Organized by Cuneyt Yuksel, LLM 94, president of the Turkish chapter of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA-Turkey), and Hayri Aydin, MPH 97, vice president of HAA-Turkey, the evening included a reception and dinner. Kerim Munir, MPH 84, SD 93, director of the Fogarty International Program in Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities at Children’s Hospital Boston, thanked Dean Ware and his wife, Janice Ware, associate director of the Developmental Medicine Center at Children’s Hospital Boston, who had participated in an international autism conference in Istanbul earlier that week.

The Harvard Alumni Association is an important "nexus of influence" in public health and regional development and cooperation, said Munir. The evening underscored capacity-building efforts in public health, as well as in mental health and developmental disabilities research in Turkey.

In his talk, Dean Ware reviewed challenges in public health, including the unfinished agenda of preventing infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, which causes about two million deaths each year, and HIV/AIDS. Chronic diseases such as obesity could form the basis of a coming epidemic. Other challenges include injury and violence prevention; environmental health issues; health disparities; and health system development, management, and reform.

He discussed the emergence of an economic model in which economic growth and health maintain a dynamic relationship, each contributing to the other. This model contrasts with a traditional concept in which economic growth unilaterally propels good health.

Dean Ware ended his talk with a quote from President Lawrence Summers regarding the University’s commitment to global health: "There are two major issues the world must address in the next 30 years. One is the expanding knowledge of the life sciences, which promises understanding of mechanisms of disease, of means to prevent and treat disease, and of functioning of the brain and ultimately the mind. The second is the increasing disparities in quality of life between and within countries. Global health stands as the fulcrum linking these global agendas."

–Based in part on material by Kerim Munir, MPH 84, SD 93