President of The New York Academy of Medicine

Dr. Boufford is Professor of Public Service, Health Policy and Management at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine. She served as Dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University from June 1997 to November 2002. Prior to that, she served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from November 1993 to January 1997, and as Acting Assistant Secretary from January 1997 to May 1997. While at HHS, she served as the U.S. representative on the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) from 1994-1997.

She is currently Chair of the Board of Directors for the Center for Health Care Strategies and serves on the boards of the United Hospital Fund, the Primary Care Development Corporation, the Village Center for Care, and MHRA. She was President of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration in 2002-2003. She was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1992 and is a member of its Executive Council, Board on Global Health and Board on African Science Academy Development. She was elected to serve four a four year term as the Foreign Secretary of the IOM beginning July 1, 2006. She received an Honorary Doctorate of Science degree from the State University of New York, Brooklyn, in May 1992. She was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in 2005. She has been a Fellow of The New York Academy of Medicine since 1988 and a Trustee since 2004.

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Professor of Urban Development and Policy at London South Bank University, Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, former member of the US National Academy of Science's Expert Panel on Urban Population Dynamics

After gaining a PhD in urban geography, Professor Harpham moved into public health to develop her specialty of urban health in developing countries.  Professor Harpham's interests cover environmental health, health services research, mental health and the social determinants of urban health.  She uses both qualitative and quantitative methods and is an applied researcher working to impact policy and practice.  She is Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, on the Review Board of the UK Institute of Development Studies and from 2000-2003 was a member of the US National Academy of Science's Expert Panel on Urban Population Dynamics.  She is also one of the main resource persons for the Rockefeller Foundation's Urban Summit of 2007.

Professor Harpham's recent projects include: an intervention study in Cali, Colombia to strengthen social capital to reduce violence and improve the mental health of low-income youth; and a study of how research can influence policy in the context of mental health in Vietnam.  She has also co-authored ‘In the shadow of the city: Health and the urban poor in developing countries' (1988) and ‘Healthy cities in developing countries' (1998), co-edited ‘Urban health in developing countries: Progress and prospects' (1995), ‘Urbanization and mental health in developing countries' (1995) and ‘Social Capital and Mental Health (2006). She has attracted over £2m from funding agencies such as the UK Department for International Development, EC, WHO, and the US National Institutes of Health.

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Director, World Health Organization Kobe Centre, which has the mission to nurture, support and sustain excellence and innovation in public health research on health in development.

The WHO Kobe Centre was selected as the hub to manage the Knowledge Network on Urban Settings of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health.

Dr Kumaresan graduated from Kilpauk Medical College, University of Madras in his hometown of Madras, India in 1978, practicing as a surgeon in hospitals around India before taking up the post of Government Medical Officer with the Ministry of Health of Zimbabwe in 1981. Meanwhile, he furthered his studies at Tulane University, New Orleans, gaining a Masters in Public Health and Tropical Medicine, then a Doctorate in Public Health, and working as Consultant Epidemiologist at Gillis Long Hansen's Disease Center in rural Louisana. Returning to Africa, Dr Kumaresan took up postings as Acting Provincial Medical Director in Zimbabwe and later in Botswana as Senior Epidemiologist with the Ministry of Health.

In 1992, Dr Kumaresan joined WHO as Medical Officer for its Global Tuberculosis Programme, later becoming Senior Adviser to the Stop TB Initiative. In his role from 2000 as Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership, he mobilized partners to expand their efforts on tuberculosis, planned strategies to support countries to meet global targets to stop TB, created and managed the Global TB Drug Facility and advocated TB control as a response to address diseases of poverty. From 2003-07, Dr Kumaresan was president of the International Trachoma Initiative, a US non-profit organization supporting the goals of WHO in eliminating the leading cause of preventable blindness. Finally, in the year prior to his appointment in Kobe, he served as Coordinator at the WHO Office for the UN in New York.

