Hosted by The JC School of Public Health and Primary Care of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), a seminar titled “(Not knowing) TBE: The social emergence of tickborne encephalitis in France” will be presented by Professor Tamara GILES-VERNICK from The Institut Pasteur, France, on 29 July 2024. Please refer to details below:
Date: | 29 July 2024 (Monday) |
Time: | 15:30 – 16:30 |
Venue: | Seminar Room 1, 1/F, School of Public Health Building, Prince of Wales Hospital |
Speaker: | Professor Tamara GILES-VERNICK Director of Research & Unit head, The Anthropology and Ecology of Disease Emergence Unit, The Institut Pasteur |
Moderator: | Professor Dong DONG Assistant Professor, The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong |
About the Speaker
Professor Tamara GILES-VERNICK is Director of Research and Unit head of the Anthropology and Ecology of Disease Emergence Unit at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. A specialist in the medical anthropology and history of central and west Africa, her long-term research has focused on the emergence of zoonotic diseases and epidemics. She is currently the Principal Investigator of two multi-country, multi-disciplinary investigations of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and tickborne encephalitis. She also serves as Coordinator of Sonar-Cities, a new European Commission-funded project to develop more socially-inclusive responses to climate change-induced health emergencies and disasters in urban settings. Other current international collaborations focus on pandemic preparedness and point-of-care testing in future health emergencies; a multi-disciplinary study of changing virulence of Yersinia enterocolitica; and a clinical trial for Plasmodium vivax reduction in Madagascar and Ethiopia.
Tamara Giles-Vernick has researched and published widely on a range of global health problems, including COVID-19 and its consequences, hepatitis B, Ebola, Buruli ulcer, malaria, HIV, influenza, and data sharing in health emergencies. Just prior to the COVID-10 pandemic, she led two multi-disciplinary studies investigating changing human-animal relations and viral sharing in Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo. She was also Coordinator for the European Commission-funded project SoNAR-Global (2019-2022), the global social sciences research network for preparedness and response to infectious threats. This network, now a legally recognized association, is part of ISIDORe, a European research infrastructure providing research services for epidemics.
She has provided expertise to multiple national and international institutions, including the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the City of Paris, the French National Agency for AIDS and Hepatitis/Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the French Red Cross.
About the Moderator
Professor Dong DONG is Assistant Professor, JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). She is also Research Fellow (by courtesy), CUHK Centre for Bioethics, CUHK and PI, Rare Disease Real-world Data Lab, Shenzhen Research Institute at CUHK.
Professor Dong employs an interdisciplinary and multimethodological approach to explore justice, equity, and intersectionality within the context of health. With expertise in communication and epidemiology, she actively engages with underprivileged and underserved populations, aiming to bridge theory and practice through community-academic partnerships. Professor Dong’s involvement spans from rare disease real-world evidence studies to health promotion among culturally diverse communities, particularly those from South Asia. In her work, she examines questions of communicative injustice and discrimination, often through a gendered lens.
Additionally, she investigates the intersection of reproductive health, genetic literacy, and bioethics within the realm of Science and Technology Studies. Professor Dong holds board memberships in several regional and national rare disease patient organizations and was awarded the 2022 Equity Initiative Fellowship. As a Principal Investigator, she has received numerous research grants totalling over US$2 million. Her work has resulted in more than 100 peer-reviewed international publications.
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