Call for applications: Brocher Summer Academy 2014: Ethical Choices for DALYs and the Measurement of the Global Burden of Disease

Confirmed speakers: Christopher Murray (IHME)—Keynote, Matt Adler (Duke), Greg Bognar (La Trobe U), John Broome (Oxford), Dan Brock (Harvard), Richard Cookson (York U), Owen Cotton-Barratt (Oxford), David Evans (WHO), Marc Fleurbaey (Princeton U), Ned Hall (Harvard), Dan Hausman (U of Wisconsin, Madison), Elselijn Kingma (U of Eindhoven), Jeremy Lauer (WHO), Colin Mathers (WHO), Erik Nord (Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo), Ole Norheim (U of Bergen), Andreas Reis (WHO), Joshua Salomon (Harvard and IHME), Abha Saxena (WHO), Erik Schokkaert (KU Leuven), Drew Schroeder (Claremont McKenna), Alex Voorhoeve (LSE), James Woodward (U of Pittsburgh).

Organizers: Daniel Wikler (Harvard), Nir Eyal (Harvard), Samia Hurst (U of Geneva)

The biennial Summer Academy in the Ethics of Global Population Health is hosted by the Brocher Foundation on the shores of Lake Geneva June 9-13 2014, introducing faculty and advanced graduate students to population‐level bioethics. This fast‐developing academic field addresses ethical questions in population‐ and global health rather than ones in individual patient care.

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project is a systematic, scientific effort to quantify the comparative magnitude of health loss due to diseases, injuries, and risk factors. From its inception in the early 1990s, scientists and philosophers recognized that ethical and philosophical questions arise at every turn. For example, it must be decided whether each year in the lifespan is to count alike, and whether future deaths and disabilities should be given the same weight as those in the present. These choices and decisions matter: the share of disease burden due to myocardial infarction could vary as much as 400% depending on what position is adopted on two of the ethical choices described in the GBD 2010 report. 

Key experts in the field of global health policy, along with senior academics in several fields, will lecture and lead discussions with talented younger scholars for five full days. Issues will include those most likely to arise in the GBD area during the next several years. Among these are the choice between health and (health-related) wellbeing as the object of study and measurement; the role of GBD in priority-setting (cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and other methods); and issues arising from the mix of categorical attribution (by cause of death, according to a classification system) and counterfactual analysis.

Younger scholars and advanced graduate students will be invited to participate, and will be selected for their potential to become prominent contributors to the field. Early morning sessions will address broad themes and methodological issues.

TARGET AUDIENCE: 40 young scholars (post-doctoral fellows, junior faculty, and advanced graduate students) in philosophy, political science, economics and other social sciences, the biomedical sciences, and global health, and practitioners and professionals in health policy and global health, selected from applications.

Participation is free, but a fee of CH 550 is required of all accepted participants to cover course documentation, five nights of accommodation, five lunches and four dinners, and local transportation.

The application form, which can be found here (press “Inscription à l’événement” or “Apply to participate”), should be accompanied bya short CV, one writing sample, anda one-paragraph description of your current research interests.

Deadline for applications: March 28th 2014

 

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