Experts from the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, RTI International and the Smithsonian Institution have teamed up to develop a day-long event designed to help the public understand the risks, newest science, and best ways to predict, prevent, prepare for and respond to an infectious disease pandemic. The event focuses primarily on flu, but content and experiences are also applicable to other infectious diseases such as SARS, MERS, Zika, and Ebola.
Presentation Schedule: NRC, 1st Floor, SECU Daily Planet Theater
- 11:30am: Ebola, SARS and MERS: Oh, My! Will We Be Prepared for the Next Pandemic?
Timothy Sheahan, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School
- 1pm: The Ongoing Threat of New and Emerging Infectious Diseases Leading to Epidemics
David Weber, MD, MPH, professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School; professor of medicine and pediatrics at UNC’s School of Medicine; medical director of UNC Hospitals’ Departments of Hospital Epidemiology and Occupational Health Service
- 1:45pm: Dramatic reading of Kyrie by E.B. Voigt
Students and faculty from the Gillings School
Kyrie, a mosaic of sonnets by E.B. Voigt, expresses the human experience of the 1918 flu pandemic.
- 2:30pm: Why people matter for emerging infectious disease
Brian Southwell, PhD, director of the Science in the Public Sphere program at RTI International; adjunct associate professor at the Gillings School; research professor at UNC’s School of Media and Journalism
This digitally-colorized, negative-stained transmission electron microscopic (TEM) image depicted some of the ultrastructural morphology of the A/CA/4/09 Swine Flu virus. Image credit: C.S. Goldsmith and A. Balish, CDC.