For more information and to RSVP for the Lancet Commission lecture, please visit: https://lancetadolescents.eventbrite.com
The Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing will be visiting the Bay Area in October. On October 26th, George Patton, Chair of Commission and Susan Sawyer, co-director, will discuss the shifting determinants of health and health needs of the world’s youth. The lecture is part of the annual UC Berkeley School of Public Health Dean’s Lecture Series and co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Global Adolescent Health Colloquium and the Center for Global Public Health.
The Lancet Commission, including 27 youth commissioners from around the globe, is entrusted with formulating a global agenda for adolescent health and wellbeing. USAID, WHO, UNICEF, and the Gates Foundation will be consulting the agenda as they begin to operationalize their plans to support youth health.
The Bay Area has long been a hub for a tight-knit network of researchers, practitioners, and advocates dedicating their life’s work to adolescents and young people at both a local and global level. Professor Coco Auerswald, a leading researcher who is spearheading the adolescent health efforts from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health stated, “George and Susan’s visit is a great opportunity for us to introduce them to the range of academic expertise in the Bay Area in adolescence and adolescent health, including a large community of experts in adolescent medicine at UCSF and Stanford and experts in adolescent public health, development, policy and wellbeing at UC Berkeley.”
The Commission’s visit to UC Berkeley comes at an exciting time for adolescent health research at the university. The momentum putting Berkeley on the map in adolescent health and wellbeing is accelerating even further this year, with the establishment of the Center for the Developing Adolescent based in the Institute for Human Development, and now I4Y, the partnering Center at the School of Public Health. I4Y is focused on partnering with campus and community partners to address the many challenges adolescents face, focusing on the social determinants of health, health disparities, connectedness, and networks for adolescents through a multidisciplinary and multigenerational approach. SPH Professors Coco Auerswald, Ndola Prada and Emily Ozer will lead.
In globally-focused efforts, just last year the UC Berkeley Center for Global Public Health (SPH) helped launch a Colloquium for Global Adolescent Health, under the faculty direction of Professor Auerswald, with funding from the Institute for International Studies. Co-collaborators are The Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability (SPH); the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at the Goldman School of Public Policy; and the Human Rights Center at the School of Law. Through active dialogue and events such as the Lancet Event, the group has encouraged dialogue between global leaders in adolescent health, and through smaller events has helped campus inform global-to-local and local-to-global dialogue regarding the care of adolescents in resource-poor settings domestically and in low-income nations.
Having such events as the Lancet visit will bring key partners together to align with global policy making, in the hopes of accelerating the transdisciplinary agenda for the world’s millions of young people. The effort will, at its best, help mobilize a diverse and widespread network already championing adolescent health and wellbeing throughout the Bay Area and beyond. Auerswald said, “We are poised in the Bay Area to join with partners globally to make the agenda a reality and make lasting impact on youth health and wellbeing worldwide.”
For more information and to RSVP for the Lancet Commission lecture, please visit: https://lancetadolescents.eventbrite.com