FSI’s researchers assess health and medicine through the lenses of economics, nutrition and politics. They’re studying and influencing public health policies of local and national governments and the roles that corporations and nongovernmental organizations play in providing health care around the world. Scholars look at how governance affects citizens’ health, how children’s health care access affects the aging process and how to improve children’s health in Guatemala and rural China. They want to know what it will take for people to cook more safely and breathe more easily in developing countries.
FSI professors investigate how lifestyles affect health. What good does gardening do for older Americans? What are the benefits of eating organic food or growing genetically modified rice in China? They study cost-effectiveness by examining programs like those aimed at preventing the spread of tuberculosis in Russian prisons. Policies that impact obesity and undernutrition are examined; as are the public health implications of limiting salt in processed foods and the role of smoking among men who work in Chinese factories. FSI health research looks at sweeping domestic policies like the Affordable Care Act and the role of foreign aid in affecting the price of HIV drugs in Africa.
The Ripple Effect: Biofuels, Food Security, and the Environment
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The integration of the agricultural and energy sectors caused by rapid growth in the biofuels market signals a new era in food policy and sustainable development. For the first time in decades, agricultural commodity markets could experience a sustained increase in prices, breaking the long-term price decline that has benefited food consumers worldwide. Whether this transition occurs, and how it will affect global hunger and poverty, remain to be seen. Will food markets begin to track the volatile energy market in terms of price and availability? Will changes in agricultural commodity markets benefit net food producers and raise farm incomes in poor countries? How will biofuels-induced changes in agricultural commodity markets affect net consumers of food? At risk are over 800 million food-insecure people, mostly in rural areas and dependant to some extent on agriculture for incomes, who live on less than $1 per day and spend the majority of their incomes on food. An additional 2 to 2.5 billion people living on $1 to $2 per day are also at risk, as rising commodity prices could pull them swiftly into a food-insecure state.
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WHO official joins CISAC as consulting professor
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David L. Heymann, assistant director-general for communicable diseases and the director general's representative for polio eradication at the World Health Organization (WHO), has joined CISAC as a consulting professor.
Heymann has dedicated much of his career as a medical doctor to investigating and fighting the spread of infectious diseases and mobilizing global efforts to prevent pandemics.
"Dr. Heymann's expertise on threats to health security is a welcome addition to CISAC," Siegfried Hecker, CISAC co-director, said. "He is deeply knowledgeable about the most severe disease-related threats as well as how best to build cooperative international efforts to reduce these threats."
Prior to assuming his current position at WHO, Heymann served as executive director of WHO's Communicable Diseases Cluster, which includes programs on infectious and tropical diseases. In that position, he oversaw the response to Severe Accute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003.
Before joining WHO, Heymann worked for 13 years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa, on assignment with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. While there, he participated in investigating both the first outbreak of Ebola, in Yambuku (then Zaire) in 1976, and the second outbreak, in Tandala, in 1977. He directed the international response to the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit in 1995. Heymann also spent two years as a medical officer in the WHO smallpox eradication program in India prior to 1976.
Heymann spent two weeks in residence at Stanford last spring, co-hosted by CISAC and FSI, during which he delivered a a talk in FSI's Payne Lecture series. In the lecture, titled "Infectious Diseases across Borders: Public Health Security in the 21st Century," he discussed the collective responsibility to defend public health. He surveyed WHO's efforts to fight emerging and re-emerging infectious disease on every continent.
Among those efforts is a global network of scientists who monitor and collect viruses, sending samples to four WHO collaborating centers for analysis and tracking. This network detected the novel virus H5N1, known as avian flu, in 1997, a disease WHO continues to track closely.
Currently, Heymann said, the H5N1 virus is in the third of six phases in WHO's pandemic alert system, meaning that there have been cases of human infection but "no, or very infrequent, human-to-human spread."
Heymann emphasized, "It is important to prevent the disease at the source." At the same time, WHO is working to "provide universal access to vaccines," which, while not eliminating the disease, "will prevent sickness," he said.
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10th United Nations Association Film Festival
UNAFF, which is now completing its first decade, was originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was created with the help of members of the Stanford Film Society and United Nations Association Midpeninsula Chapter, a grassroots, community-based, nonprofit organization. The 10th UNAFF will be held from October 24-28, 2007 at Stanford University with screenings in San Francisco on October 17 and 18, East Palo Alto on October 19 and San Jose on October 21. The theme for this year is "CAMERA AS WITNESS."
