Alice de Paula Baer Spotlights Ann Kurth
By Alice de Paula Baer, Travel Scholar and Speaker Ambassador at the 2019 Planetary Health Annual Meeting
During the 2019 Planetary Health Annual Meeting, I had the honor of meeting Dr. Ann Kurth. She is Dean, Linda Koch Lorimer Professor at Yale University School of Nursing, and a Professor of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health.
Dr. Kurth completed her bachelor’s degree in 1984, mastering in public health in 1987. She earned her Master of Science in Nursing in 1990 at the Yale School of Nursing, and gained a PhD in epidemiology in 1998 from the University of Washington.
Although I met Dr. Kurth mostly to talk about her work regarding planetary health, which is one of the main focus of her research, I was particularly impressed by the other main area she works in: HIV/sexual and reproductive health prevention, screening, and care. Her doctoral research was published in a book in 1993 — Until the Cure: Caring for Women with HIV — which I already ordered from Amazon. She is also developing a project in Kenya, High-Yield HIV Testing, Facilitated Linkage to Care, and Prevention for Female Youth in Kenya ‘GIRLS STUDY,’ comparing different HIV ‘seek,’ ‘test’ and ‘link to care’ strategies among women in Kenya. It was really inspiring to meet someone whose research has such an important worldwide reach in a subject that has always fascinated me.
Dr. Kurth is a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine and of the American Academy of Nursing. Previously, from 2014 to 2018, she was a member of the US Preventive Services Task Force, which sets screening and primary care prevention guidelines for the United States. She is a member of the New York Academy of Medicine and of the CT Academy of Science and Engineering. Dr. Kurth is also the 2018–2020 Chair of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH), the 190+ university member academic global health network.
The mission of CUGH is to support academic institutions and partners to improve the wellbeing of people and the planet through education, research, service, and advocacy. Their goal is to support universities as a transforming force in global health. A related vision was transmitted by Dr. Kurth’s presentation in the Lighting Talks during the 2019 Annual Meeting. According to her, continuous education on planetary health is necessary in order to prepare health professionals to anticipate, adapt, and advocate for the health of the population for which we care and who will be affected by global warming. She exemplified models that could be used in order to do that — for example, freely accessible online content. The main message was: every health professional should be a planetary health professional.
Related to that, one of the most interesting initiatives she talked about was Nurses Climate Challenge, an American national campaign to mobilize nurses to educate 50,000 health professionals on the impacts of climate change on human health, build a national network of informed and engaged health professionals, and launch a movement of health professional committed to climate solutions in care settings and in their communities. They do not use a continuous education model yet, and Dr. Kurth, as part of the Yale School of Nursing, will work with them in order to develop material to put together a planetary health continuous education model.
As a medical student from Brazil, I found this initiative particularly inspiring. In my experience, the health effects of climate change are very rarely discussed during our graduation. All health professionals should be part of the frontlines of fighting environmental changes, since it is essential to do it in order to safeguard population health.
Dr. Kurth has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and scholarly monographs and presented at hundreds of scientific conferences and invited talks, and she has received many awards for her science and leadership. Being her speaker ambassador reinforced the feeling that the whole conference caused in me: inspiration and willingness to dive deeper into the theme of planetary health. I hope one day I will be able to share all of this knowledge with its due depth back in Brazil.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Planetary Health Alliance or its members.
