At the front lines of global health messaging: A conversation with WHO’s retired communications director
A virus never before seen in humans is killing people around the world. What do you say to a global audience desperate to learn more? Gabriella Stern faced this question head-on. For more than six years, she served as director of communications at the World Health Organization, including throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In this fireside chat, Stern will share stories from the front lines of global health communication—what it takes to craft and deliver clear, trusted messaging on issues ranging from infectious disease outbreaks to humanitarian crises to massive public health funding cuts—all while navigating a rapidly evolving communications landscape.
Speaker
Gabriella Stern
Moderator
Clarisza Runtung
About The Studio
Brown Bag Seminar: The Lancet Commission on a Citizen-Centered Health System for India: Reform pathways towards UHC for a fifth of the world’s population
Anuska Kalita, DrPH, is director of the India Health Systems Program in the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard TH. Chan School of Public Health. She is a health systems specialist with over 20 years of experience across academia, management consulting, multilateral agencies, and philanthropy. Her work spans 18 countries across Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, with a particular focus on India. She has led large-scale health systems and policy research and built cross-sector partnerships that align government, private sector, academic, and civil society actors around actionable reform agendas. She co-led The Lancet Commission on a Citizen-Centered Health System for India (2026) and has contributed to the design of landmark policies including India’s National Health Policy (2017), the Ayushman Bharat program (2018), and the national ASHA Program (2005). She has led and designed several capacity-strengthening/executive training programs for senior health professionals and policy makers, notably the WHO Academy’s PHC Leadership Course for senior policy actors across 180 countries. Kalita holds a doctorate in public health from Harvard University.
Vikram Patel, MBBS, PhD, is Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He holds honorary professorships at Harvard Chan School, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Public Health Foundation of India. Patel co-leads the Mental Health for All lab and GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard initiative, and his research focuses on the global burden of mental health problems, their links to social disadvantages, and community-based solutions. He cofounded Sangath, an Indian NGO recognized with international awards, and several global mental health networks. A Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and member of the US National Academy of Medicine, Patel has served on India’s first National Mental Health Policy Committee, co-led two Lancet Commissions on mental health, and received major honors, including the Rhodes Scholarship, Sarnat Prize, Pardes Humanitarian Prize, an Honorary OBE, and the Canada Gairdner Award. He holds multiple honorary doctorates and was named to TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2015.
Speaker Information
Anuska Kalita
Organizers
How our surroundings shape health: A conversation between environmental scientists
For more than 50 years, Jack Spengler has advanced our understanding of how environment shapes health through pioneering research on the importance of air quality, healthy buildings, and climate resilience. In conversation with longtime collaborator Linda Powers Tomasso, Spengler explores how the places we live, learn, and work shape human health. Together, they reflect on the evolution of environmental health over five decades and the importance of continued collaboration and mentorship in shaping a more sustainable future.
Register for free to submit your questions.
An on-demand video will be posted after the event.
Speakers
About The Studio
Monday Nutrition Seminar | AI-driven Integration of EMR and Molecular Data for Maternal and Child Health
Please join the Department of Nutrition for the Monday Nutrition Seminar featuring Nima Aghaeepour, PhD, Endowed Professor and Vice Chair for Research (Data Science) in the Department of Anesthesiology, Peri-operative, and Pain Medicine; Professor in the Department of Pediatrics; and Professor in the Department of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University. Dr. Aghaeepour’s talk—”AI-driven Integration of EMR and Molecular Data for Maternal and Child Health”—will take place on April 27 at 1:00 p.m. 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 click the “Register Today” button to 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
Organizers
Monday Nutrition Seminar | Red tape and empty plates: understanding how administrative burden diminishes the effectiveness of food assistance policies
Please join the Department of Nutrition and the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences for the Monday Seminar featuring Professor Erica Kenney, ScD, Associate Professor of Public Health Nutrition in the Department of Nutrition and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at HSPH, and Research Director of the Harvard Prevention Research Center. Dr. Kenney’s talk—”Red tape and empty plates: understanding how administrative burden diminishes the effectiveness of food assistance policies”—will take place on April 13 at 1:00pm ET in FXB G-13 and via Zoom (registration is required).
Lunch will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.
All of our Monday Seminars are free and open to the public. If you plan to attend this event and do not have a valid HUID, please fill out this form in advance to request a visitor pass to access the building.
Seminar speakers share their perspectives, they do not speak for Harvard.
Speaker Information
Organizers
Crossroads Conversation Series
Join Harvard Chan faculty and alumni as they share how someone’s advice, encouragement, or challenge impacted their life, and the ways they apply those lessons today. Lunch will be provided.
Follow the link below to register.
Organizers
Screening for Major Diseases — Does it help?
