Fred Barbash-Moderator - Good afternoon. The topic today is everything about pandemics. Our guests are Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, and Dr. Greg Dworkin. Both are Arena contributors.
Dr. Benjamin is well known in the world of public health as a leader, practitioner and administrator. Benjamin has been the executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA), the nation's oldest and largest organization of public health professionals, since December 2002. He is board-certified in internal medicine and a fellow of the American College of Physicians; he is also a Fellow Emeritus of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
At APHA, Benjamin also serves as the publisher of the nonprofit's monthly publication, The Nation's Health, the association's official newspaper, and The American Journal of Public Health, the professions premier scientific publication. He is the author of over 90 scientific articles and book chapters.
Benjamin also serves on the boards of Research America, Partnership for Prevention and the Reagan-Udall Foundation. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.
Greg, a contributing editor to the DailyKos, is a founding editor of Flu Wiki (www.fluwikie.com) and its sister site, the Flu Wiki Forum. Since its inception in June 2005, Flu Wiki has grown into an international clearinghouse of pandemic influenza information and links, presented in four languages and accessed from six continents.
Dr. Dworkin has lectured on the topic of Flu Wiki and the internet at the UCLA School of Public Health, and has presented (all by invitation) at the Seasonal and Pandemic Influenza Conference 2007 (jointly sponsored by the Infectious Disease Society of America and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) on Flu Wiki’s volunteer community projects, at CIDRAP’s 2007 Business Preparedness for Pandemic Influenza National Summit (as a panelist discussing the role of journalism and the internet during a flu pandemic), at the CDC’s 2007 Leaders to Leaders Conference (on the role of the internet in advancing public health issues), and at the Pandemic Influenza National Summit in June of 2007 sponsored by Department of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Dworkin is Chief of Pediatric Pulmonology and Medical Director of the Pediatric Inpatient Unit at Danbury Hospital in Danbury CT, where he has been in clinical practice for eighteen years. He serves on the Danbury city and school Pandemic Flu Task Forces.
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