In this presentation, Megan Corbett-Thompson, a CommunityFirst Fellow cosponsored by the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and the SeeChange Initiative, will reflect on the importance of applying participatory methodologies that enable the effective involvement of community members to respond to the health challenges identified by communities. Together with Jessica Farber and Osman Sow, they will examine the context of building effective solutions to humanitarian health crises in Sierra Leone. 

Speaker profiles

Megan Corbett-Thompson holds a BSc in environment, ecological determinants of health from McGill University and currently works as a project coordinator for SeeChange Initiative, an organization supporting community-led responses to health and climate-related emergencies. She conducts research on ethical and equitable humanitarian interventions and community-led approaches to the pandemic and other public health emergencies. As well, she has experience in the humanitarian field in Latin America, focusing on human rights work, migration, and environmental health promotion. She has advocated for migrant rights, directed community-based integration programs, and provided humanitarian aid in Mexican border towns. She has also developed projects aimed at protecting human health and the environment from contaminated sites and harmful mining practices. Megan completed an internship at UNICEF Geneva in the Strategic Planning and Partnerships Division. 

Jessica Farber is leading SeeChange project with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), piloting the CommunityFirst approach in vulnerabilised communities globally. She works with community leaders and institutional partners to organise, prepare and respond to health crises. She also has experience in outreach, advocacy and project coordination with forced migrants and asylum seekers in Montreal and Mexico. Jessica holds a B.A. in International Development from McGill University.

Osman Sow holds a BSc Honors in Community Health and Clinical Sciences at Njala University. During the Ebola pandemic Osman worked for US Center for Disease Control and Prevention as a Disease Surveillance Officer in Freetown and with Save the Children at Kerry town by treating Ebola patients as a community health officer (CHO). Currently working for MSF Holland for more than 7 years at the Magburaka government hospital in the paediatric and neonatal unit as clinical officer. He is also volunteer as an instructor to train and implement the national Emergency Triage Assessment and Treatment Course (ETAT+). Osman has also been supporting SeeChange Initiative in the COVID-19 response in the Tonkolili District.

Register below and join us on Wednesday, February 8, at 1 p.m.

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We all encounter stress in our daily lives that at times can be difficult to manage – affecting the health of our body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Participants in this interactive series will learn practical techniques for ‘Stress Busting’ via Qi Gong (Tai Chi) and Mindfulness Meditation practices, empowering us to care for our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others despite what is occurring around us. This is a great way to prepare for the foreseen and unforeseen challenges ahead.

Join us for the first session in the 3-part Wellness & Self Care series hosted at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research –

Qi Gong (Tai Chi)

Qi Gong is an ancient system of postures, exercises, breathing techniques, and meditations that help improve health and overall well-being.

• Wednesday, February 15, 2023
• 11 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. ET
• 30 minutes Practice followed by 15 minutes Discussion Q&A
• Hybrid

This session will focus on increasing energy and reducing stress using breath work, energizing movements, purging exercises, flowing movements and mediation.

Harvey Skinner PhD has over 45 years experience in academia with a current focus on promoting global mental health that draws on Eastern, Indigenous and Western worldviews and practices. He has Level 1 Qi Gong Teacher Certification with Lee Holden, and has completed many workshops with Qi Gong masters Teja Bell and Robert Peng.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

-Rumi

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This is the fourth seminar of the six-part seminar series Massive Action: Global Health Design, led by visionary designer Bruce Mau.

In this seminar, we will learn about the Safe Water Optimization Tools, led by research fellow Syed Imran Ali, and community fellow Bruce Mau will offer insights and lead a workshop on the project's design opportunities.

About the Safe Water Optimization Tools

Waterborne illnesses like cholera are among the leading threats facing displaced people during humanitarian emergencies. Many water engineering practices used in humanitarian response however are not based on field evidence and fail to reliably protect public health. The Safe Water Optimization Tool (SWOT) is an innovative web-based water quality modelling platform that uses machine learning and numerical modelling to unlock life-saving information from routine monitoring data. The SWOT currently generates evidence-based, context-specific water chlorination targets that help keep water safe all the way to the point-of-consumption, and our vision is to build a full toolkit that helps unlock insights from the data already collected in the humanitarian sector.

