The Water Institute at UNC launches at international conference
| October 28, 2010 | |
|
The University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health launched The Water Institute at UNC on Oct. 25, as part of the international “Water and Health: Where Science Meets Policy” 2010 conference held in Chapel Hill.
Dr. Jamie Bartram addresses participants at an international water and health conference in Chapel Hill on Oct. 25. Bartram directs The Water Institute at UNC, which was launched at the event.
The Water Institute at UNC, led by Jamie Bartram, PhD, professor of environmental sciences and engineering, will bring together individuals and institutions from diverse disciplines and sectors and empower them to work together to solve the most critical global issues in water and health. At Monday’s launch, speakers from organizations around the world described how they already are working with the Institute and look forward to partnerships it will facilitate between academia, NGOs, the United Nations (WHO and UNICEF), and businesses. Speakers at the launch included Catarina de Albuquerque, United Nations Independent Expert on the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation; Clarissa Brocklehurst, Chief, Water Sanitation and Hygiene at UNICEF; John Borrazzo, Chief, Maternal and Child Health Division, Bureau for Global Health, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and Jon Lane, Executive Director, Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, headquartered in Geneva.
“Our (collective) vision is that no one in the world lacks access to his or her fundamental right to clean water and sanitation,” said Tom Slaymaker of Wateraid. “It is so important to partner with academic institutions to have access to the latest thinking, to make sure we are rigorous and supported by evidence.”
Jon Lane, executive director of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, headquartered in Geneva, congratulated UNC and Chancellor Holden Thorpe for recruiting Bartam.
Bartram came to the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in July 2009 from the World Health Organization. His 30-year career has focused upon diverse areas of public health and disease prevention, especially in relation to water supply and sanitation. For more than 20 years, he has worked at the interface of science and policy regarding water and environmental health.
He spent more than a decade at WHO, where he also served as Coordinator for Assessing and Managing Environmental Risks to Health and chaired U.N.-Water, coordinating water-related issues among 23 U.N. agencies and 12 international partners.
“More than 400 people from over 50 countries joined us here this week in launching the Water Institute,” Bartram said. “The emerging water crisis demands real academic leadership. We need both to protect public health and turn adversity to opportunity to improve equity and reduce preventable disease. Our vision at UNC is of bringing people together to tackle the most critical challenges in water health and development and enabling policy makers and practitioners to make a real difference.”
For more information, visit www.waterinstitute.unc.edu.
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, 919-966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.
|
|
