Farms.com, Canada
10-04-07
October 22 Lecture Looks At Agriculture-Public Health Connection
AMES, Iowa -- Physician, environmental researcher and human rights advocate
Robert Lawrence will explore the linkages between health, agriculture and U.S.
farm policy when he speaks at Iowa State University on October 22.
Robert Lawrence, M.D., will present "The Agriculture-Public Health Connection"
at 7 p.m. in the newly renovated Curtiss Hall Auditorium. His speech is the
Keeney Distinguished Lecture honoring Dennis Keeney, who directed the
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture from 1988 to 1999. The lecture is part
of the Center's 20th anniversary commemoration as well as ISU's
Sesquicentennial celebration.
Lawrence, M.D., is professor of environmental health sciences and director of the
Center for a Livable Future at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a world leader in human rights
and the environment, receiving the 2002 Albert Schweitzer Humanitarianism
Prize for his lifelong efforts to improve health care, human rights and the
environment.
"We have created schools and communities where unhealthful foods are cheaper
and more accessible than healthful foods. This is especially true in lower-income
communities, where childhood obesity has hit hardest," Lawrence wrote in a
recent essay. "Critical pieces of the farm bill could open the door toward making
more healthful foods accessible and affordable for more people."
In 1996, Lawrence founded the Center for a Livable Future to examine the
relationships among diet, food production systems, the environment and human
health. He also helped found Physicians for Human Rights in 1986, which
launched the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and shared the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1997. He has degrees in history and medicine from Harvard and
holds a joint appointment in medicine, international health, and health policy and
management at Johns Hopkins.
Earlier in his career he worked as an epidemic intelligence service officer at the
Centers for Disease Control and was a member of the medical faculty at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Harvard University. He has
chaired a number of task forces and participated in human rights investigations in
countries throughout the world.
The public is invited to an informal reception in the first floor rotunda area of
Curtiss Hall following the speech. The lecture is hosted by the Leopold Center
and co-sponsored by the ISU Committee on Lectures funded by GSB.