Stanford University

Global Health

SAID Conference - Gender and International Development Recentered

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Stanford University
HUANG ENGINEERING BUILDING
475 Via Ortega

Michele Barry Senior Associate Dean for Global Health in the School of Medicine, Professor of Medicine Moderator Stanford University

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Larry Diamond Director, CDDRL Moderator Stanford University
Amy Klement Moderator
Helen Stacy Senior Fellow, CDDRL Moderator Stanford University
Gemma Bulos Panelist
Karl Eikenberry Panelist
Moushira Khataab Panelist
Elaine Karp-Toledo Panelist
Birtukan Mideksa Panelist
Fouzia Saeed Panelist
Kim Thuy Seelinger Panelist
Ruth Shapiro Panelist
Robert Simon Panelist
Alejandro Toledo Panelist
Nang Lao Lia Won Panelist
Nancy Lindborg USAID Assistant Administrator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Keynote Speaker
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CISAC welcomes microbiologist David Relman as co-director

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David Relman, a Stanford microbiologist and professor of infectious diseases, has taken up the mantle as CISAC co-director alongside Stanford law professor Tino Cuéllar, both of whom intend to broaden the center’s research in biosecurity and the life sciences.

Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor at Stanford’s School of Medicine and chief of infectious disease at the VA Palo Alto Healthcare System, has advised the U.S. government about pathogen diversity, dual-use technology and biosecurity. He also is the current president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

“The appointment of a life scientist who focuses on infectious diseases and biosecurity is an innovative step for our work in international security and cooperation,” said Gerhard Casper, president emeritus of Stanford University and director of CISAC’s umbrella organization, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Relman succeeds Siegfried S. Hecker, a nuclear scientist and director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who was the CISAC co-director since 2007. One of the world’s foremost experts on plutonium, nuclear weapons and nonproliferation, Hecker is on sabbatical in New Mexico and the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation. He is working on a book about his historic efforts to foster collaboration between U.S. and Russian nuclear labs, as well as traveling to meet his nonproliferation counterparts in parts of Europe and Russia.

Hecker will return to CISAC this summer to resume his teaching in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, as well as his writing and research as a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI.

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Advancing Science to Reduce Premature Mortality Worldwide

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Co-sponsored by the Center for South Asia, Stanford University

Human life expectancy improved more in the last 50 years than in the preceding 5000 years. Much of this recent progress arose from declines in childhood mortality, and most of this decline was due to scientific knowledge and technologies (defined widely as drugs, diagnostics, policies, strategies, and epidemiological knowledge). The dominant challenge of the 21st century is to apply scientific knowledge to reduce premature adult mortality, in particular from vascular and neoplastic disease but also from persistent infectious disease such as malaria. Reliable quantification of the causes of death is a key starting point for control of adult diseases, as shown by the early results from India's Million Death Study. Specific global attention is required to tobacco, as on current patterns there will be 1 billion deaths from smoking in the 21st century, as opposed to "only" 100 million deaths from smoking in the 20th century. Scientific research on adult mortality, paired with specific action, might well halve premature adult mortality worldwide in the next few decades.

Professor Prabhat Jha has been a key figure in epidemiology and economics of global health for the past decade. He is the University of Toronto Endowed Professor in Disease Control and Canada Research Chair at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and the founding Director of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. Professor Jha is a lead investigator of the Million Death Study in India, which quantifies the causes of premature mortality in over 1 million homes from 1997-2014 and which examines the contribution of key risk factors such as tobacco, alcohol, diet and environmental exposures. He is the author of several influential books on tobacco control, including two that helped enable a global treaty on tobacco control, now signed by over 160 countries.

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Prabhat Jha University of Toronto Endowed Professor in Disease Control and Canada Research Chair Speaker the Dalla Lana School of Public Health
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HIV Development Assistance and Adult Mortality in Africa

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Context  The effect of global health initiatives on population health is uncertain. Between 2003 and 2008, the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the largest initiative ever devoted to a single disease, operated intensively in 12 African focus countries. The initiative's effect on all-cause adult mortality is unknown.

Objective  To determine whether PEPFAR was associated with relative changes in adult mortality in the countries and districts where it operated most intensively.

Design, Setting, and Participants  Using person-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, we conducted cross-country and within-country analyses of adult mortality (annual probability of death per 1000 adults between 15 and 59 years old) and PEPFAR's activities. Across countries, we compared adult mortality in 9 African focus countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) with 18 African nonfocus countries from 1998 to 2008. We performed subnational analyses using information on PEPFAR's programmatic intensity in Tanzania and Rwanda. We employed difference-in-difference analyses with fixed effects for countries and years as well as personal and time-varying area characteristics.

Main Outcome Measure  Adult all-cause mortality.

