International Conference on

Ecology and Global Health

As we move into the twenty-first century, the human community is increasingly confronted with the reality that human health is inseparable from the health of the environment.  Global economic, cultural, and technological forces are impacting our ways of living; the purity of our air, water and food supplies; and the spread of disease, even as they also make possible new ways to treat disease and promote health.  Pollutants respect no national boundaries, and climate change is impacting health worldwide in ways which we are only beginning to understand.  Diseases like SARS and avian flu move from animal to human populations with reductions in animal habitats and increasing human population, with shifts in food supplies and increased wild meat consumption, and with changes in human-animal interactions in markets and animal husbandry.  These diseases are further able to rapidly traverse the globe with international air travel.  Changes in our consumption patterns and diet, fueled by global marketing, are further displacing centuries old wisdom about healthy nutrition and life style and sustainable agriculture.

In these changing circumstances, our global human community will need to come to terms scientifically with the nature and scope of the interlinked environmental and health challenges facing our world today; develop strategies to address these challenges through medical practices, public policies, and new technology; and foster changes in attitudes toward health and the environment to promote a healthier and more sustainable global world, drawing on a broad range of cultural and religious resources and motivations and the skills of marketing professionals.

This conference directly addresses these critical issues by bringing together medical experts, environmental scientists, philosophers, ethicists, scholars of religion, marketing and management professionals, and local medical practitioners with the two-fold goal of providing a larger global environmental context in which to understand health and the causes and treatment of disease and impacting thinking at the highest levels among medical scientists and policy makers.