Global Health Tuesday: Climate Change Impacts on Global Health

Ambassador John E. Lange, M.S., J.D., is Senior Fellow for Global Health Diplomacy at the United Nations Foundation, and serves as the Foundation’s primary focal point for global health diplomacy activities and its wide-ranging work with the World Health Organization. He chairs the Leadership Team of the Measles & Rubella Initiative and earlier served as co-chair of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s Polio Partners Group.

Lange had a distinguished 28-year career in the Foreign Service at the U.S. Department of State, where he was a pioneer in the field of global health diplomacy, serving as the Special Representative on Avian and Pandemic Influenza; Deputy Inspector General; Deputy U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at the inception of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; and U.S. Ambassador to Botswana (1999-2002). Lange also worked from 2009-13 at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he engaged in high-level global health advocacy with international organizations and African governments.

Sumudu Atapattu is Teaching Professor and Director of the Global Legal Studies Center at University of Wisconsin Law School. She is affiliated with UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Global Health Institute, the Center for South Asia, and the 4W Initiative, and is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Program. She is also the Lead Counsel for Human Rights at the Center for International Sustainable Development Law; and affiliated faculty at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights, Sweden. She has published widely including several books on climate change and human rights, international environmental law, and environmental justice.

Dr. Atapattu has worked on several projects as an independent consultant, attended several  climate COP meetings, UN experts consultations, and taught blended learning courses on human rights and the environment in Asia organized by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights. Her research examines the link between human rights and the environment, especially climate change, climate migration and small island states.

Dominique Brossard is Professor and Chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an affiliate of the UW-Madison Robert & Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the UW-Madison Energy Institute, the UW-Madison Global Health Institute, and the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. She is also a Principal Investigator at the Morgridge Institute for Research. Her teaching responsibilities include courses in strategic communication theory and research, with a focus on science and risk communication.

Brossard co-directs the Science, Media and the Public (SCIMEP) research group, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the International Communication Association. Brossard is an internationally known expert in public opinion dynamics related to controversial scientific issues, and been an expert panelist for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) on various occasions. She currently serves on the NASEM Climate Communication Initiative Advisory Committee, as well as on the Executive Committee of the Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN), which aims at facilitating rapid and actionable responses to social, behavioral, and economic-related COVID-19 questions. Brossard is a member of the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. She is also on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences and she is the Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation.

Jonathan Patz, M.D., MPH, is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor and the John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment with appointments in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Population Health Sciences. For 15 years, Patz served as a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC)—the organization that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. He also co-­chaired the health expert panel of the U.S. National Assessment on Climate Change, a report mandated by the U.S. Congress. He is also an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Patz has written more than 200 scientific papers with more than 100 peer-reviewed, a textbook addressing the health effects of global environmental change and co‐edited the five­‐volume Encyclopedia of Environmental Health (2011). He, most recently, co-edited “Climate Change and Public Health” (2015, Oxford University Press) and is leading a Massive Open Online Course “Climate Change Policy and Public Health.”

He has been invited to brief both houses of Congress and has served on several scientific committees of the National Academy of Sciences. Patz served as Founding President of the International Association for Ecology and Health.