Students and Faculty Take Part in the 2018 UNGA
September 28, 2018
By: Dr. Chris Dickey and Kassandra Jones (MPH ‘19)
The 73rd gathering of the United Nations General Assembly is in session, and it’s nearly impossible to capture the breadth and depth of the public health experience.
GPH has been well represented by students and faculty at the UNGA, and has hosted several UN-themed events to raise awareness of important organizations and causes.
On the student front, the Nutrition Without Borders club held a cook-off with award-winning international chefs from Senegal, South Africa and Nigeria. The event brought together students, the community and UN members to raise awareness of food issues, with a specific focus on African nations. GPH students acted as sous-chefs representing the three nations and afterward, UN officials held a panel discussion around Zero Hunger.
Photo by: Tanya Braune; (left to right) back row: Joanna Philips, Ashley Newcomb, Palak Kaushal, NWB Co-President Kassandra Jones; front row: NWB Co-President Chelsea Mangold, Jerome Viloria, Prajakta Khairkar, Felicity Duran, Vaibhav Srinivasan
At the “Accelerating the SDGs through Digital Innovation” event, the UNICEF Innovations team presented research that is relevant for GPH by mapping the connectivity and the digital divide of schools in Colombia and other countries. Using data provided by UNICEF partners IBM and Telefonica, the screenshot below shows the school- mapping platform along with the Zika risk index. The underlying colors indicate the calculated Zika risk for each municipality, and the team has also mapped natural disaster and violence vulnerability. UNICEF Innovations is open to collaborations with GPH researchers in Colombia and all the other countries in which it works.
Photo: School mapping in Colombia. Part of the MagicBox platform developed at UNICEF Office of Innovation.
NCDs have been a major theme at the UNGA, as almost every member country is increasingly forced to contend with a growing prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, cancers, stroke, and diabetes. At a high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases, at least a dozen leaders of key UN agencies and partner countries reaffirmed their commitment to address NCDs as part of the SDGs. These delegates agreed to promote policies in their respective countries to protect people from tobacco, unhealthy foods, and other harmful products by restricting alcohol advertising, banning smoking, and taxing sugary drinks.
Thanks to the efforts of key GPH faculty and colleagues, oral health is also on the agenda as a key determinant of NCD risk. In fact, GPH and NYU Dental will be co-hosting an event discussing the shared global health challenges of oral health and the NCDs, and will present an investment case for oral health to help achieve the SDGs in partner countries.
Dean Cheryl Healton; NYU Dental Vice Dean Stuart Hirsch; Drs. Richard Niederman, Habib Benzian, Rudolf Knippenberg, and (your correspondent) Chris Dickey will be joined by the ministers of health of Burkina Faso and Egypt. Stanley Bergman (CEO of Henry Schein, Inc) and Dr. Svetlana Axelrod (Assistant Secretary General of WHO), along with other key global health colleagues, will join in a dynamic and thought-provoking series of presentations.