International Avian Flus Conference, to be held Cambridge, MA November , 2006

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports an interdisciplinary workshop on avian influenzas to be held at Harvard University. The workshop is being convened by scientists from the fields of medical anthropology, public health, and political science, who have a wealth of experience with social and medical epidemiology of disease and international health policy. Emphasis will be on a biosocial framework that seeks to integrate biological, cultural, social, political, economic and agricultural perspectives. The workshop will bring together specialists across various fields to examine the local and global dimensions of the Avian flus phenomenon and the social consequences of a worldwide pandemic. Workshop participants will include junior and senior scholars in the fields of virology, epidemiology, agronomy, animal science, social and cultural anthorpology, political science,history, and social and health policy. Scholars will come from many institutions across the United States, as well as China, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, and Europe. The workshop's objectives are: 1. To provide an integrative, cross-disciplinary look at biosocial issues that contribute to avian and other influenza infections and their spread, beginning with an undertanding of the lived experience of intensive husbandry of chickens, ducks, geese, and swine in South China, Thailand, Vietnam, and other Asian societies. 2. To better underestand the institutional and governmental issues that have faced societies in responding to Asian flus and will face them in an even more pressing way in the future if the H5N1 strain of avian flu, or some other flu virus, becomes pandemic. 3. To better understand the social and political consequences for societies should pendmic occur with high mortality and morbidity. 4. To better understand cultural, political, institutional, professional, and economic differences in the sources of and responses to Asian flus.