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Project Manager, Swiss Virtual Campus project SUPPREM (Sustainability and Public or Private Environmental Management) and Director of the Continuing Education course on sustainable development and Agenda 21 at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Professor Roderick Lawrence MA, D.Sc. has accumulated 25 years of professional experience with academic and international institutions, which has been recognized by successive nominations in Marquis Who's Who in the World and Who's Who in Science and Engineering. He has contributed to the well-known UNESCO Encyclopaedia "Our Fragile World: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development" published in 2001.  He has also been a scientific advisor to the OECD Urban Affairs Division and edited the OECD publication "Better Understanding our Cities: The roles of urban indicators" (1997).

Professor Lawrence has collaborated with the World Health Organization to develop the WHO-EURO Healthy Cities project and has served as the Chairperson of the Scientific Advisory Evaluation Committee from 1998 to 2003.  He is currently Project Manager for the Swiss Virtual Campus project SUPPREM (Sustainability and Public or Private Environmental Management) funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Education and Research since 2001.  He is also Director of the Continuing Education course on sustainable development and Agenda 21 at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

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Professor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, President-Elect, International AIDS Society, Director, British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and a founding co-Director of the Canadian HIV Trials Network

Dr Montaner is the President-Elect of the International AIDS Society. He is the Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and a founding co-Director of the Canadian HIV Trials Network. He is also the Endowed Chair on AIDS at SPH/UBC.

Dr. Montaner has published extensively with regard to the treatment of HIV and in the early days of the HIV epidemic, he pioneered the use of adjunctive corticosteroids for AIDS-related Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. Later on, his work played a significant role in establishing the relationship between the development of HIV resistance to nucleoside analogues and clinical progression of the disease. For several years, Dr. Montaner has focused his efforts on the study of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), most recently focusing on simplification of antiretroviral therapy, the management of multiple drug resistant HIV and emerging toxicities of HAART and more recently increasing the availability of HAART to eligible persons as a public health measure both in low and high-income countries.

Dr. Montaner is the Editor of the BC Centre Therapeutic Guidelines and is responsible for several aspects of the Centre's Drug Distribution Program. Dr. Montaner has received numerous awards for his research work, including the $1,000,000 (CDN) Distinguished Researcher Award in HIV in 2002.

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Dr. Alex C. Ezeh is the Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC).

He joined APHRC in 1998 (then a program of the Population Council in Nairobi) as a Senior Research Fellow. In 2000, he was appointed APHRC’s Interim Director and charged with the responsibility of leading its transition into an autonomous institution. Having successfully led this transition, he was appointed APHRC’s Executive Director in 2001, and has steered the young institution to phenomenal growth to date. Prior to joining APHRC, he worked at ORC/Macro International where he provided technical assistance to governmental and non-governmental institutions in several African countries in the design and conduct of Demographic and Health Surveys.

Dr. Ezeh has more than 20 years of experience working in public health and has authored numerous scientific publications covering the issues of population, demographics, health and health metrics. Currently, he participates on the boards and committees of several international public health organizations, including the World Health Organization, PATH, International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, University of Witwatersrand School of Public Health in South Africa, and the Wellcome Trust.

Dr. Ezeh received his PhD in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania (USA) in 1993. He also has an MA in Demography from the same university (1991), and an MSc in Sociology from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria (1988).

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Anthony Zwi is Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine and Associate Dean (International) at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He has longstanding interests in international and global health policies, and has focused, in particular, on countries affected by conflict and political violence.  Over the past decade he has stimulated work on post-conflict health system development and has led teams examining the interface between health and peacebuilding in conflict-affected settings. His most recent projects have concerned fragile states in the Asia-Pacific region - notably Timor-Leste, the Solomon Islands, and Sri Lanka. He has led research examining how the health system in Timor-Leste responded to the major challenges consequent to political violence and instability in the capital city, Dili, and the efforts made to ensure the continuity of health services provision.

Another major project has examined the emergence of psychosocial and mental health policies and services in relation to experiences of conflict and disaster in the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. He believes that policy should be evidence-informed and that academics should be working more closely with policy makers, service providers, civil society organizations and community members if their work is to contribute to making a difference.

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