More about the Safe Water Optimization Tool

This seminar series is co-organized by the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and York University’s Department of Design.

In 2022, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimated that 59.1 million persons remain internally displaced (53.2 million due to conflict), and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that 27.1 million are displaced across international borders as refugees. The highest figure of displacement on record since record keeping began.  

This research examines the existing orthodox International Legal and Policy Framework regulating the harm of displacement in contemporary crisis situations. It queries whether the “harm of displacement”, as envisaged in this orthodox framework sufficiently captures the scale, gravity, and multi-faceted nature of this harm. The research hypothesizes that the failure to specifically reference the “harm of displacement” in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s landmark Policy for the Protection of Civilians 2016 is emblematic of the limitations of this orthodox International Legal and Policy framework.

In this seminar, Sarah will present her year-long research for the LLM Research Program at Osgoode Hall Law School. Her findings encompass: (i) trends and pattens of displacement in significant contemporary crisis; (ii) the legal, policy and practice response undertaken by key actors such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United Nations (UN), the African Union (AU) and the Red Cross; and (iii) an analysis of the rhetoric and reality in the legal, policy and practise response to the “harm of displacement”. Her findings are based on extensive desk-based research and empirical data collection via interviews with subject matter experts.

Speaker profile

Sarah Khan is a lawyer by training, with a BA LLB Hons. degree from the National Law School at India University and a master of arts in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Sarah is excited to apply her extensive field operations practice to research as an LLM research student at Osgoode Hall Law School and as a Dahdaleh Global Health Graduate Scholar at the Dahdaleh Institute. Prior to this, she has worked for over 12 years with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a senior protection officer and senior cluster coordinator. She has worked in areas of human rights, refugee, and international humanitarian law. In her work she supported the development of protection policies for UN/NGO humanitarian country teams; assisted governments with the development of legislation and policy related to internally displaced persons (IDP); designed capacity-building programs on international protection and displacement for armed actors and civil society; developed protection monitoring systems for response and advocacy; and coordinated UN/NGO actors on inter-agency protection platforms.

Her last position was as head of office in Northern Somalia, managing a multifaceted program covering refugees, IDPs, and persons in mixed flows (refugees/migrants). She has also worked with Oxfam, CAFOD UK, and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. At Pearson, she facilitated integrated training courses for NATO/ISAF and UN Mission senior commanders. 

Sarah has lived and worked in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, covering various displacement situations, including in Afghanistan, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria. She has also worked at UNHCR Headquarters at the Global Protection Cluster covering various internal displacement situations, such as those in the Central African Republic, Colombia, Iraq, and the Philippines.

Register below and join us on Wednesday, February 22, at 1 p.m.

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Black History Month is a distinct period for honouring history, negotiating current realities, and imagining potential futures for Black communities. For the second year, the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research is proud to collaborate with the Harriet Tubman Institute (HTI) at York University on their BHM seminar series – in 2023, we will focus on Black resistance with the aim of remembering achievements in the face of multiple struggles.

Please join us on Tuesday, February 28 from 12:30 p.m. - 2 p.m. ET and learn more about Dahdaleh faculty fellow Harris Ali's research as it relates to Implications of Colonialism for Disease Outbreak Response in Black Communities. Harris will discuss his recent work on vaccine hesitancy and other COVID issues pertaining to the Black community in both Toronto and West Africa. Based on his research on the West African Ebola epidemic, he will also provide some reflections on the importance of the work of Frantz Fanon for global health research and decolonizing epidemic response within the context of the post-colonialist condition marked by suspicion and social resistance.

The Harriet Tubman Institute presents Black History Month in collaboration with the The African Studies Program; Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research; Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change; Faculty of Graduate Studies; Glendon Office of the Principal’s Indigenous, Black, and Racialized Guest Speakers Fund; Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies.

