Engaging discussions about today’s public health landscape
The MaineHealth Center for Health Improvement (CHI) has assembled an exciting panel of respected leaders to discuss important public health issues impacting Maine and the nation. Our virtual Public Health Grand Rounds series is open to anyone interested in learning more about public health and we would love to see you there!
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Register for an upcoming webinar to attend live or view recordings of past webinars on YouTube.
Amanda Rector has been the State Economist for Maine since 2011. In this capacity, she conducts ongoing analysis of Maine's economic and demographic conditions to help inform policy decisions. Amanda is a member of the State of Maine’s Revenue Forecasting Committee and serves as the Governor’s liaison to the U. S. Census Bureau. She earned a BA in Economics from Wellesley College and her master’s in public policy and management from the Muskie School of Public Service at USM.
Tom Frieden, MD served as Director of the CDC and Commissioner of the New York City Health Department. Earlier in his career, he worked with the government of India to improve tuberculosis care, a program that prevented millions of deaths. He led efforts that stopped the largest outbreak of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis ever to occur in the United States, reduced tobacco use, and stopped epidemics of Ebola and other deadly diseases.
Georges C. Benjamin, MD is known as one of the nation’s most influential physician leaders because he speaks passionately and eloquently about the health issues having the most impact on our nation today. From his firsthand experience as a physician, he knows what happens when preventive care is not available and when the healthy choice is not the easy choice. As executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA) since 2002, he is leading the Association’s push to make America the healthiest nation.
View past webinars:
This interactive, insightful and entertaining webinar is focused on the importance of nutritious food and how it can be used as medicine. Corby Kummer is considered the “Dean among food writers in America” and he spent time sharing thoughts and answering questions from the MaineHealth CHI Food Is Medicine team and other care team members.
Kummer is executive director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute, a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science, and a senior editor of The Atlantic, for which he was a longtime food columnist and originated a vertical on food, sustainability, policy, and food justice. He attended the Loomis-Chafee School and received a BA from Yale College. He is the author of The Joy of Coffee and The Pleasures of Slow Food, the first book in English on the slow food movement, and has been restaurant critic of New York, Boston, and Atlanta Magazines and a food and food policy columnist for The New Republic.
This fascinating webinar focuses on the impacts of American regional history and culture on public health. New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist, Colin Woodard, is known for his work on North American regionalism, the history of the United States, and international affairs.
He is the author of several books, including "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America" and “Lobster Coast.” He is currently the Director of Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University's Pell Center. A native of Maine, he is also a State and National Affairs Writer for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.
This engaging webinar describes the importance of social connections and outlines the strategies that are effective in addressing it. Robert Putnam, PhD discusses his theory of how declining community engagement has created an American civic crisis. His points center on the importance of community as integral to the success of democracy.
Putnam is a professor and former Dean at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and author of several ground-breaking books. There is also a documentary based on his work titled “Join or Die” that is available on Netflix.
This webinar outlines critical components needed for change in health care. Zeev Neuwirth, MD lays out the three domains that are transforming health care and weaves together the stories of individual and organizational exemplars who are going beyond the walls of our legacy health care system to create a more personalized, effective and humane system of care.
Neuwirth is a health care executive with over 30 years of combined experience in clinical practice, clinical operations, process improvement, population health and innovation. He most recently served as the Chief of Care Transformation at Atrium Health, now part of Advocate Health.
This webinar examines the role of the midwifery care model in improving maternal health outcomes within health systems, identifies key practices in high-income countries that contribute to enhanced maternal health outcomes and their relevance to policy and explores actionable strategies that U.S. health systems can adopt to improve outcomes in maternal health.
Munira Gunja, MPH is a senior researcher at The Commonwealth Fund for International Programs in Health Policy and Practice Innovations. Previously, she worked at the US Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Health Care Access and Coverage, receiving the Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service for two consecutive years.
MaineHealth Center for Health Improvement
The MaineHealth Center for Health Improvement was founded in 1997 to support the achievement of the health system’s vision of “working together so our communities are the healthiest in America."