thursday,march29-usfhealth.docVIP

PUBLIC HEALTH DAY THURSDAY, MARCH 29 Introductory Session (TH-18) THURSDAY 8:00-9:50 Garrison 3 Public Health Challenges in the 21st Century: An Overview University of South Florida College of Public Health Plenary Session New and emerging global threats have challenged public health professionals in recent years. With issues ranging from flu pandemics to bioterrorism events with smallpox infection to radiation poisoning form dirty bombs, there has never been a time when the public has expected public health to be more prepared. Obviously, many of these concerns are not new. Indeed, organized public health grew to maturity in the late 19th Century as a direct response to several of similar challenges including epidemic disease, quarantine, malnutrition, and public sanitation. Perhaps the most important novel element today is the public recognition of an interconnected global community - a world where the incidence of poultry disease in the Far East, for example, is a reasonable basis for public concern in the U.S. The scope and dimensions of these new and emerging threats forces us to raise the question - are the conventional tools of public health sufficient to meet these new challenges to industrial society? This panel will respond to this question and sketch a framework for understanding more precisely the dialogue during Public Health Day. It will consider recent changes in education and research and how these shifts reflect responses to the definition of new problems. The panel will also explore the projections for new personnel needs in public health. PANELISTS: PETERSEN, Sc.D., Donna (Dean, College of Public Health, University of South Florida), MAIL, Ph.D., Patricia (Immediate Past-President, American Public Health Association), HANN, MPH, CHES, Neil E. (Chief, Community Development Service, Oklahoma State Department of Health, Chair, Editorial Board, American Journal of Public Health) (TH-05) THURSDAY 8:00-9:50 Regency 5 Urban Ecology and Infrast