Conference News Central
The Western Regional International Health Conference has started! This page will be updated constantly throughout the weekend, so check back often for the latest news, videos, photos, and commentary about the conference.Recent Posts
News article in Real Change: Preventing and curing conflictArticle published in Real Change July 7, 2010 by Robin Lindley. “What if more of us saw war as a global health problem? “
Video: Low-Intensity Conflict in the Drug WarsVideo created by Mike McCormick of KEXP Public Affairs.
Video: Health Professionals and Torture: Perpetrators, Activists and HealersVideo taped by Mike McCormick with KEXP Public Affairs.
Video: Short recap of conferenceEric Becker filmed this 3-minute short of the conference. He interviewed conference organizers, head of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and others. To view it, click here.
Addressing tortureThe practice of torture is perceived by many as a dark element of history, but what few people know is the United States continues to dirty its hands by engaging in this immoral and illegal practice. (For the lecture by torture expert Alfred McCoy, click here).
“We cannot wish it away…questions of responsibility are pressed upon us,” said [...]
Kevin Sites discusses the lessons he learned as a war correspondent for major TV networks and Yahoo News. Sites believes American media and society as a whole focus on only the most narrow part of war – combat – while ignoring collateral damage that affects civilians for generations.
What refugees face in U.S.Maggi Little, a panelist at the Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, remembered a woman giving birth on the road as she marched from Kosovo to Macedonia. Nobody stopped to help, nobody did anything except keep walking.
Little and her family fled from the conflicts in the Balkans during the 1990s. Now she lives in Seattle, where [...]
Peter Sessum, a global health reporting student at UW offers the following opinion on a pre-conference session, “Expanding the Definition of War.”
I wonder how University of Wisconsin-Madison professorand torture expert Alfred McCoy, PhD, would feel if we took one idea from his books that represent his entire philosophy? Books are long because they represent complex [...]
What if you couldn’t go the store? What if you couldn’t go to the mall? Or what if going to Pike Place Market caused you to tremble and panic because the sights, the sounds or the smells reminded you of a moment when the bomb had gone off and a comrade or a woman or [...]
Health impacts of radioactive weaponsWith April 26 being the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Dr. Holly Barker and Dr. Tom Carpenter gave lectures that were equally informative and disturbing on the health impacts of radioactive weapons. With the Cold War over, the shadow that is the threat of nuclear weapons is not gone.
Barker from UW brought to the forefront the [...]
To begin his discussion of the role law plays in international human rights protection, Professor Joel Ngugi of the UW School of Law asked the audience if the right to health even existed. His answer was a resounding “Yes!” and he proceeded to expound upon the legal call-to-action faced by the global society of today.
Emerging issues in vets’ treatmentThree clinicians from the Puget Sound Veterans Administration discuss the medical treatment of veterans and the way they address these issues Saturday afternoon.
Julia Sewell’s lecture on Military Sexual Trauma (MST) was particularly enlightening for the audience. Due to the military culture and environment that military service members find themselves in, the challenges with MST can [...]
Some Americans feel removed from war. Not Dr. Howard Campbell. As a cultural anthropology professor at University of Texas at El Paso, Campbell is on the front lines of the Mexican war on drugs. Juárez, Mexico, is literally outside his back door.
His message was simple; we are losing the war on drugs.
Military costs of warWhat is the cost of war? According to Dr. Evan Kanter, a psychiatrist who treats veterans, it is much greater than the price of military operations. Kanter spoke Saturday about the wounds of war on the home front.
Ecological impacts of warfareThe speakers at this breakout session discussed the impacts of war on the ecosystem and the rise of childhood leukemia in Iraq.
Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, presented the idea that healthy people and a happy biosphere are a necessary combination to protect the ecosystem. He explained that even though [...]
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