About the Speaker

Jonathan Patz, MD, MPH, is Professor & John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also directs the Global Health Institute. Patz co-chaired the health expert panel of the first Congressionally mandated US National Assessment on Climate Change and was a convening lead author for the international Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.  For 14 years, Patz was a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.  

In 1994, Dr. Patz convened the first-ever session on climate change for the American Public Health Association (APHA) and authored the organization’s first policy resolution on climate change in 1995.  In 1997, he organized the first climate change/health briefing to an EPA administrator (Carol Browner) and has been invited to brief both houses of Congress and serve on scientific committees of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2006 to 2010, Patz served as Founding President of the International Association for Ecology and Health.  

Professor Patz received an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellows Award in 2005, and UW-Madison’s Romnes Faculty Fellow award in 2009. He shared the Zayed International Prize for the Environment in 2006, won a Fulbright Scholar award in 2014, received APHA’s Homer Calver Award for environmental health leadership in 2015 , and the 2017 Alumni Special Recognition award from Case Western School of Medicine. He’s written over 100 peer-reviewed papers plus multiple reports, two co-edited textbooks and an encyclopedia on global environmental health.

Past Speakers

2018
"Why Global Health Matters;  New Insights into the 21stCentury" 
Roger I. Glass, MD, PhD,
Associate Director for International Research, National Institutes of Health (NIH)

2017
"The Impact of Green Chemistry on Global Health" 
Terrence J. Collins PhD,
Director of the Institute for Green Science at Carnegie Mellon University 

2016
"Tackling Global Health in Our Own Backyard"
Jeffrey Brenner, MD
Executive Director of the Camden Coalition

2015
"Global Health Equity: How the Next Generation of Leaders Can Make a Difference"
Barbara Bush
CEO and Co-Founder, Global Health Corps.

2014
"Making Healthcare as Accessible as a Coca-Cola®"
Eric Bing, MD
Senior Fellow & Director of Global Health, George W. Bush Institute, Professor of Global Health, Southern Methodist University, and author of Pharmacy on a Bicycle.

2013
“Biopharmaceutical Industry Impact on the Developed and Developing World”
P. Roy Vagelos
Retired Chairman of the Board and CEO of Merck, and current Chairman of the Board of Regeneron

2012
“Noncommunicable Disease: The Global Challenge”
Sir George Alleyne
Director Emeritus for the Pan American Health Organization

2011
“Saving Children’s Lives: The Millennium Village’s Approach”
Sonia Ehrlich Sachs, MD, MPH
Director of Health for the Millennium Villages Project

2010
“Reaching Out to the World: The Role of Institutional Partnerships” a lecture on the global health response to Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake
Dr. Mirta Roses Periago
Director of the Pan American Health Organization