Unite for Sight Conference: Part 2
Joshua Schulman-Marcus, a 4th year medical student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, was also at the Unite for Sight Conference (also see the entry from Danyaal Raza below) and gives his take on the weekend-Rhona
Unite for Sight
I am writing from New Haven, Connecticut on the second day of the Unite for Sight international health conference. The first day was quite busy, with about 2,200 attendees attending dozens of sessions. Most are from the United States, though there are a fair number from international venues as well. In contrast to some international health conferences, here I have met many attendees from the disciplines of development, nursing, economics, business, and even law. This has made the exchange of ideas far more vibrant than I would have expected, and last night I spent some time wondering how I could apply these ideas to my own personal projects.
The conference opened with lectures from some of the luminaries in global health. Dr. Allan Rosenfield from the Columbia University School of Public Health presented a thoughtful discussion on maternal mortality, and the idea of training nonphysicians to do cesarean sections in underserved areas. Dr. Jim Yong Kim of Harvard gave an impassioned and thought-provoking address on the difficulties of implementing public health strategies in low-income settings. His discussion weaved dramatic pictures of HIV patients in Rwanda with ideas from business and systems analysis. Dr. Kim called for greater attention to what he called “implementation science,” a scientific discipline to reduce the bottleneck between technological discovery and delivery to the world’s poorest. Even as much of the material was familiar to me, I was riveted by Dr. Kim’s presentation, and joined the thousands of participants who gave his talk a standing ovation.
The second day of the conference began with an articulate and focused presentation by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute of Columbia University. Dr. Sachs articulated the difficulties in balancing the demand for rising living standards in developed countries, the need to ameliorate extreme poverty, and the ecological constraints of increased growth. He accentuated the need for international cooperation to address these “diverging tendencies,” an effort he conceded will take “an odyssey of decades.” Dr. Sachs was most impassioned when speaking about the need for the US government to take a greater role in leading the international solutions to these problems, saying that “there is no place to run anymore” as humanity’s “commonality” is increasingly clear. His wife, Dr. Sonia Sachs, presented the Millennium Villages project, as a focused proof-of-concept on addressing extreme poverty. The attendees gave both speakers an enthusiastic standing ovation.
I could not attend the dozens of breakout sessions, but I would like to comment on one that I found invigorating. Dr. Jeffrey Robinson of the NYU Stern School of Business enthusiastically led a workshop on social entrepreneurship to an audience diverse in backgrounds and professions. He laid out the basis for social entrepreneurship and its possible roles versus those of markets, governments, or NGOs. Using case examples, he emphasized the importance of long-range business planning and measurement as being intrinsic to a successful venture. Dr. Robinson encouraged discussions on social marketing, the role of entrepreneurship in health, and the ingredients for successful and socially responsible enterprises, incorporating numerous case examples. As I listened to their thoughtful and pragmatic comments, I couldn’t help but be impressed by what so many of my peers were attempting to do in communities throughout the world. In spite of the awesome challenges that face us, while sitting in that room I had a sense that our generation has enormous amounts of skills and energy to offer. It was affirming to be sitting and learning amongst some of our best and brightest. Joshua Schulman-Marcus: jschumar@gmail.com
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