23 Oct Joep Lange Chair and Fellows Symposium 2024: Our Speakers and Topics
This year’s Joep Lange Chair and Fellows Symposium will be held on the 7th of November, 13:00-17:00 at De Balie in Amsterdam. Check out the full programme on the Joep Lange Chairs website: jlc.aighd.org.
2024 marks a special year for our organization as we celebrate 15 years of AIGHD. This year is also dedicated to the memory of AIGHD’s founder Joep Lange, who tragically died ten years ago and yet, still continues to inspire us with his passion for evidence-based activism. Join us for this year’s Symposium by registering here: bit.ly/JLCFSR2024.
In an era marked by unprecedented challenges and opportunities in global health, the concurrent theme of the 2024 Joep Lange Chair and Fellow Symposium and Masterclass, “Towards a Just Future in Global Health”, highlights our commitment to equity, inclusivity, and sustainability in healthcare across the globe. This year we seek to challenge and reflect on the barriers that prevent equitable access to health across various affective variables like economic status, society, and policy.
Our goal for the 2024 edition of the symposium and masterclass is to bring together students, educators, practitioners, and researchers who are passionate about how holistic science can reshape our health systems, transforming them into more equitable and accessible spaces.
The 2024 Symposium will invite renowned speakers to share their approaches to justice in the field of Global Health. How can we reduce barriers that prevent equitable access to health? What role do scientists play in leading policy change towards more equitable access to health? How do we enable participatory methods to further inform evidence-based health care? What does justice in global health look like for those who are often left behind?
You can register to the symposium using this link: bit.ly/JLCFSR2024.
Check out our speakers for this year’s Symposium!
Prof. Sridhar Venkatapuram is an Associate Professor in Global Health and Philosophy at King’s College London. He specializes in global and public health ethics and justice, conducting interdisciplinary research aimed at improving health equity. Notably, he helped establish the field of “health justice” philosophy, providing ethical guidance to global health practitioners and amplifying the role of ethics in public health education and practice.
Prof. Venkatapuram has an extensive background, holding degrees from prestigious institutions including Brown, Harvard, and Cambridge Universities. His career spans advising key organizations like the World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, and the NHS. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he has taken on multiple ethics advisory roles and currently serves on ethics committees for prominent organizations such as the WHO and the British Medical Association.
Prof. Venkatapuram’s talk is titled “Academic Global Health and Global Health Justice“.
Ellen van de Poel (PhD) is a Senior Health Economist in the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, working closely with the Moroccan government on their health sector reform as well as supporting the World Bank’s Health Financing portfolio in the region more broadly. Prior to joining the MENA region, Ellen was leading the Health Financing team within the Global Financing Facility (GFF), a Trust Fund and Partnership in the World Bank focused on improving sustainable financing for maternal and child health outcomes in partner countries, mostly concentrated in Sub Saharan Africa. She provided support to countries in developing and implementing strategies to mobilize more domestic resources for health and improve the efficiency of health spending and coordination across development partners more generally.
Before joining the GFF, and the World Bank, Ellen was an associate professor of Health Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands). Her research focused on evaluating health financing reforms and on the measurement of equity in health and has been published in leading journals. She received her PhD in 2009 from the Erasmus School of Economics. She is currently based in Rabat (Morocco) since 2023, after having spent 3 years in Dakar (Senegal).
Dr. Ellen van de Poel’s talk is titled “Bridging the Research-Policy Gap in Global Health”.
Professor Nicaise Ndembi is a Senior Advisor to the Africa CDC’s Director General and currently Associate Professor, Division of Epidemiology and Prevention at the Institute of Human Virology (IHV), University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA. Dr. Ndembi is a graduate of Kanazawa University School of Medicine, Department of Viral Infection and International Public Health, Japan and a Research Professor within the same Institution. He is a Principal Investigator on numerous grants including US National Health Institute/NIAID. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Public Health in Africa, AIDS Research and Therapy, and serves on various World Health Organization and US National Institute of Health study sections. Through his leadership, a framework for Africa vaccine manufacturing was established. He has authored or co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in professional journals.
Prof. Ndembi will be joining us remotely from the DRC as he works with the Africa CDC to control the Mpox Outbreak in the region. His talk is entitled “Ending Epidemics and Preventing Pandemics”.
Prof. Sheila Varadan is an Assistant Professor of Children’s Rights and Global Health, with a dual appointment at the Department of Health and Child Law and the African Studies Centre Leiden. She is also a co-founder of the Leiden University Network for Health in Africa (LUNHA). Dr. Varadan’s academic work focuses on the intersection of global health, human rights, and children’s rights, particularly in relation to antimicrobial resistance and access to medicine for vulnerable populations.
Her research includes leading three global health and human rights projects, focusing on the human rights implications of antimicrobial resistance, and advancing the use of primaquine in Africa as part of an EU-funded project. Additionally, she has 15 years of experience working as a human rights lawyer in Southeast Asia and is a qualified barrister and solicitor in Ontario, Canada. She also contributes to several academic programs, including teaching at Leiden University and the University of Oxford.
Prof. Sheila Varadan will talk about “A ‘Just Transition’ For Antimicrobial Resistance”.
About the Joep Lange Chair and Fellows Program
The Joep Lange Chair and Fellows Program was established in 2015 in memory of prolific HIV activist, medical doctor, and scientist Prof. Joep Lange. Funded in part by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the program was commissioned by the Joep Lange Institute and is based at the Department of Global Health-Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD) at the Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam.
About AIGHD
The Amsterdam Institute for Global Health & Development (AIGHD) is a research and education institute with a mission to address challenges in global health and development by conducting collaborative interdisciplinary research, generating insights and solutions, and educating the next generation of global health leaders.
AIGHD conducts collaborative, interdisciplinary research prioritizing infectious disease elimination, antimicrobial drug resistance, chronic care & ageing, urbanization & health, health markets, and economics of human development. It aims to educate and inspire the next generation of global health leaders at undergraduate, post-graduate and professional levels to shape a healthier and more prosperous future for all. AIGHD aspires to accelerate progress on global health objectives by sharing knowledge and insights with global agencies, governments, NGOs, and the scientific community.
About JLI
The Joep Lange Institute is an activist Global Health & Development Institute, inspired by the life and work of Dr. Joep Lange. JLI combines science, activism, and pragmatism to reach its goal: making health markets work for the poor in countries where the system fails the people. To achieve this goal JLI analyzes the obstacles and failures in healthcare today, asking inconvenient questions when necessary. The JLI comes up with concrete solutions for healthcare quality, delivery and finance. JLI develops and tests these on the ground, and advocates to scale those that have real impact for real people.