Skip to main content
March 24

A public health success story: The near-eradication of Guinea worm

An illustration of a worm against a grey background
Location
Online

Event Type

1:00 pm 1:30 pm

Recorded Q&A, Tuesday, March 24, 2026, 1-1:30pm ET 

At just 10 human cases, reports of Guinea worm, a debilitating parasitic disease with no vaccine or drug treatment, are at an all-time low, according to The Carter Center.*  What drove this success? 

Former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and The Carter Center’s Sarah Yerian and Emily Staub answered questions following the screening of The President and the Dragon, a documentary about former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to eradicate Guinea worm, at the Harvard Chan School. This a recording of that Q&A. 

Released last fall, The President and the Dragon is available on various streaming platforms.  

*Figures are provisional until officially confirmed. 

Speakers

March 26

Brown Bag Seminar: Primary Healthcare IMPACT Lab at the Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives

Diah Saminarsih.
Location
Building 1, Room 1208
665 Huntington Ave.
Boston, Massachusetts 02115

Event Time

1:00 pm 2:00 pm

In this seminar, Diah Saminarsih will introduce the Primary Healthcare IMPACT Lab, a new collaboration between the Center for Indonesia’s Strategic Development Initiatives (CISDI) and the Program in Global Primary Health Care, a shared initiative of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Global Health Equity and Harvard Medical School. The Lab aims to support Indonesia’s primary health care transformation through locally grounded research, training, and service innovation. The discussion will also reflect on the broader role of Global South–led partnerships in shaping the future of health systems.


Diah Saminarsih is the founder and CEO of CISDI and a distinguished global development practitioner and public health advocate. Diah concluded her role as senior advisor to the WHO Director-General on Gender and Youth in August 2022. In this role, she established dialogues with member states and their youth delegates on meaningful youth engagement. She also spearheaded strategies for youth engagement and gender mainstreaming, in close collaboration with development partners and member state representatives.

After leaving WHO, Diah served on the board of the Pandemic Fund as the CSO Global South Representative. She co-founded the Stop TB Partnership Indonesia in 2018 and played a key role in advising and overseeing the work of the Global Fund TB Community Principal Recipient Consortium from 2021 to 2023. She also served as special staff to Indonesia’s Minister of Health (2014-2019) and special staff to Indonesia’s MDGs Envoy (2010-2014). During her work with the government of Indonesia, Diah was Indonesia’s co-negotiator in the SDGs negotiation. Her involvement in health security national design brought Indonesia to be part of the initial troika in the Global Health Security Agenda initiative, along with the U.S. and Finland.

Diah is currently a Commissioner for the Lancet Global Health Commission on People-Centered Care for Universal Health Coverage and Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Education at Universitas Harkat Negeri, in Tegal, Central Java, Indonesia.

Speaker Information

March 25

Negotiations Webinar Series: “The Making of Negotiating Organizations”

The image depicts the text details of the event, along with a headshot of the speaker, and a QR code in the bottom left quadrant to scan to join the Zoom. Dark blue background with headshot of Claude Bruderlein.
Location
Online

Time

10:00 am 11:00 am

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Join us on Wednesday, March 25, 2026 (10–11 a.m. ET) for the second session of our two-part Negotiations Webinar Series, hosted by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

🎙 Webinar 2: ”The Making of Negotiating Organizations”

Featuring Claude Bruderlein, Esq., LL.M., Adjunct Lecturer and Senior Researcher, and Founder of Frontline Associates.

This session focuses on how effective institutions build and sustain robust negotiation practices. We will examine the dimensions of strong negotiating organizations and share examples of successful institutional reshaping in complex and adversarial contexts.

🔗 Free and open to the public

📍 Join via Zoom: hsph.me/negotiations-webinar-march-25

📲 Or scan the QR code in the event image

Please share with your networks and anyone who may be interested.

Questions? Contact hhi@harvard.edu.

Speaker Information

April 16

“Rovina’s Choice” Screening and Q&A with Atul Gawande

Poster for "Rovina's Choice" featuring the documentary's subject Rovina Naboi, as well as event information about the HSPH screening.
Location
Kresge G1
677 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115

Time

5:45 pm 6:45 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Trainings and Workshops

You are invited to a special screening of the New Yorker film “Rovina’s Choice,” a harrowing account of a mother’s efforts to save her daughter from sickness and starvation in the wake of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Rovina Naboi’s devastating story represents the global impact of that decision on the world’s most vulnerable populations, and how it stopped decades of progress combating severe malnutrition and disease.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Executive Producer Atul Gawande, who served as the Assistant Administrator for Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) until last year.

