Zehra Aydin, M.A., joined the United Nations (UN) Environment Programme (UNEP) in September 2006 as the UNEP Liaison to the UN Development Group—a system-wide mechanism to coordinate operational activities in the field and to support UN country teams. Prior to UNEP she was with the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), where she worked in the Division for Sustainable Development, managing the relationship of the Commission on Sustainable Development with civil society and the private sector (1993–2006). Before DESA, she was with the former UN Centre on Transnational Corporations, where she worked on environment and business issues (1990–1992). During her assignment in DESA, she was seconded twice: first to the executive office of the Secretary-General for 18 months and next to the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS) for 12 months. Ms. Aydin’s UN career has largely focused on environment and development, partnerships with civil society and the private sector, and interagency relations. Her work with civil society and the private sector has generated new participatory practices in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, such as the multi-stakeholder dialogues, and shaped the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002) as an unusually participatory event. She also assisted the Cardoso Panel to develop proposals on improving how the UN collaborates with civil society, and in NGLS she managed the first-ever Hearings of the General Assembly with civil society and the private sector in 2005.
John M. Balbus, M.D., M.P.H., serves as senior advisor for public health at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). He also leads NIEHS efforts on climate change and human health. In this capacity he serves as Department of Health and Human Services principal to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, for which he also co-chairs the Interagency Cross-Cutting Group on Climate Change and Human Health. Dr. Balbus has authored studies and lectures on global climate change and health, transportation-related air pollution, the toxic effects of chemicals, and regulatory approaches to protecting susceptible subpopulations. Before joining the NIEHS, Dr. Balbus was chief health scientist for the nongovernmental organization the Environmental Defense Fund. He served on the faculty of the George
Washington University, where he was founding director of the Center for Risk Science and Public Health, founding co-director of the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, and acting chairman of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. He maintains an adjunct faculty appointment at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Balbus received his A.B. degree in biochemistry from Harvard University, his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and his M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Kristie L. Ebi, Ph.D., M.P.H., has been conducting research on the impacts of and adaptation to climate change for more than 15 years, primarily on extreme events, thermal stress, foodborne diseases, and vectorborne diseases. She has worked with the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Development Programme, International Development Research Centre, United States Agency for International Development, and others on designing and implementing adaptation measures in low-income countries, and has worked with the Center for Climate Strategies on identifying adaptation options for U.S. states conducting vulnerability and adaptation assessments. She was a lead author for the Human Health chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, and was lead author for Human Health for the U.S. Synthesis and Assessment Product Analyses of the Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and Human Systems. She has edited four books on climate change and health, and has more than 80 publications. Dr. Ebi’s scientific training includes an M.S. in toxicology and a Ph.D. and an M.P.H. in epidemiology, and 2 years of postgraduate research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Sir Andrew Haines, M.D., MBBS, is a professor of public health and primary care with joint appointments in the Department of Social and Environmental Health Research and Department of Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was previously director (originally dean) of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for almost 10 years, having previously been professor of primary health care at University College London between 1987 and 2000. He also worked part-time as a general practitioner in North London for many years. Dr. Haines’ research interests are in epidemiology and health services research, focusing particularly on research in primary care and the study of environmental influences on health, including the potential effects of climate change and the health cobenefits of the low-carbon economy. He has been a member of a number of major international and national committees, including the Medical Research Council (MRC) Global
Health Group (chair), the MRC Strategy Group, the UK Health and Social Care Policy Committee (chair), and the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research (chair). He was a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the second and third assessment reports and is currently a review editor for the fifth report.
Sir Michael G. Marmot, M.D., Ph.D., is professor of epidemiology and public health and director of the International Centre for Health and Society at University College London, as well as adjunct professor of health and social behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health. Sir Marmot's lifetime work has focused on social inequalities and health. He conducted the well-known Whitehall Studies in Britain, which documented important effects of class on health over a 20- to 40-year span, and he has been involved with translating these issues into policy. He has coordinated two European Research networks and is now co-coordinator of the European Science Foundation network on inequalities in healthy life expectancy; he has also been a member of two research networks of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation and a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research population research program. He is a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and was elected as a founding fellow of the Academy of Medical Science. Sir Marmot holds a medical degree from the University of Sydney and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Christopher J. L. Murray, M.D., D.Phil., is a professor of global health at the University of Washington and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. A physician and health economist, his work has led to the development of a range of new methods and empirical studies to strengthen the basis for population health measurement, measure the performance of public health and medical care systems, and assess the cost effectiveness of health technologies. Dr. Murray worked at WHO from 1998 to 2003, where he served as the executive director of the Evidence and Information for Policy Cluster. From 2003 until 2007, Dr. Murray was the director of the Harvard University Initiative for Global Health and the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, as well as the Richard Saltonstall Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Murray has authored or edited 14 books, many book chapters, and more than 130 journal articles in internationally peer-reviewed publications. He holds bachelor of arts and science degrees from Harvard University, a D.Phil. in international health economics from Oxford University, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.
