Institute for Health and Social Justice
launches campaign on hunger and health

The Institute for Health and Social Justice (IHSJ) – the research, education and advocacy arm of PIH – has launched a campaign to galvanize knowledge, awareness, and action to combat pandemic coinfections of hunger, malnutrition and disease.

The first round of activity in this campaign is a series of seminars to be held in the Boston area, organized jointly with the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University and the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights.

The first seminar in the series features Dr. Nevin Scrimshaw, an internationally renowned scholar who literally wrote the book (or books) on the connections between hunger, malnutrition, illness, and death. Dr. Scrimshaw headed the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at MIT for many years, organized and led the World Hunger Programme at the UN University, was awarded the World Food Prize in 1991, and remains a leader in the field as a professor emeritus at MIT and a member of the faculty at the Friedman School. The seminar will take place on Thursday, March 8, at 4:30 pm in Room G2 of the Kresge Building at the Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston.

In addition to the seminar series, the IHSJ is organizing a gathering of leading experts and activists on hunger and health to take place in early May. That meeting will help set the agenda for the IHSJ's research and advocacy work over the coming months and will lay the groundwork for a major symposium to be held in the autumn.

[posted March 5, 2007]