On Friday 25 November at 7:30pm the Humanitarian Centre presents, the first ever Global Health Life Raft Debate. Who will survive??
We imagine there has been an apocalyptic disaster, and that the sole survivors, the audience, have built a life raft to take them to a new land, where they will have the opportunity to build a new society.
Experts from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds in Global Health will vie for the one remaining space on the life raft, each presenting an argument for why their particular expertise will be most useful for the health of the future society, and rebutting the others.
At the end of the debate, the audience will vote for who has earned their place on the life raft—though it may be that “Devil’s Advocate,” wins the debate by convincing the audience not to take any of the experts on board.
This event is FREE to attend and no membership of the Cambridge Union is required. Spaces are on a first come, first served basis, so please arrive at the Union early to secure a seat. The debate will begin promptly at 7:30.
Chair and Speakers:
Chair: Alan Fenwick is a Professor of Tropical Parasitology at Imperial College and directs the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. He also runs the Global Health Short Course at Imperial College. He will be the chair of the debate, guiding us through the scenario and each presentation. He is a wonderful, lively, and fun (and funny) facilitator (and my inspiration for holding this event).
Jenny Dean established and now runs the Centre for Health Leadership & Enterprise at the Cambridge Judge Business School. Previously she worked for ten years as a Doctor in the NHS in various hospitals, specialising in Anaesthesia. During that time she spent a continuous 18 months as a medical officer on a British Research Station in Antarctica, and has also worked freelance in Aeromedical Repatriation and Hyperbaric Medicine. She has a MSc in Remote Health Care (Polar Option) and an MBA from Cambridge.
Steve Gillam is Director of Public Health Education at University of Cambridge, Professor of Primary Care at the University of Bedfordshire, and a GP in a deprived area of Luton. He was previously Director of Primary Care at the King’s Fund, a national policy institute. He was heavily involved in charting the impact of primary care policy under new Labour including the development of Primary Care Trusts. And he has overseas experience of public health medicine through an appointment with Save The Children Fund.
Belinda Clarke is Director of External Relations at IdeaSpace Enterprise Accelerator, which is a four year programme to support the generation of new firms and jobs across the Eastern Region, hosted at the Hauser Forum. She was previously Life Sciences Manager at One Nucleus (formerly ERBI), International Trade Adviser at UKTI and Science Liaison Manager at Norwich Research Park Science.
Simon Szreter is a professor of History and Public Policy at the Univeristy of Cambridge. His current research includes the study of qualitative and quantitative sources on the history of fertility decline in Britain, including a new project on the venereal diseases and fertility decline; the history of mortality public health and politics; and the comparative history of identity registration systems in world history. He is a long-term honorary research associate of the Cambridge Group for the history of Population and Social Structure and currently hold a Leverhulme Grant with colleagues there to investigate newly-available child mortality and fertility data from the 1911 census.
Lawrence Peter King is a Reader in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College. He studies the impact of privatization programs and macroeconomic policies on the global health crisis in the postcommunist world and less developed countries. He currently holds an Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council to conduct a large scale study the impact of privatization on mortality in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Hungary.