Maria Neira, M.D., is the director of the Department of Public Health and Environment at WHO. Previously, between September 2002 and August 2005, she was president of the Spanish Food Safety Agency and Vice Minister of Health and Consumer Affairs in Spain. Dr. Neira was appointed in 1999 as director of the Department of Control, Prevention and Eradication at WHO. Prior to that, she had been working for WHO in Geneva since 1993, as coordinator of the Global Task Force on Cholera Control. Before joining WHO, Dr. Neira worked as the public health adviser in the Ministry of Health in Mozambique from 1991 to 1993. Earlier, in Kigali, Rwanda, she was a UN public health advisor/physician on assignment from the United Nations Development Programme. From 1987 to 1989, she was in El Salvador and Honduras as medical coordinator for Médecins sans Frontières. Dr. Neira is a Spanish national who holds a degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Oviedo, Spain, and a master’s degree in public health from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, France. She specialized in endocrinology and metabolic diseases at the Université René Déscartes, then in nutrition at the Conservatoire National d’Arts et Métiers, both in Paris, and she obtained an international diploma in emergency preparedness and crisis management from the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Katherine Rogers, D.Phil., is an executive manager in the Office of the Executive Director at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Prior to joining UNICEF, Dr. Rogers worked for the World Bank in Sierra Leone, where she led a research project that focused on the relationship between mining companies and host communities. Upon joining UNICEF, she worked in the Division of Policy and Strategy, as well as the Division of Programmes, focusing on the agency’s engagement with civil society. Dr. Rogers has an M.Phil. in international relations and a D.Phil. in international development from the University of Oxford.
David Serwadda, M.B.Ch.B., M.Sc., M.Med., M.P.H., is professor of disease control and environmental health at the Makerere School of Public Health, and former dean of the Makerere University School of Public Health in Uganda. He is also a founding member of Accordia Global Health Foundation’s Academic Alliance. Dr. Serwadda is an infectious disease epidemiologist who, in the early 1980s, was one of the first physicians in Uganda to recognize the new disease that became known as AIDS. He has worked continuously on HIV-related research and prevention ever since. He received his M.B.Ch.B. and M.Med. (internal medicine) from Makerere University and M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has been a senior investigator on the Rakai Program since its inception in 1988, and is the Ugandan
principal investigator on the ongoing National Institutes of Health–funded Trial of Male Circumcision for HIV Prevention. He has been instrumental in the scientific design and management of the project and has provided critical liaisons between the project, the local community, Ugandan political and policy decision makers, the Ugandan Ministry of Health, and inter-national agencies. Dr. Serwadda is a member of the Institute of Medicine and was cochair of the Committee on Envisioning a Strategy to Prepare for the Long-Term Burden of HIV/AIDS: African Needs and U.S. Interests.
Úrsula Oswald Spring, Ph.D., is a full-time professor and researcher at the National University of Mexico in the Regional Multidisciplinary Research Centre and the first Munich Re Foundation (MRF) Chair on Social Vulnerability at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security. In 1998 she was elected president of the International Peace Research Association, and between 2002 and 2006 she was general secretary of the Latin-American Council for Peace Research, and today is Honorific President. She was involved in peace and conflict resolution processes in different countries of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Spain. She is lead author of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Special Report on Extreme Events. In 2009 she was elected as the national coordinator of the water research in Mexico to establish a network of water researchers, including scientists, govern-ment officials, and representatives of private enterprises for the National Council of Science and Technology. From 1992 to 1998 she was also the first Minister of Environmental Development in Morelos, Mexico. She cofounded the Peasant University of the South in Mexico and is an adviser of women and environmental movements. She has a Ph.D. in social anthropology with a specialty in environment, a master’s degree in psychology, and a B.E. in philosophy, psychology, and anthropology from the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
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