Unite for Sight- Jessica Cowan-Dewar

I just returned from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut where Unite for Sight hosted their annual global health conference. Although Unite for Sight is an NGO that focuses on global eye health and preventable blindness, the conference invites speakers to present on all aspects of global health. This year’s conference “Achieving Global Goals through Innovation” featured keynote addresses by Jeffrey Sachs, PhD (Director of Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon), Sonia Ehrlich Sachs, MD, MPH (Health Coordinator, Millennium Village Project), and Harold Varmus MD (President and Chief Executive, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Former Director of the NIH and Nobel Prize Recipient), amongst others. It was an exciting weekend in New Haven - the forsythias were in full bloom and thousands of people from across the globe had traveled to Yale in order to attend this conference. I was there to present a talk entitled “Open Medicine: A Journal and a Social Movement”. I spoke primarily about the role of online, open access, peer-reviewed journals in bettering global health. My co-presenters, Dr. Brian Leonard (a vitreoretinal surgeon at the Ottawa Eye Institute) and Dr. Maria Isabel Herran (Pediatrician at the Rainbow Centre for International Child Health in Cleveland) were excellent and the audience was most receptive. After the weekend away I feel rejuvenated and ready to tackle the last of my doctoral course work. Most importantly, my commitment to the field of global health has been reaffirmed. I strongly recommend this conference to anyone interested in global health and/or development.

For more information:

Unite for Sight - http://www.uniteforsight.org/what-we-do
Conference - http://www.uniteforsight.org/conference