Date: January 10, 2012
Author: Pat Thomas
Contact: Pat Thomas, pthomas@uga.edu

A physician and public health expert who has spent his career battling illnesses transmitted by contaminated food and water opens the 7th annual Global Diseases: Voices from the Vanguard lecture series on Tuesday, Jan. 17, at the University of Georgia Chapel.

Robert Tauxe will talk about the ongoing struggle to protect people against hidden microbes in a 5:30 p.m. lecture on Clean Water and Disease Prevention in the Developing World.

Tauxe will discuss his experiences as a disease detective for the Centers for Disease Control during the early days of AIDS, as well as his subsequent experiences in North and South America, Africa and Europe. Included will be his reflections on cholera outbreaks following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which threatened an already fragile population and caused political upheaval as well.

Tauxe, an internal medicine specialist who earned his master’s of public health degree at Yale, has been with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 1985. He is deputy director of the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases, which is part of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.

Tauxe’s division is charged with preventing and controlling outbreaks of foodborne, waterborne and fungal infections. His team monitors infection rates in the United States, investigates outbreaks, and develops strategies to reduce illness, disability and death. Around the world, Tauxe has been part of efforts to make water safer in homes, schools, clinics and the marketplace.

“Rob has seen it all,” said UGA’s Dan Colley, a professor of microbiology and Director of UGA’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases. “If you can drink it or eat it and get sick, he has studied it and often come up with ways to prevent it. He can also tell you about it in ways that are enlightening and memorable.”

The 2012 Voices from the Vanguard series continues on February 21 with a lecture by Sheila West, an expert on trachoma and blindness based at the famous Wilmer Eye Institute at John Hopkins University. Marc LaForce, who has spent the past 10 years developing a meningitis vaccine for Africa that is both effective and inexpensive, will appear on March 20. The 2012 series concludes on April 17 with field biologist and biodiversity expert Matt LeBreton of the Global Virus Forecasting Initiative, who looks for emerging infectious scourges among bush meat hunters and indigenous populations in Cameroon. All lectures will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the UGA Chapel, followed by a reception next door at Demosthenian Hall.

The Voices from the Vanguard Lecture Series is a joint effort of Patricia Thomas, UGA’s Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Daniel G. Colley, director of UGA’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases. For additional information, visit www.grady.uga.edu/medicaljournalism/events.