Three day conference on public health by Navrachna university in collaboration with Arizona university

Navrachana university in collaboration with University of Arizona organised a three-day virtual International Conference on Public health. Eminent experts from India, USA, Brazil, Canada and Italy shared their views on several themes identified in the three-day Conference.

Eminent speakers like Prof Mohan Tanniru from University of Arizona, Dr. Kumarasamy Director of VHS Infectious Disease Medical Centre Chennai, Padma Shri Subroto Das from CEO Lifeline foundations Vadodara, Prof Iman Hakim Dean Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public health University of Arizona, Dr. Narayan Gaonkar health Specialist UNICEF, Gujarat, Dr. Dileep Mavlankar Director Indian Institute of Public health Gandhinagar, Dr. Salvador Gullo Neto from School of Medicine Brazil, Dr. Navin Verma Assistant Director, Non Communicable Disease Division Delhi, Dr. Krishna Reddy CEO, Care Hospitals AP, India and Dr. Minoo Patel Dean GMERS Medical College talked about the current pandemic and the road ahead for public health practice and management.

During the conference COVID 19 was discussed from all perspectives as a matter of learning for public health systems over the world. Existing problems in handling COVID pandemic were highlighted like lack of sufficient training and knowledge of healthcare professionals, public awareness for such pandemic, lack of sufficient infrastructure to manage such pandemics and also need for stricter supervision and control.

The experts suggested some very important way ahead as lessons learnt from this pandemic. Some of them were requirement of a well-structured public health policy in place, increase public private partnerships to implement innovations in healthcare through research and start up, make public health awareness a priority, increasing funding on public health, establish health and wellness centres for continued public health awareness and support, work on increasing the resilience, quality of healthcare service, accessibility of clear and true information and proper communication and healthcare services around the world.

The Conference also talked in detail about how Block chain and Artificial Intelligence could be at use to store data of COVID patients and also be used for effective vaccine distribution. The real time generation and tracking is the only way to deal with situation like these and IT based solutions in healthcare are key to such mass handling. However, the issue of data privacy and ethics were also debated and lot of future scope of work will depend on the efficient handling of such sensitive data.

Navrachana University in association with University of Arizona have committed to work towards the public health initiatives together through the jointly launched Navrachana University Centre for Public Health. This centre shall work on several issues of public health through an interdisciplinary cross talk. The Centre shall work on the several IT based solutions for health management, reaching out to people to bring in awareness about public health through various tie ups with organisations, Schools, government bodies.

The centre shall also launch joint programs on public health and its management. The major thematic areas of work for the Centre shall be emerging, re-emerging diseases, non-communicable diseases, maternal and foetal health and nutrition, IT solutions for health care, Educating for public health, public health spaces, environmental health and occupational health.