Devex: Q&A With Liberia's Minister of Health on Lessons Learned from the Ebola Crisis

By Catherine Cheney

“West Africa is sitting on a ticking time bomb,” Bernice Dahn, Liberia’s minister of health, said at Global Health: Next Decade, Next Generation, an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington, her alma mater. 

"We all learned a lot of lessons from the Ebola outbreak. At least one lesson that we have learned is that an epidemic... could quickly become a pandemic," she said.

Margaret Chan's Keynote Address at Global Health: Next Decade, Next Generation Symposium

Read the entire transcript of the keynote address of Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, at the UW Department of Global Health's 10th anniversary celebration symposium, Global Health: Next Decade, Next Generation. Chan discussed grand challenges on the horizon of the next decade: control of non-communicable diseases, climate change, pandemic disease response and educating the next generation of global health leaders.

Humanosphere: Podcast with Dr. Patty Garcia

In a new Humanosphere podcast, Dr. Patricia (Patty) Garcia talks about her recent appointment to become Minister of Health in Peru. Garcia is a Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington, was head of the Peruvian National Institute of Health and Dean at the school of public health for Cayetano Heredia University in Lima. As Garcia describes in this interview, she became a doctor because of some personal struggles with illness, her own as a child and her father’s death from cancer.

GeekWire: Global Health Leaders Seek New Ties to Tech Industry, While Aiming to Avoid ‘Innovation Addiction’

By Clare McGrane

It’s easy to see global health as a far-off issue, one that doesn’t have much impact outside isolated parts of the world. But at a symposium on global health today at the University of Washington, leaders in the field argued just the opposite.

HS Newsbeat: Women Took Path Through UW to Lead Nations' Efforts on Health

Liberia was in the midst of a devastating Ebola outbreak when Bernice Dahn, the country's chief medical officer, went to visit her ailing special assistant at his home on Sept. 20, 2014. When the 55-year-old father of eight died from the disease less than a week later, Dahn put herself into quarantine for 21 days. She kept her constituency aware of her situation, as well as many from her cohort at the University of Washington. Dahn, now Liberia's minister of health, has been fulfilling her vision to build a resilient health system by deploying thousands more community health workers.