More than 750 people from 31 universities and 17 states attended the 9th Annual Western Regional International Health Conference,   “At a Crossroads: Choosing Hidden Paths in Global Health” held on the UW campus April 27-29.  One of the highlights of the event was the inspirational  keynote talk, "Nothing Less than a Revolution: Why I'm Preoccupied with Inequality, Social Justice and Health," by acclaimed human rights advocate and thought leader Kavita Ramdas, the executive director of a newly launched program on social entrepreneurship at Stanford University. Also, many great plenaries on mental health, climate change, trauma and conflict, organization and funding, making the most of your good attentions, working for equity in health and justice in a new season of Occupy, new technology, next challenges, and much much more.
Student Cyan James wrote a great piece on the conference for Humanosphere.
"As I jumped from session to session at the University of Washington’s 9^th Annual Western Regional International Health Conference, I found myself persuaded that mental health on a global scale remains both an important and largely invisible problem. One of the themes of the meeting was finding hidden paths to improving global health," she wrote.
Most of the sessions were blogged about from the Global Health Reporting class at UW and several undergraduate minor students at www.healthintersections.org.