We all encounter stress in our daily lives that at times can be difficult to manage – affecting the health of our body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Participants in this interactive series will learn practical techniques for ‘Stress Busting’ via Qi Gong (Tai Chi) and Mindfulness Meditation practices, empowering us to care for our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others despite what is occurring around us. This is a great way to prepare for the foreseen and unforeseen challenges ahead.

Join us for the second session in the 3-part Wellness & Self Care series hosted at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research –

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness is an ancient practice that has taken hold of the modern imagination as a method to decrease stress and increase happiness. 

• Wednesday, March 1, 2023
• 11 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. ET
• 30 minutes Practice followed by 15 minutes Discussion Q&A
• Hybrid

This session will focus on mindfulness of breath, awareness of body sensations, loving-kindness and self-compassion practices.

Susan Harris MSW has over 30 years of personal and professional experience based on Buddhist teachings and practices. Susan has completed the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification training program led by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

-Rumi

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Book Launch and Discussion

Emerging infectious disease outbreaks in recent decades have transformed the very nature of urban life worldwide, even as the extent and experience of pandemics are shaped by the planetary urban condition. Pandemic Urbanism, the new book by Dahdaleh York University faculty fellows S. Harris Ali and Roger Keil, co-authored with their University of Hong Kong colleague Creighton Connolly, critically investigates these relationships in the world faced with an unprecedented pandemic, the first on a majority urban planet.

The authors reveal the historical context of recent infectious disease events and how they have variously transformed the urban social fabric. They highlight the important role played by socio-ecological processes associated with the global urban periphery – suburban or post-suburban zones and hinterland areas of "extended" urbanization –bringing to light the increased significance of social media, changing mobility patterns, and new forms of urban governance and pandemic response. The book takes forward theoretical approaches to understanding pandemics grounded in urban political ecologies of disease and landscape political ecology, developing novel insights for post-pandemic urban governance and planning. In doing so, it reveals a paradox at the heart of pandemic urbanism: we are so closely connected so as to enable contagions to spread easily, yet our urban way of life also makes it easier to contain and respond to disease outbreaks.

Multidisciplinary in its approach, written by three proven experts in the field, this book is an invaluable, accessible primer on the origins, pathways and management of infectious disease.

In this one-hour seminar, Professors Ali and Keil will present the book to the Dahdaleh community and invite participants to join them in a conversation about the pathways for action for global public health governance and pandemic preparedness that they advocate in the book.

Speaker Profiles

Harris Ali is a sociologist at York University who teaches in the areas of environmental sociology, disaster and emergency management, social theory, and environmental health. His research focuses on how the interplay of social, political and environmental factors promote the emergence of disease outbreaks and environmental disasters, as well as how this interplay influences the response to such phenomena. He has conducted various studies based on extensive fieldwork on different types of infectious disease outbreaks in various parts of the world, including E. Coli in Walkerton, Ontario, Tuberculosis amongst the homeless in Toronto, community-based responses to Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (with Dr. Mosoka Fallah and Dr. Joseph Macarthy), and with his long-time research colleague - Roger Keil - a comprehensive study of the 2003 outbreak of SARS in global cities – Singapore, Toronto, Hong Kong - which culminated in an edited volume on SARS (Networked Disease: Emerging Infections in the Global City, Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) that has recently been recognized by the Canadian newspaper of record, The Globe and Mail, as one of the "top ten books that offer lessons from past pandemics." His most recent book coauthored with Roger Keil and Creighton Connolly is entitled Pandemic Urbanism (Polity Press) and focuses on the disease ecology and socio-political dimensions of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases under the conditions of contemporary globalization and heightened urban inequality.

Roger Keil is Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University. He researches global suburbanization, urban political ecology, cities and infectious disease, infrastructure, and regional governance. Among his publications are Suburban Planet (Polity, 2018) and After Suburbia (with Fulong Wu, UTP: 2022) as well as Pandemic Urbanism (Polity, with S. Harris Ali and Creighton Connolly, Polity: 2022) and Turning Up the Heat: Urban political ecology for a climate emergency (with Maria Kaika, Tait Mandler and Yannis Tzaninis, Manchester: 2023).

