“The Global AIDS Pandemic: Can it Be Slowed and is SARS Next”

Hartford, CT — Michael H. Merson, M.D., Dean of Public Health, the Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health and Chairman, Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine, and a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering is the keynote speaker for the 28th Annual Meeting of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. Dean Merson will speak to an assembly of approximately 200 members of the Academy, invited guests, and the winners of the 2003 statewide science competitions about “The Global AIDS Pandemic: Can it Be Slowed and is SARS Next.”

Prior to joining Yale as the first Dean of Public Health, Dr. Merson worked for 17 years with the World Health Organization (WHO) serving first as Director of the Diarrheal Diseases Control and Acute Respiratory Control Programs and subsequently as Executive Director of the WHO Global Program on AIDS. Before joining WHO, he was engaged in research on the etiology and epidemiology of diarrheal diseases in the United States and abroad. More recently, he has written on global AIDS policy issues, which is his current major area of interest. He has authored more than 175 articles and is the senior editor of International Public Health, the first textbook on the subject. He is the director of Yale’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA), which supports primary and secondary HIV/AIDS prevention research and studies of related policy issues. As director of CIRA’s International Research Core, he also oversees several AIDS research and training programs in St. Petersburg, Russia, China, India, West and South Africa, which enable policy makers, health service providers and community resources to deal effectively with the pandemic in their own countries through prevention and care. Dr. Merson has served on various National Institutes of Health review panels and advisory committees, is a consultant to the World Bank for its HIV/AIDS projects in various countries, has received the Surgeon General’s Exemplary Service Medal and the Arthur S. Flemming Award for distinguished government service, and has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences