Theme: Contagious Ideas

Contagion. It’s more than the spread of infectious disease.

On Saturday 30th September 2017, TEDxLSHTM will investigate the transmission of contagious ideas. The diffusion of solutions from the local to the global. The repurposing of knowledge from distinct fields and sectors. The transfer of information, inspiration and hope from one human being to the next.

Through casting its gaze from the minutiae to the gargantuan, TEDxLSHTM speaks to the idea that whilst ‘one size fits all’ is definitely not a universal truth when combating complex issues, much can be gained from repurposing, reconfiguring and remodelling solutions from other settings, sectors and situations. Problems, solutions and indeed ideas, do not exist in isolation. They are connected. They are contagious. It is through adjusting our approach in recognition of this, that we may make real progress in the pursuit of a more just, equitable and healthy society.

TEDxLSHTM is rooted in the notion that individuals, their health and their wellbeing, are connected and co-dependent. The 2017 event will celebrate those who, through embracing these connections, have taken a share of the responsibility for the wellbeing of others, be that at local, national or international level. Through harnessing and catalysing this vibrantly diverse community of change-makers, TEDxLSHTM hopes to inspire and empower those tackling some of the biggest environmental, economic and societal challenges of our time.

This year, TEDxLSHTM will hear from 12 speakers. The first four speakers to be released are as follows: Tammam Aloudat, Syrian medical doctor and deputy medical director of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Switzerland; Sophie Bostock, sleep expert at pioneering digital medicine company Big Health; Bisi Alimi, sexual health and LGBT rights activist who has been involved in HIV/AIDS advocacy since the 1990’s, and Ivana Schnur, co-founder and chief medical officer at Sense.ly, San Francisco-based ‘virtual nurse’ company. More speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

The event will be held in the newly refurbished Library, at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, an innovative and pioneering school in the field of global and public health. Situated at a nexus of disciplines, the school brings together a diverse range of specialists and students with the intention of improving health worldwide.

This is the second TEDx event to be held at the school. TEDxLSHTM: Emerging… was held at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the 15th September 2015. The event brought together emerging ideas from fifteen speakers at the forefront of their respective disciplines, including Vikram Patel, Karl Blanchet, Will Nutland, Jean Smith and Sophia Walker.

TEDxLSHTM welcomes attendees from all backgrounds and sectors of society to join in creating a platform for action, through which global change can be created. We look forward to seeing you in September!

Please click here (http://tedxlshtm.com/) to access the TEDxLSHTM website with more information on the event, 2017 speakers, ticket sales and the organising team. If you can’t find the information you need here, send us a message through the website and someone from the team will get back to you.

To view talks from the 2015 event, please click here. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cQoGNEcc5Q&list=PL4vUzOPxB_9IPAL-lbZjfHMIvUaCHn4Ni)

Tickets for this event go on sale on Thursday 20th July

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Keppel Street
London, London, City of, WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom

Aala El Khani

Dr. Aala El-Khani develops and researches innovative ways to reach families that have experienced conflict with parenting support and training. She has conducted award-winning field research with refugee families and families in conflict zones, exploring their parenting challenges and the positive impact parenting support can provide. Her work has significantly contributed to an agenda of producing materials which together form psychological first aid for families affected by conflict and displacement. Aala is a humanitarian psychologist, working as a consultant for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, as well as a researcher at the University of Manchester at the Division of Psychology and Mental Health. Her current work collaborates the efforts of the UNODC and the University of Manchester in developing and evaluating family skills programmes in countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Turkey and Lebanon. Aala is incredibly passionate about highlighting the significant role that caregivers play in protecting their children during conflict and displacement. She has trained affected families, NGO workers and school teachers internationally on family skills and research methods.

Andy Tatem

As well as being a Professor of spatial demography and epidemiology at the University of Southampton, Andy Tatem is the Director of WorldPop and Flowminder. He is interested in how populations, their characteristics and their dynamics can be mapped at high resolution across low and middle-income countries. His research has led to pioneering approaches to the use and integration of satellite, survey, cell phone and census data to map the distributions of vulnerable populations for disease, disaster and development applications. He runs international collaborations with national governments, UN agencies and data providers, and leads multiple research and operational projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, Clinton Health Access Initiative and others.

Bisi Alimi

An LGBT advocate and HIV activist, Adebisi Alimi was the first person to ever come out as gay on Nigerian television. After an attempt on his life in 2007, he fled to the UK where he was granted political asylum. Before he left, he founded The Independent Project for Equal Rights-Nigeria, where he served as Executive Director and pioneered several Nigerian LGBT youth initiatives. In the UK, he helped to set up Britain’s first international LGBT organization, Kaleidoscope Diversity Trust, where he served as media spokesperson and Director for Africa until 2012. As a Fellow of AVAC, an HIV prevention and treatment fellowship based in New York, he promotes the need for community involvement of more Black gay men in Europe on the mobilization in the fight against HIV. His development work focuses on promoting human rights for gay African men and the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Christine Coester

Christine Coester is a journalist and editor living in Germany. Originally from the United States, she studied Biology, Chemistry and German Literature at the University of Missouri, before pursuing a Master of Arts in Journalism. After graduating, Ms. Coester moved to Leipzig, Germany, where she reported on antimicrobial resistance in agriculture with the support of the Fulbright Commission. Ms. Coester now works as an editor for Handelsblatt Global, a leading German newspaper with a strong focus on European politics and business. She also writes translates and writes science texts for the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Germany's international wire service, and CORRECTIV, a nonprofit investigative newsroom in Berlin.

Femi Nylander

Femi Nylander is a poet, actor and activist from Manchester in the United Kingdom. His topics range from climate change to migration to global health and beyond. He is currently working on a film project on French colonial history called "Exterminate all the brutes".

Georgina Perry

Georgina has over twenty years of experience in health service development and associated research, training and consultancy in both the UK and internationally. She is recognised for her leadership, advocacy and pioneering approach to meeting the diverse range of needs experienced by sex workers in the UK. After 13 years at the helm of a specialist NHS service in East London, Georgina has witnessed on many occasions the culture of disbelief and discrimination faced by sex workers who seek to report crimes against them. Her current role is as CEO for National Ugly Mugs (a safety and criminal justice reporting service for sex workers). She is clear that decriminalisation is the only legislative model that can offer a safer and more just environment and is committed to working in partnership with sex workers and sex work allies to achieve this.

Laura Spratling

Laura came to the NHS in 2009 from a diverse non-health background, having first studied Modern Languages, and worked for a major publishing firm in Germany. She then trained on the NHS graduate management scheme and holds an MSc in Health and Public Leadership. To date, her career in health has seen her in local commissioning, managing paediatric and ophthalmic services, and working in International Health at the Department of Health. Her current role as Programme Director for Diabetes and Stroke Prevention at the Health Innovation Network (HIN) in South London involves leading two major collaborative improvement programmes which work across the NHS, public health, research and industry. In her various managerial roles Laura has worked to bring about the best possible outcomes for patients by getting systems to work more effectively and ensuring that staff have the right skills, equipment and support to meet their patients’ needs. Her experience of enthusiastic teamwork and commitment to change was broadened during her recent six-month placement with the King’s Sierra Leone Partnership at Connaught Hospital in Freetown, where she worked alongside local partners to introduce a new health records system and implement a number of quality improvement projects. The experience of meeting those who Laura describes as "some incredibly strong, resilient and inspiring people, who have survived some terrible times and are committed to working towards a better healthcare system", has strongly influenced Laura’s work as she forges ahead in her current role back in South London. In her spare time, Laura is an enthusiastic violinist, and performs with various groups including the European Doctors Orchestra.

Lawrence Haddad

Lawrence Haddad is the Executive Director of Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) since October 2016. Lawrence joined GAIN following his role as Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division. From 2004-2014, Lawrence was the Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). Prior to this, he was the Director of the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division at IFPRI, a lecturer in quantitative development economics at the University of Warwick and also a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics. From 2010 to 2012, Lawrence was the President of the UK and Ireland’s Development Studies Association and from 2014-2016 the founding co-chair of the Global Nutrition Report. He was also the UK’s representative on the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) of the UN’s Committee on World Food Security (CSF), with the aim of making the CSF more effective in research analysis. Lawrence’s research focuses on a wide range of issues related to the wellbeing of the poor, including the design of policies and programs intended to reduce poverty and malnutrition, the impact of gender differences in accessing resources on nutrition and poverty, the role of community participation in the performance of poverty programs, and the challenges that rapid urbanization poses for the poor. He has published extensively on these issues. Lawrence holds a PhD in Food Research from Stanford University.

Mahesh Mathpati

Mahesh started working as a student fellow with the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLTHT), whilst studying a Bachelors of Ayurveda Medicine and Surgery (BAMS). Ayurveda (Ayurvedic medicine) is one of the world’s oldest holistic healing systems, based on the belief that health and well-being depend on a balance between the mind, body, and spirit. Whilst studying, Mahesh was involved with various projects developing databases on Ayurveda. His diverse interests have involved him with various plant, animal and environmental conservation programmes and non-governmental organisations in India and the UK. As a programme coordinator working with indigenous communities (Adivasi) in South India, Mahesh’s work focused on the revitalisation of local health traditions and cultural heritage, to create integrative healthcare models which are sustainable at the community level. Since completing his Masters in Public Health, he has been working on projects and policies governing integration of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine in public health systems. In collaboration with the Norwegian government, Mahesh coordinated a study for the development of a Maternal and Child health programme by integrating traditional medicine and western medicine at primary healthcare level. He currently works as a Research Associate at Tran-Disciplinary University, Bangalore and as a Volunteer Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Patrick Young

Patrick Young is the Executive Director and founder of Theatre for a Change (TfaC), which was established in 2003. Before that he established Streets Alive Theatre Company, having studied for an MA in Theatre for Development at King Alfred's College Winchester. Patrick was originally a drama teacher in comprehensive schools in the east end of London. Theatre for a Change enables the most marginalised girls and women to have a voice in their personal relationships and in society as a whole. It has offices in Ghana and Malawi, and works in partnership with other organisations who use its methodology to achieve their objectives.

Sophie Bostock

Sophie Bostock, PhD, is a passionate advocate for the importance of sleep for health and wellbeing. As a Sleep Evangelist at Big Health, she is working towards the company's mission to help millions of people to improve their sleep and mental wellbeing by harnessing the power of digital medicine. Sophie has been awarded an NHS Innovation Accelerator Fellowship, to help promote the uptake of digital medicine within the NHS. She has a PhD in Health Psychology from UCL and collaborates with colleagues at the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford.

Tammam Aloudat

Tammam is the current Deputy Medical Director of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Switzerland. He is a Syrian medical doctor and public health expert, and has worked for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and for MSF in both the field and headquarters, directly supporting emergency medical assistance in multiple contexts. He has published multiple works on health and medical interventions in emergencies and conflict, including on epidemic control, natural disasters, non-communicable diseases and psychosocial support. In addition to his role in managing the medical department at MSF, he also works on a range of issues related to the quality of medical care in emergencies, health information systems, and medical ethics in emergencies.