Closing Plenary Speakers
Dr. A.M.Viens- Facilitator
Dr. A.M. Viens is the Inaugural Director of the School of Global Health and an Associate Professor of Global Health at York University. He has degrees in philosophy and law from the Universities of Toronto, Oxford, and London. His research specialization focuses on global health ethics and global health law, with a particular interest in demonstrating how philosophical analysis, legal epidemiology, and regulatory theory should shape how we approach different issues within global health policy, practice, and research (especially infectious diseases, disasters and emergencies, and health promotion). His latest book is Public Health Law: Ethics, Governance, and Regulation, co-authored with John Coggon and Keith Syrett (Routledge, 2017). He is an Investigator in the Global Strategy Lab and a member of the WHO Collaboration Centre on the Global Governance of Antimicrobial Resistance. He is also an Honorary Member of the UK Faculty of Public Health, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health, and Editor-in-Chief of Health Care Analysis.
Dr. Tara Penney-Panelist
Dr Penney is a population health scientist focused on the prevention of disease at the global level. She is assistant professor of Global Food Systems and Policy, a faculty member of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and an Investigator at the Global Strategy Lab at York University. She completed her Postdoctoral training and PhD in preventive medicine and epidemiology at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge where she examined the multi-levelled impacts of food systems and national policy on population health. Working with national and international organizations and partners in the Global South, her research utilizes systems thinking, complexity science and multiple methods to generate policy relevant evidence to improve systems and tackle some of our largest global challenges including food insecurity, emergence of zoonoses, anti- microbial resistance and the related consequences of climate change.
Dr. John Amuasi- Panelist
John Humphrey AMUASI is based at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), where he is Head of the Global Health Department of the School of Public Health and Leader of the Global One Health Research Group at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR). Amuasi is also a W2 Professor of Global One Health at the Bernhard Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine and the University of Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany, an adjunct Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in the USA, and an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford in the UK. Amuasi trained as a physician in Ghana, and later graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, USA, with post-graduate degrees terminating in a PhD in Health Research and Policy. Amuasi set up and was the inaugural head of the Research and Development Unit at the 1,200-bed Komfo Anokye teaching Hospital in Kumasi. For over 20 years, he has engaged in Tropical Medicine and Global Health research in LMICs - including in malaria, NTDs, AMR and One Health. He has also consulted for several Global Health-focused organizations and supported civil society organizations with technical expertise on matters related to access to drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, as well as strategic advice related to Global Health research priorities. Amuasi’s current research involves clinical and field epidemiologic studies on malaria, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, AMR, snakebite and other neglected tropical diseases. He further serves as Co-Chair of The Lancet One Health Commission, an adjunct to a number of academic institutions, and as a regular technical advisor/contributor to the WHO, Africa CDC, African Academy of Sciences, and several other Global Health organizations. John is a board member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in the USA, The Soulsby Foundation in the UK, and an advisory board member of The British Medical Journal. Amuasi is passionate about mentorship and sustainably building both clinical and non-clinical health research capacities in Africa.
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