Register below and join us on Wednesday, March 8, at 1 p.m.

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We all encounter stress in our daily lives that at times can be difficult to manage – affecting the health of our body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Participants in this interactive series will learn practical techniques for ‘Stress Busting’ via Qi Gong (Tai Chi) and Mindfulness Meditation practices, empowering us to care for our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others despite what is occurring around us. This is a great way to prepare for the foreseen and unforeseen challenges ahead.

Join us for the third session in the 3-part Wellness & Self Care series hosted at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research –

Developing Your Stress Busting Action Plan 

Specific tools will be used for a) assessing readiness for change, b) identifying which practice to focus on, and c) developing an action plan for implementing a successful wellness and self-care practice.

• Wednesday, March 15, 2023
• 11 a.m. – noon ET
• 60 minutes interactive Workshop using behavior change planning tools
• Hybrid

This session will engage participants in developing their plan for a successful wellness and self-care practice.

Harvey Skinner PhD has over 45 years experience in academia with a current focus on promoting global mental health that draws on Eastern, Indigenous and Western worldviews and practices. He has Level 1 Qi Gong Teacher Certification with Lee Holden, and has completed many workshops with Qi Gong masters Teja Bell and Robert Peng.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

-Rumi

RSVP

This is the fifth seminar of the six-part seminar series Massive Action: Global Health Design, led by visionary designer Bruce Mau.

In this seminar, we will learn about the project Artificial Intelligence for Global Health Priority Diseases, led by faculty fellow Jude Dzevela Kong, and community fellow Bruce Mau will offer insights and lead a workshop on the project's design opportunities.

About Artificial Intelligence for Global Health Priority Diseases

This initiative will address existing knowledge and practice gaps in the Global South by establishing a multi-regional network to deepen the understanding of how responsible artificial intelligence solutions can improve public health preparedness and response. It will strengthen the capacity of interdisciplinary researchers and policy makers across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa to support early detection, response, mitigation, and control of developing infectious disease outbreaks. Projects within the initiative will work closely with governments, public health agencies, civil society, and other actors to generate new knowledge and collaborations to inform practice and policies at subnational, national, regional, and global levels.

More about the Africa-Canada AI & Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC)

This seminar series is co-organized by the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and York University’s Department of Design.

The Planetary Health Advocacy Framework aims to visualize key advocacy principles, actors and actions for humanitarian, global health and climate actors and beyond. Please join this interactive session for an overview of the crowd-sourced updated framework and contribute your feedback to the final (but living) version.

Check back here for an updated version of the framework.

Speaker Profiles

Carol Devine is a Community Scholar, Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research working on a framework for health and humanitarian actor climate action and a related framework for Planetary Health Advocacy. She leads Médecins Sans Frontières' (MSF) HACE, Humanitarian Action on Climate and Environment and advisor to Climate Smart MSF. Carol co-authored MSF's Humanitarian Policy Briefs in the Lancet Countdown and was a member of MSF's COP27 delegation in Egypt in Nov 2022.

Yasmin Al-Sahili joined the Dahdaleh Institute as a research assistant working on equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization projects in 2021 and collaborating in 2022 with Carol on the Planetary Health Advocacy Framework. She recently completed her fourth year in the global health program, specializing in health policy, management, and systems.

Register below and join us on Wednesday, March 29 at 1 p.m.

A six-part seminar series

Join us at this public seminar to learn about Bruce Mau’s vision of global health design. Bruce Mau will reflect on his MC24 Principles for LIFE-CENTRED DESIGN and on the four case studies covered in the seminar series to suggest learnings for Massive Action: Global Health Design.

Read more about the six-part seminar series and register to participate.

Join us on Wednesday, April 5, at 3 p.m. ET for the closing seminar!

This seminar series is co-organized by the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research and York University’s Department of Design.

Speaker profile

Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist, designer, author, educator, and artist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centred design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he’s collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists, and fellow optimists.  

Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas. His most recent books are Mau MC24: Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work and, with co-author Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science. Mau is co-founder and CEO of Massive Change Network, a holistic design collective based in the Chicago area.