UNAFF celebrates the power of films dealing with human rights, environmental survival, women's issues, protection of refugees, homelessness, racism, disease control, universal education, war and peace. Documentaries often elicit a very personal, emotional response that encourages dialogue and action by humanizing global and local problems. To further this goal, UNAFF hosts academics and filmmakers from around the world to discuss the topics in the films with the audience, groups and individuals who are often separated by geography, ethnicity and economic constraints.
Over three hundred sixty submissions from all over the world have been carefully reviewed for the tenth annual UNAFF. The jury has selected 32 films to be presented at this year's festival. The documentaries selected showcase topics from Afghanistan, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cuba, France, Haiti, Kenya, Kosovo, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Iran, Israel, Italy, Lesotho, Macedonia, Mongolia, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Peru, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Spain, Sudan, Uganda, the UK, Ukraine, the US, Vietnam and Zambia.
Cubberley Auditorium (October 24)
Annenberg Auditorium (October 25-28)
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FSI scholars present new research, outline projects for upcoming year
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On October 2 FSI Acting Director Michael A. McFaul commenced FSI's annual orientation gathering for the 2007-08 academic year. After introducing new faculty and staff, McFaul turned the orientation over to scholars from CDDRL, CHP/PCOR, CISAC, Shorenstein APARC, the Program on Food Security and the Environment, and the Forum on Contemporary Europe, all of whom presented new research and outlined projects for the upcoming year.
CISAC senior research scholar Paul Stockton began with a presentation on "The Politics of Homeland Security," and was followed by Jean C. Oi, FSI senior fellow and director of the new Stanford China Program, who spoke about the Stanford Center at Peking University. Kathryn Stoner, CDDRL associate director for research, presented on "Promoting Democracy." McFaul moderated a panel discussion Q&A and, after a short break, introduced the second panel of FSI scholars.
CHP/PCOR core faculty member Grant Miller presented research that examines if "what people want" interferes with sound health policy in the developing world . New FSI senior fellow Josef Joffe discussed how America is both "a model and a monster" in the European consciousness; FSE Director Rosamond L. Naylor reviewed some of FSE's projects on biofuels and food security, and highlighted what they would be working on this upcoming year. Joffe, Miller, and Naylor each answered questions from faculty and staff before McFaul adjourned the 2007 orientation.
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Economic Consequences of Population Aging in Asia
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Dr. Lee currently holds the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Endowed Chair in Economics and is a professor in the Department of Demography at University of California - Berkeley (Berkeley). He has taught courses in economic demography, population theory, population and economic development, demographic forecasting, population aging, indirect estimation, and research design, as well as a number of pro-seminars.
Professor Lee is also the director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at Berkeley, funded by the National Institute of Aging. His current research includes including modeling and forecasting demographic time series, the evolutionary theory of life histories, population aging, Social Security, and intergenerational transfers.
He has received several honors, including Presidency of the Population Association of America, the Mindel C. Sheps Award for research in mathematical demography, the PAA Irene B. Taeuber Award for outstanding contributions in the field of demography. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding member of the British Academy. He has chaired the population and social science study section for NIH and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Population, and served on the National Advisory Committee on Aging (NIA Council).
Professor Lee holds an MA in demography from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Philippines Conference Room
Ronald Lee
Director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging
Speaker
University of California - Berkeley
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Agent Orange: The Toxic Trail
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Jeanne Mager Stellman (speaker) has just recently joined the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at SUNY-Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn N.Y as Professor and Director of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences. She had been a member of the faculty of the School of Public Health at Columbia University since 1981 and directed the General Public Health track. Stellman is actively engaged in research on herbicides in Vietnam and was director of a multimillion dollar study for the National Academy of Science to develop exposure methodologies for epidemiological studies of military herbicides. She and her husband, Steven D. Stellman, are collaborating on several follow-up studies and, with National Library of Medicine support, she is now creating a website on Vietnam that uses the geographic information system they developed to make it accessible to researchers around the world. The Stellmans are the recipient of The American Legion's Distinguished Service Medal because of their ongoing research and assistance to veterans. In addition, Stellman is now heavily engaged in research and policy in the aftermath of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks. She served on the EPA's Technical Advisory Panel for WTC Cleanup and is a consultant to the Mt. Sinai WTC Medical Monitoring program, where she is co-directing research on the mental health and well-being of the first responders. Stellman served as Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety, 4th edition (1998). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and was named one of Ms. Magazine's "80 women to watch in the 80's." She has written several books, many monographs and chapters and peer-reviewed publications.
Lynn Eden (discussant) is associate director for research/senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Lynn Eden
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lynneden@stanford.edu
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Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.
In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.
Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.
Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.
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Jeanne Stellman
Professor of Clinical Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health
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Columbia University
Seminars