The Cutter Lectures on Preventive Medicine – 10th Symposium
Part of the Cutter Lectures on Preventive Medicine series, The 10th Cutter Symposium “Screening for Major Diseases—Does It Help?” will feature three separate lectures from expert speakers on the topic of screening for colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, and infectious diseases followed by a moderated Q&A segment with all the speakers. This symposium is open to the public & is virtual only.
Schedule of talks:
| 1:00PM | Introducing the Cutter Symposium Albert Hofman, MD, PhD |
| 1:05PM | The Power of Colorectal Cancer Screening Hermann Brenner, MD. MPH Abstract: Over 30 years ago, in 1993, a groundbreaking analysis of the US National Polyp Study was published, which suggested that colonoscopic removal of colorectal polyps was associated with an 88% reduction of colorectal cancer incidence. Since then, numerous observational studies and randomized trials have confirmed effectiveness of colorectal cancer screening, even though most of them substantially underestimated screening effects for various reasons. Large heterogeneity in introduction of and adherence to screening programs across countries in the last three decades is mirrored in large heterogeneity of trends in colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. Modelling studies based on the accumulated evidence confirm that the vast majority of the approximately one million colorectal cancer deaths per year globally could be prevented by screening. |
| 1:35PM | Controversies and Innovations in Screening for Prostate Cancer Lorelei Mucci, ScD Abstract: More than 1.6 million men across the globe are diagnosed with prostate cancer annually, and it is the leading cause of cancer death in more than 50 countries. In randomized controlled trials, screening with prostate specific antigen (PSA) has been shown to reduce cancer mortality over two decades. However, PSA screening also has led to overdiagnosis of prostate cancers that have a low potential for metastasis and concomitant overtreatment of patients. What has ensued over the past two decades has been an active debate about the harms and benefits of screening, guidelines that are often in conflict with one another, and in the United States, a substantial reduction in prostate cancer screening that is now tied to an uptake in incidence of metastatic prostate cancer. This talk will provide an overview of the history of PSA screening, the evidence around risks and harms, the controversies, and recent innovations in approaches to accelerate a risk stratified approach to screening. |
| 2:05PM | Diagnostics, Screening, and Surveillance in Pandemics Marc Lipsitch, DPhil Abstract: This talk will describe challenges and opportunities for surveillance during large infectious disease events, with lessons from COVID-19 and earlier pandemics. Active testing of population-based random samples provide numerous advantages over passive case detection in many situations, while linked data on demographics, severity, and pathogen variant among other characteristics are far more valuable for decision making than the same data if unlinked. Better data can inform more efficient decisions about control measures that improve the ratio of disease control effectiveness to cost and disruption. |
| 2:35PM | General Discussion |
| 3:00PM | Closing by Albert Hofman |
Speakers will share their own perspectives; they do not speak for Harvard.
Speaker Information
Organizers
The Voice of Hind Rajab Film Screening
Film screening
On January 29, 2024, Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 5-year-old girl is trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her. Her name was Hind Rajab.
Food will be offered.
Organizers
Why Stability Matters for Early Childhood Development
Join the Center on the Developing Child’s upcoming webinar to explore why stability plays a critical role in shaping young children’s health and development.
Drawing on insights from the new working paper, From Resources to Routines: The Importance of Stability in the Developmental Environment, the conversation will examine how stability—or the lack of it—across children’s developmental environments can affect their well-being in the moment and across the lifespan, and highlight strategies to promote stability for young children and their caregivers.
The conversation will be moderated by our Chief Science Officer, Lindsey Burghardt, MD, MPH, FAAP, and feature Nathaniel Harnett, PhD, Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Natalie Slopen, ScD, Associate Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
Speaker Information
Organizers
CHDS Seminar with Christopher Jackson
Join the Center for Health Decision Science for a seminar with Christopher Jackson from the University of Cambridge, UK, titled, “Making Semi-Markov Multistate Models for Intermittent Observations Easily Usable.” Multi-state models for changes in a state (e.g. of health or illness) often assume that the transition rate is constant with time spent in the state (the “Markov” assumption). In this seminar, Jackson proposes a new method and software package to relax this often-unrealistic assumption, using hidden states known as “phases.” This is motivated by applications such as modelling the duration of infections, modelling time in a detectable state in cancer screening, and modelling cognitive impairment in studies of ageing.
Christopher Jackson is a Senior Statistician at the MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge. His research involves incorporating statistical methods in models to combine evidence to inform population health policy. His publications cover Bayesian evidence synthesis, survival analysis, multi-state modelling, longitudinal data, decision theory, and model comparison. He has also developed several popular R packages, and co-authored two textbooks, “The BUGS Book” and “Value of Information for Healthcare Decision-Making.”