Dr. Tedros on global perspectives on public health

Join us for a discussion on global public health and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic response with Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization. Dean F. DuBois Bowman of the School of Public Health will moderate the conversation. Watch this event on YouTube.

This event is co-sponsored by the U-M School of Public Health.  

From the speaker's bio

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was elected WHO Director-General for a five-year term by WHO Member States at the Seventieth World Health Assembly in May 2017. In doing so, he was the first WHO Director-General elected from among multiple candidates by the World Health Assembly, and was the first person from the WHO African Region to head the world’s leading public health agency.

Born in the Eritrean city of Asmara, Dr. Tedros graduated from the University of Asmara with a Bachelor of Biology, before earning a Master of Science (MSc) in Immunology of Infectious Diseases from the University of London, a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in Community Health from the University of Nottingham and an Honorary Fellowship from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Following his studies, Dr. Tedros returned to Ethiopia to support the delivery of health services, first working as a field-level malariologist, before heading a regional health service and later serving in Ethiopia’s federal government for over a decade as Minister of Health and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

As Minister of Health from 2005 to 2012, he led a comprehensive reform of the country’s health system. Under his leadership, Ethiopia expanded its health infrastructure, developed innovative health financing mechanisms, and expanded its health workforce. A major component of reforms he drove was the creation of a primary health care extension program that deployed 40,000 female health workers throughout the country. A significant result was an approximate 60% reduction in child and maternal mortality compared to 2000 levels.

As Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2016, he elevated health as a political issue nationally, regionally and globally. In this role, he led efforts to negotiate the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, in which 193 countries committed to the financing necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

From the moderator's bio

A renowned expert in the statistical analysis of brain imaging data, F. DuBois Bowman is dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health, one of the nation’s top public health programs. Dr. Bowman’s work mines massive data sets and has important implications for mental and neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, schizophrenia, and substance addiction. His research has helped reveal brain patterns that reflect disruption from psychiatric diseases, detect biomarkers for neurological diseases, and determine more individualized therapeutic treatments. Additionally, his work seeks to determine threats to brain health from environmental exposures and optimize brain health in aging populations.

Prior to joining the University of Michigan School of Public Health, Dr. Bowman was chair and Cynthia and Robert Citrone-Roslyn and Leslie Goldstein Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and a tenured professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at Emory University. Dr. Bowman has also been a visiting scholar at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, and was the founding director of Emory’s Center for Biomedical Imaging Statistics.

• World Health Organization
• Dr. Tedros
• public health
• School of Public Health
• global public health
• Omenn-Darling
• health policy
• Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus