Exploring Health System and Country Performance on Improving Health Conditions Around the Globe
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Effective Policies to Control BSE (Mad Cow Disease)
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Cellular prion protein (PrPC) is present in the healthy adult brain. It is a presumably essential membrane protein but its cellular function is unclear. Like Ice-9 - the fictitious water allotrope in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, which "taught the atoms a novel way in which to stack, lock and crystallize until the oceans turned to ice" - cellular prion protein can, in a rare event, adopt a pathogenic and 'contagious' shape, PrPSc, which causes mad cow disease or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). New variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD) is the human malady attributed to eating beef tainted with BSE. In comparison to the UK epidemic (at the peak of which 37,280 cases of BSE were reported in the single year 1992), the emergence of four North American mad cows since May 2003 is minor yet still alarming. This work examines the USDA's response to indigenous BSE as manifested in "The Final Rule" (9 CFR 93-96, Jan 4, 2005) and questions whether current regulations are stringent enough to keep PrPSc out of cattle feed and human food.
Sheila Healy is a CISAC Science Fellow. She is currently analyzing USDA policy addressing Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease. She recently finished a postdoctoral appointment in Stanley Prusiner's laboratory in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. There she studied the molecular and structural requirements for the conversion of cellular prion protein to its pathogenic form, the agent that causes BSE. She holds a doctoral degree in biochemistry and molecular and cellular biology from the University of Arizona.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, East 207, Encina Hall
Sheila Healy
Seminars
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros
Encina Hall, C149
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
0
albertod@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and co-director of the Democracy Action Lab (DAL), based at FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL). His research interests include federalism, poverty relief, indigenous governance, political economy of health, violence, and citizen security in Mexico and Latin America.
He is the author of Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America (Cambridge, reedited 2016), coauthored with Federico Estévez and Beatriz Magaloni, of The Political Logic of Poverty Relief (Cambridge, 2016), and of numerous journal articles and book chapters.
He is currently working on a project on cartography and the developmental legacies of colonial rule and governance in indigenous communities in Mexico.
From 2016 to 2023, he was the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford University, and from 2009 to 2013, Director of the Center for US-Mexican Studies at UCSD, the University of California, San Diego.
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
Director of the Center for Latin American Studies (2016 - 2023)
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Not My Specialty: The Nexus of Health and Human Rights
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Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to treating some of the world's poorest populations, in the process helping to raise the standard of health care in underdeveloped areas of the world. Paul Farmer has worked in infectious-disease control in the Americas for nearly two decades and is a world-renowned authority on tuberculosis treatment and control. Dr. Farmer has pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies for infectious diseases (including HIV/AIDS and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis) in resource-poor settings.
In 1993, he was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Genius Award in recognition of his work, and in 2003 the Heinz Award for the Human Condition.
Bechtel Conference Center
Dr. Paul Farmer
Professor of Medicine and Medical Anthropology, Harvard University and Medical Director, Clinique Bon Sauveur, Cange, Haiti
Lectures
Weapons of Mass Destruction
This unit contains lectures, originally given at Stanford University by leading scholars , and accompanying lessons strive to educate students about the past, present, and future implications of weapons of mass destruction by introducing them to the history, policies, ideologies, and strategies involved in decision making in this area.
Racial Differences in the Treatment of Heart Disease
The goal of this project is to examine the causes of racial and gender differences in the treatment of elderly patients with coronary artery disease and heart failure.
Understanding Medical Necessity Decision-Making
The term "medical necessity" is used in insurance contracts to refer to medical services that are generally recognized as appropriate for the diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of disease and injury. Although insurers have a contractual obligation to reimburse patients for these services, there is no consensus on how to define and apply the term.