Presented by David Addiss, MD MPH
Wednesday, March 5th 2014, 12:00 noon – 1:00 p.m., Claudia Nance Rollins Building
Emory University, 1518 Clifton Road, Room 1000

This seminar will explore the role of compassion in global health. Unlike hospitals and medical
centers, which frequently highlight compassion in their mission statements and core values, the word “compassion” is rarely heard within global health organizations, training programs, or literature. This seems curious given the significance of compassion as a key motivation for many in global health and given the millions of compassionate acts that are offered each day in primary health care clinics, refugee health units, and public health programs around the world. Our collective silence on such a core shared value isolates us as individuals and predisposes the field of global health to distortion by commercial, institutional, military, and political interests. In this seminar we will explore the role of compassion as motivation for global health, examine how it can be diminished, and identify challenges to, and opportunities for, compassionate action in this field. We also will explore how reconnecting with our own sense of compassion might influence the field of global health.