Speaker Information

Organizers

April 21

Managing Your Electronic Records: Shared Drives and Email

Location
Online

Time

10:00 am 10:45 am

Event Type

From Around the School, Trainings and Workshops

Virtual event

Does it take ages to find a file in your shared drive? Are you running out of room in your email? Save yourself and your office time and money by learning to manage your electronic records. In this workshop, we’ll help you manage your email and electronic records efficiently and effectively by giving you guidelines.

Workshops are about 45 minutes long. Attendance is free and open to all members of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health communities. Familiarity with the General Records Schedule (grs.harvard.edu) is helpful but not required.

April 1

Health journalism case study series with Gabriella Stern

Gabby Stern headshot on purple and beige background with even title
Location
Kresge 201
677 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115

Time

1:00 pm 1:50 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Join us for part one of an engaging case study series led by Gabriella Stern, journalist and former Director of Communications at the World Health Organization. In this session, we’ll dig into a compelling piece of health journalism—how complex health topics are communicated to the public, what we can learn from journalistic choices, framing, and impact, and actionable-takeaways for your own health communication.

Lunch will be served.

Speakers will share their own perspectives; they do not speak for Harvard.

Speaker Information

March 23

Monday Nutrition Seminar | Targeting Metabolism through FABP4 to Extend Healthspan

Headshot of Gökhan S. Hotamışlıgil, MD, PhD
Location
FXB G-13 & Zoom

Time

1:00 pm 1:50 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Please join the Department of Nutrition for the Monday Nutrition Seminar featuring Gökhan S. Hotamışlıgil, MD, PhD, James S. Simmons Professor of Genetics and Metabolism and Director of the Center on Causes and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at HSPH. Dr. Hotamışlıgil’s talk—”Targeting Metabolism through FABP4 to Extend Healthspan”—will take place on March 23 at 1:00pm ET in FXB G-13 and via Zoom (registration is required).

Healthy snacks will be provided, thanks to the generous support of the Wellbeing Project Fund from the Office of the Associate Provost for Student Affairs.

The Monday Nutrition Seminar Series is free and open to the public. If you plan to attend this event and do not have an active HUID, please fill out the registration form by 3:00 p.m. ET on the Friday before the seminar to request a visitor pass to access the building.

Seminar speakers share their perspectives, they do not speak for Harvard.

Speaker Information

May 18

HCMPH Center Annual Symposium

event title on blue background
Location
Kresge G1 & Online

Time

8:30 am 5:00 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

We are delighted to welcome everyone to the eighth annual Harvard Chan Microbiome in Public Health Center (HCMPH) symposium. As microbial community science expands across industry, clinical research, biotech, and pharma, this year’s theme – translating the microbiome – focuses on turning discovery into implementation. From the first approved live biotherapeutics to microbiome-informed cancer immunotherapy, the field is already reshaping how we understand health and develop therapies.

The symposium will highlight recent advances while looking ahead to future opportunities, including microbial biochemistry in small-molecule drug development and engineering of microbial community members. As always, we hope to be joined by an audience that is both topically and geographically diverse, online and in person. The symposium program will include keynotes, invited talks, and selected presentations from poster submissions. We collect a nominal fee for in-person registration, with virtual attendance available for free. Refreshments and a poster presentation are offered on-site, and support for social media and interactive participation are provided for online attendees.

For more information on the event and the poster reception, please visit this link.

** REGISTRATION **

In-person registration is available: HERE
Virtual registration continues to be free and is available here: virtual attendance only

Location:
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Snyder Auditorium – Kresge G1
Poster Reception to be held in the Kresge Cafeteria
Virtual attendance available via Zoom webinar (link emailed to you after completing registration for virtual attendance)

Contact:
levesque@hsph.harvard.edu

Speaker Information

April 2

Harvard Pop Center Social Demography Seminar: “Population, environment, and infectious disease ecology: History, progress, and innovation.”

SDS logo on pastel swirly background
Location
Harvard Pop Center & online via Zoom
9 Bow Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Time

12:00 pm 1:15 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Michael Emch, PhD, W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Geography and Epidemiology, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, presents “Population, environment, and infectious disease ecology: History, progress, and innovation.”

The Social Demography Seminar (SDS) series at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The hybrid series offers presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, immigration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes.

Speaker Information

March 26

Harvard Pop Center Social Demography Seminar: “Tribal casinos, economic success, and intergenerational mobility for tribal reservation residents”

SDS logo and headshot of Randall Akee
Location
Harvard Pop Center & online via Zoom
9 Bow Street, Cambridge, MA
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Time

12:00 pm 1:15 pm

Event Type

From Around the School, Lectures/Seminars/Forums

Randall Akee, PhD, Julie Johnson Kidd Professor of Indigenous Governance and Development, Harvard Kennedy School, presents “Tribal casinos, economic success, and intergenerational mobility for tribal reservation residents.”

The Social Demography Seminar (SDS) series at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The hybrid series offers presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, immigration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes.

Speaker Information