for her work with immigrant victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. The Wisconsin Law Journal again recognized Erin’s work with immigrants by awarding her as a Woman in the Law in 2014. She has also been a member of Wisconsin Pro Bono Honor Society since 2013. In 2021, the students at the University of Wisconsin Law School awarded her with the Clinical Teacher of the Year Award. 

Currently, she is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, (AILA) the Wisconsin Bar Association, on the Board of Directors of the Community Immigration Law Center (CILC) and DREAMers of Wisconsin. She is also a faculty affiliate with Chican@ & Latin@ Studies at the College of Letters & Science. 

SARA MCKINNON

PROFESSOR, RHETORIC, POLITICS, & CULTURE, DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION ARTS

FACULTY DIRECTOR, LATIN AMERICAN, CARIBBEAN, AND IBERIAN STUDIES

Sara L. McKinnon is Professor of Rhetoric, Politics & Culture in the Department of Communication Arts, and Faculty Director of Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies. She is co-chair of the Human Rights Program, with affiliations in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and Chican@ & Latin@ Studies. 

Her current research examines foreign policy rhetoric in an era of globalization, considering as case studies collaborations between the United States, Mexico, and Central American countries since the 1980s to address regional issues such as drug trafficking, corruption, and migration. She is also working on a collaborative project to expand the information about US immigration and refugee programs and legal counsel available to migrants throughout Latin America as they consider safe options for movement and resettlement. 

McKinnon’s books include Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2016), which charts the incorporation of protections for survivors of gender- and sexuality-based persecution in US refugee and asylum law, and Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method (Penn State University Press, 2016), which considers a range of approaches for using ethnographic and field-based methods in doing rhetorical research. 

She regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in communication and human behavior, migration and refugee studies, gender and communication, intercultural communication, and conflict studies, and qualitative and text-based research methods. 

FRANCES VAVRUS

VICE PROVOST AND DEAN, INTERNATIONAL DIVISION

Frances Vavrus is the Vice Provost and Dean of the International Division at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which leads campus efforts to promote international scholarship and engagement, cultivate global awareness, and prepare students for a diverse and interconnected world. The division is the home to UW–Madison’s distinguished regional studies centers, study abroad and international internship programs, and less commonly taught language programs. It also provides critical services to the university, city, and state on international projects, international safety and security, and holistic support for international students, faculty, and staff on immigration and intercultural affairs. 

As a UW–Madison alum, Dean Vavrus has benefited from many of the programs supported by the International Division. She studied Swahili as a graduate student with the support of a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship; she is the recipient of both a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholars Fellowship; she taught in the International Studies Major; and she studied abroad as an undergraduate and led a study abroad program as a professor. In addition, Dean Vavrus has helped to establish institutional partnerships with universities abroad and served as the Co-principal Investigator for a U.S. Agency for International Development project partnering with higher education institutions in Zambia. 

Dean Vavrus served for two decades as a professor of comparative and international education at Columbia University’s Teachers College and at the University of Minnesota, where she received numerous awards for her teaching and mentoring. She has also held leadership positions at both universities and, since 2015, she has served as the North American representative on the Joint ILO/UNESCO Committee of Experts on the Application of the Recommendations concerning Teaching Personnel, a multinational committee of 12 experts that monitors international trends in education and allegations of violations of the rights of K–12 teachers and higher education faculty. Dean Vavrus’ professional expertise and personal engagement in international education enable her to bring a unique perspective to her role as the senior international officer for the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

DR. ROBERT N. GOLDEN

VICE CHANCELLOR FOR MEDICAL AFFAIRS, ROBERT TURELL PROFESSOR IN MEDICAL LEADERSHIP, AND PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY, DEAN, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Robert N. Golden, MD has served as Dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health and Vice Chancellor for Medical Affairs at UW Madison since 2006. He is also the Chair of the Board of UW Health, an integrated academic health system.

Dr. Golden received his BA cum laude with honors in psychology from Yale, and his MD from Boston University School of Medicine. Following his residency and chief residency in psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, he completed a research fellowship in the Clinical Pharmacology Section of the National Institute of Mental Health. He returned to UNC-Chapel Hill where he served in a series of leadership roles, including Associate Director of the General Clinical Research Center and the Mental Health Clinical Research Center, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, and Vice Dean of the School of Medicine.

Dr. Golden’s national activities have included appointments as President of the American College of Psychiatrists, Chair of the Board of the Association of Academic Health Centers, Director of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and Associate Editor for Psychosomatic Medicine and Neuropsychopharmacology. His honors include the Eugene Hargrove Mental Health Research Award and the American College of Psychiatrists Mood Disorders Research Award, the Distinguished Medical Alumnus Award from the UNC School of Medicine, and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Boston University School of Medicine.

Dr. Golden lives in Madison Wisconsin with his wife, Dr. Shannon Kenney, the Wattawa Bascom Professor of Cancer Research in the Departments of Oncology and Medicine.

DR. KRISTIN LONG

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, ENDOCRINE SURGERY, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Dr. Kristin Long is an Associate Professor at UW in the Division of Endocrine Surgery. She completed her specialty fellowship training at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston Texas, and completed her Masters in Public Health here at the University of Wisconsin after joining the faculty in 2016. 

Her clinical practice involves treating benign and malignant disease of the thyroid, parathyroid, and adrenal glands. Her academic focus is on surgical education and capacity building in low resource settings, with a particular focus in eastern and southern Africa. 

She is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, as well as the College of Surgeons of Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa, and currently serves on the executive board of the Association of Academic Global Surgery.