Events in Japan: What Can We Learn From Tragedy?
To shed light on the complexity of events unfolding in Japan the Mailman School of Public Health held a special Columbia community-wide event, “Perspectives on the Current Crisis in Japan” on March 22, 2011. Featured speakers and a panel of experts offered their insights into how we can make sense of events on this scale and what we can learn as public health professionals from Japan’s tragedy.
Hosted by Dean Linda Fried, the special presentation was organized by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, the Health In Crisis Working Group (part of the Global Health Initiative), the Program on Forced Migration and Health, and the School of Nursing's WHO Collaborating Center for Advance Practice. The panel included faculty experts in disaster preparedness, disaster assessment and relief, and radiation oncology.
The School also was most fortunate to welcome a professor from a Tokyo nursing school and expert on public health efforts following the Kobe earthquake, as well as an eyewitness to the events in Northern Japan, an American teacher of English who has been living and working on the Oshika Peninsula, extremely close to the earthquake epicenter. He witnessed firsthand the quake, the tsunamis and the immediate aftermath.
