Dear Friends of the National Institute —
The COVID-19 global pandemic has roiled societies, economies, and countless individuals’ lives. It has also introduced lasting changes into global healthcare.
Please join us for a fascinating and informative virtual discussion forum featuring two prominent healthcare experts who share their perspectives on lessons learned, mistakes made, and what we should be prepared for in the future.
We expect this to be a lively and enlightening discussion of a timely and important topic in global society, and we invite you to join us as we search for answers.
Thursday, May 27, 2021
4:00 to 5:30 pm ET (US and Canada)
This forum is sponsored by the National Institute of Social Sciences and is free and open to the general public. In order to attend, you must click the link above to register in advance for the event. The event will be recorded for those who cannot attend it live.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Fred Larsen
President, Board of Trustees
Panelists:
Dr. Christopher P. Austin is a CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering in Cambridge, MA. In that role, he serves as CEO of one of Flagship’s franchise companies and advises on the operation and creation of other Flagship entities. Before joining Flagship in 2021, Dr. Austin served for almost a decade as the founding director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the NIH, where he formulated the strategic vision and scientific directions of the new center, and led its efforts in developing, demonstrating, and disseminating scientific and operational advances across the spectrum of translational science to get more treatments to more patients more quickly, from target validation to preclinical therapeutic development to clinical trials to community health implementation. Before NCATS, Dr. Austin founded and directed a number of scientific and technology initiatives at the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH to derive biological insights and therapeutic potential from the human genome. Austin came to NIH in 2002 from Merck, where his work focused on genome-based discovery of novel targets and drugs, with a particular focus on common complex neuropsychiatric diseases. He received his A.B. in biology from Princeton University and M.D. from Harvard Medical School, did clinical training in internal medicine and neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and completed a research fellowship in genetics at Harvard.
Dr. Paul Edward Farmer is a medical anthropologist and physician who has dedicated his life to improving health care for the world's poorest people. With his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad, he has pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings in the U.S. and other countries.
Dr. Farmer is the Kolokotrones University Professor and chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School as well as the co-founder and chief strategist at Partners In Health, an international not-for-profit organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. In addition, he is professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He also serves as the United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community-Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.
Dr. Farmer received the Gold Honor Medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences in 2019.