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10-3-07
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 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.
For more information,
contact:
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