At present, the tobacco industry produces some six trillion cigarettes worldwide every year. Six trillion cigarettes per annum, each ready to release smoke filled with highly addictive nicotine and powerful carcinogens. A third of all these sticks were produced in China last year. In 2011, the world’s largest cigarette maker by volume, the China National Tobacco Corporation, contributed an all-time high of U.S. $214 billion in profits and taxes to the Chinese government, up 22 percent year-on-year. Currently the greatest cause of preventable death in the world, the cigarette is likely to kill ten times as many people in the 21st century as it did in the 20th century, epidemiologists tell us, with China bearing the largest burden. Until now, much global health research and intervention has focused with limited success on the cigarette consumer—addressing how one or another variable prompts people to take up or quit smoking, whether the cue for the consumer is biological, psychological, spatial, financial or symbolic. What though of the industrial sources of tobacco-related diseases? Where are the six trillion cigarettes that are released into circulation each year manufactured? Where are they rolled, wrapped, and boxed for shipment? This presentation will introduce the Cigarette Citadels Project, an innovative application of participatory GIS. With special attention given to China’s network of cigarette factories, Matthew Kohrman will explain how the Cigarette Citadels Project not only reveals conceptual roadblocks in public health policy but also lacuna in social theory pertaining to the state and the politics of life.

Matthew Kohrman joined Stanford’s faculty in 1999. His research and writing bring multiple methods to bear on the ways health, culture, and politics are interrelated. Focusing on the People's Republic of China, he engages various intellectual terrains such as governmentality, gender theory, political economy, critical science studies, and embodiment. His first monograph, Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern China, examines links between the emergence of a state-sponsored disability-advocacy organization and the lives of Chinese men who have trouble walking. In recent years, Kohrman has been conducting research projects aimed at analyzing and intervening in the biopolitics of cigarette smoking and production. These projects expand upon analytical themes of Kohrman’s disability research and engage in novel ways techniques of public health.

This event is part of the China's Looming Challenges series. 

Venue Changed to the Philippines Conference Room

China has recently reformed its health care system with the intent of providing universal coverage for basic health care to every Chinese citizen. Three separate health insurance plans have recently been launched to achieve this objective: the rural newly cooperative medical scheme, urban resident health insurance, and urban employee-based health insurance. Each plan differs substantially in terms of insurers, insured population, premiums, and benefits packages. Using data from the 2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey, Hai Fang will discuss a study that investigates whether and to what extend different health insurance plans have created disparities in health care utilization and expenditure.

Hai Fang is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Systems, Management, and Policy at the University of Colorado Denver, and a research associate in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He earned his doctorate in economics and master of public health from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2006. Before joining the University of Colorado Denver, he taught at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Miami. His research interests include health economics, labor economics, and public health.

Recent events in the U.S. have raised concerns about the safety and security of research with hazardous microbial agents, particularly with regard to the insider threat. The anthrax letters of 2001 and several technical surprises in legitimate infectious disease research, led to a series of high-level committee recommendations on safety and security of the ongoing work. When a scientist from a U.S. military high-containment laboratory was implicated in the anthrax letters case, the president and congress called for more regulation. Subsequently, a series of steps to reduce the risk have been proposed: from armed guards, pathogen accountability and medical and psychological exams for scientists to training, ethical frameworks, codes of conduct and standards of quality research. Franz will discuss the implications of these events on both security and productive research in support of public health and the life-sciences enterprise, and the important role of leadership and culture in enhancing both safety and security.

About the speaker: Dave Franz is a Vice President and Chief Biological Scientist at MRIGlobal. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for 23 of 27 years on active duty and retired as Colonel. He served as Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and as Deputy Commander of the Medical Research and Materiel Command. Prior to joining the Command, he served as Group Veterinarian for the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Dr. Franz was Technical Editor for the Textbook of Military Medicine on Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare released in 1997. He serves on numerous national committees and boards. Dr. Franz holds an adjunct appointment as Professor for the Department of Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Kansas State University. The current focus of his activities relates to the role of international engagement in the life sciences as a component of national security policy.

Abstract:

There is a wide diversity in the provision of public services in India. In some states one can go for miles without seeing a functional school or public health centre, where roads are poorly maintained, and electricity has not yet been introduced. In other places, governments tend to function remarkably in extending basic public services to all, with tremendous consequences to human lives. In this talk, Vivek Srinivasen will explore why some parts of India have developed an impressive social commitment to such services unlike others. In this context, he will also discuss the remarkable changes in Bihar and other parts of North India in the recent years.

 Speaker Bio: 

Vivek Srinivasen joined the Liberation Technology Program as the manager in February 2011 after completing his Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Prior to this, Srinivasen worked with campaigns on various socio-economic rights in India, including the right to food, education and the right to information. Based on these experiences he has written (and co-authored) extensively on issues surrounding the right to food, including Notes from the right to food campaign: people's movement for the right to food (2003), Rights based approach and human development: An introduction (2008), Gender and the right to food: A critical re-examination (2006), Food Policy and Social Movements: Reflections on the Right to Food Campaign in India (2007).

Infectious diseases, especially those transmitted from person to person through the respiratory route, continue to pose a threat to the global community. Public health surveillance systems and the International Health Regulations are intended to facilitate the recognition of and rapid response to infectious diseases that pose the risk of developing into a pandemic, but the response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic illustrates the continuing challenges to implementing appropriate prevention and control measures. The response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic will be discussed and its implications examined.

Speaker biography:

This colloquium will discuss the state of evidence, challenges, and research agenda regarding the growth of private hospitals and public-private hospital partnerships in developing Asia.

Dominic Montagu is an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and lead of the Health Systems Initiative at the Global Health Group of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). His work is focused on private delivery of health services in developing countries and on market function for health services and health commodities. He has active field research projects ongoing in Nigeria and Myanmar. Montagu holds masters degrees in business administration and public health, as well as a doctorate in public health, from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). He has worked extensively in Africa and Asia, and teaches on the private sector in developing countries, and on the regulation of private hospitals and public-private-partnerships at UCSF, UC Berkeley, and on behalf of the World Bank Institute.

FSI's second major conference on global underdevelopment brought together worldwide thought leaders to explore the root causes of global underdevelopment and to provide fresh insights on the links between international security and universal access to adequate food, health care and water.

Redefining Security Along the Food/Health Nexus Conference website