"aids2031: Anticipating the Future of AIDS"

Wednesday, November 4, 2009
12:00 - 1:15 PM
Harvard Center for Population and Developments Studies, 9 Bow St, Cambridge

Free and Open to All
Lunch provided

The year 2031 will mark fifty years since AIDS was first reported. aids2031 is a UNAIDS commissioned think-tank designed to look at what we need to do differently in order to change the future of aids by 2031.

Dr. Heidi Larson, Director of aids2031, will share some of the emerging findings from the nine working groups of the project. Dr. Larson is also Associate Professor of International Development, Clark University; Research Fellow, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London; and Research Associate at the Harvard Center for Population and Development. She is an anthropologist specializing in the social and political determinant of health, with a particular focus on what drives rumours and shapes public trust--and distrust--especially around vaccines. From 2001-2005 she served as Director of Communications for UNICEF's Immunization Programme and Chair of the Advocacy Task Force, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). Through the Harvard Pop Center, she is currently working on a book on risk and rumors in health, analyzing the experience of the Nigeria polio vaccination boycott and along with other examples of managing public questioning and rumors in public health. She was recently awarded a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation award to develop a methodologies to monitor and support public confidence in immunization programs.