The Dartmouth healthcare community will present “Feast or Famine: Global Food Realities,” its seventh symposium on the “Great Issues in Medicine and Global Health,” from Wednesday, November 17, to Friday, November 19. Featuring a wide range of lectures on global food realities, the symposium aims to shed light on how the globalization of the food supply affects production, economics, and sustainability, and how culture influences health and nutrition.
(Photo courtesy of stock.xchng)
“Whether we consider our biological needs or the basic principles of human rights, food is at the core of our existence—as individuals as well as societies,” says cardiologist Dr. John Butterly, the symposium co-director and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center’s (DHMC) executive medical director. “The major health problems we face today are either related to chronic under-nutrition in resource poor countries, or chronic over-nutrition in the resource-rich countries. We do not seem to be able to get this right.”
Dr. John Butterly, symposium co-director and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center’s (DHMC) executive medical director. (photo by Mark Washburn)
The three-day event will include lectures by Butterly and symposium co-director Mary Turco, EdD, director of the Center for Continuing Education in the Health Sciences and Continuing Medical Education at DHMC. There will also be five featured speakers from a range of academic backgrounds: Peter Menzel, author of What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets; Faith D’Aluisio, editor and lead writer for the Material World book series; Jaime Bayona, MD, MPH, director of global health programs and practice for the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science; Susanne Freidberg, PhD, professor of geography; and Mary McGowan, MD, medical director of the Cholesterol Treatment Center at Concord Hospital in Concord, N.H., and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.
The events will take place on the main Dartmouth campus as well as at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and DHMC. Most events are free and open to the public, although some specifically target secondary school students, collegians, or health professionals. A complete schedule of events is online at the symposium’s website.