Results  We analyzed information on 1 538 612 adults, including 60 303 deaths, from 41 surveys in 27 countries, 9 of them focus countries. In 2003, age-adjusted adult mortality was 8.3 per 1000 adults in the focus countries (95% CI, 8.0-8.6) and 8.5 per 1000 adults (95% CI, 8.3-8.7) in the nonfocus countries. In 2008, mortality was 4.1 per 1000 (95% CI, 3.6-4.6) in the focus countries and 6.9 per 1000 (95% CI, 6.3-7.5) in the nonfocus countries. The adjusted odds ratio of mortality among adults living in focus countries compared with nonfocus countries between 2004 and 2008 was 0.84 (95% CI, 0.72-0.99; P = .03). Within Tanzania and Rwanda, the adjusted odds ratio of mortality for adults living in districts where PEPFAR operated more intensively was 0.83 (95% CI, 0.72-0.97; P = .02) and 0.75 (95% CI, 0.56-0.99; P = .04), respectively, compared with districts where it operated less intensively.

Conclusions  Between 2004 and 2008, all-cause adult mortality declined more in PEPFAR focus countries relative to nonfocus countries. It was not possible to determine whether PEPFAR was associated with mortality effects separate from reductions in HIV-specific deaths.

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Eran Bendavid
Grant Miller

Delivering Justice to the Poor: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Liberia

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Abstract: 

CDDRL post-doctoral fellow Bilal Siddiqi will address the question of whether progressive, statutory legal reform can meaningfully affect the lives of the poor, using observational and experimental evidence from Liberia in a new study co-authored with Justin Sandefur at the Center for Global Development. The authors develop a simple model of forum choice and test it using new survey data on over 4,500 legal disputes taken to a range of customary and formal legal institutions in rural Liberia. Their results suggest that the poor would benefit most from access to low-cost, remedial justice that incorporates the progressive features of the formal law. They then present the results of a randomized controlled trial of a legal empowerment intervention in Liberia providing pro bono mediation and advocacy services, using community paralegals trained in the formal law. The authors find strong and robust impacts on justice outcomes, as well as significant downstream welfare benefits—including increases in household and child food security of 0.24 and 0.38 standard deviations, respectively. They interpret these results as preliminary evidence that there are large socioeconomic gains to be had from improving access to justice, not by bringing the rural poor into the formal domain of magistrates’ courts, government offices, and police stations, but by bringing the formal law into the organizational forms of the custom through third-party mediation and advocacy.

About the Speaker: 

Bilal Siddiqi is a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the Empirical Studies of Conflict project (esoc.princeton.edu). His research focuses on micro-institutions, formal and informal legal systems, peace-building and state accountability in post-conflict settings. He is currently involved in several field experiments in Sierra Leone and Liberia, including a randomized controlled trial of two non-financial incentive mechanisms in Sierra Leone’s public health sector; experimental evaluations of community-based paralegal programs in Liberia and Sierra Leone; and a randomized controlled trial of a community reconciliation program in Sierra Leone. 

Bilal received his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to Stanford, he was based at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm as a Marie Curie / AMID Scholar; and has also spent time at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, where he worked on aid effectiveness in global health. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons) from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan.

 

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Bilal Siddiqi

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Minerva Postdoctoral Fellow (ESOC Project)
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Bilal Siddiqi is a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the Empirical Studies of Conflict project (esoc.princeton.edu). His research focuses on micro-institutions, formal and informal legal systems, peace-building and state accountability in post-conflict settings. He is currently involved in several field experiments in Sierra Leone and Liberia, including a randomized controlled trial of two non-financial incentive mechanisms in Sierra Leone’s public health sector; experimental evaluations of community-based paralegal programs in Liberia and Sierra Leone; and a randomized controlled trial of a community reconciliation program in Sierra Leone.

Bilal received his Ph.D. and M.Phil. in economics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to Stanford, he was based at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm as a Marie Curie / AMID Scholar; and has also spent time at the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, where he worked on aid effectiveness in global health. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons) from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan.

Bilal Siddiqi Post-doctoral fellow Speaker CDDRL
Seminars

Stephen P. Luby

Y2E2
473 Via Ortega
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-4129 (650) 725-3402
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Faculty Lead, Center for Human and Planetary Health
Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases)
Professor of Epidemiology & Population Health (by courtesy)
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
steve_luby_2023-2_vert.jpg MD

Prof. Stephen Luby studied philosophy and earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Creighton University. He then earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester-Strong Memorial Hospital. He studied epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prof. Luby's former positions include leading the Epidemiology Unit of the Community Health Sciences Department at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, for five years and working as a Medical Epidemiologist in the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exploring causes and prevention of diarrheal disease in settings where diarrhea is a leading cause of childhood death.  Immediately prior to joining the Stanford faculty, Prof. Luby served for eight years at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), where he directed the Centre for Communicable Diseases. He was also the Country Director for CDC in Bangladesh.

During his over 25 years of public health work in low-income countries, Prof. Luby frequently encountered political and governance difficulties undermining efforts to improve public health. His work within the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) connects him with a community of scholars who provide ideas and approaches to understand and address these critical barriers.

 

Director of Research, Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Managing the Risk of Pandemic Influenza Amidst Weak Government Institutions

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Abstract:
 
Bangladesh is one of the highest risk settings for emergence of new strains of influenza. Some of these strains could infect humans and spread globally causing widespread human mortality. The government of Bangladesh has made genuine efforts to reduce this risk, but these efforts are constrained by the limited capacity of government institutions to affect the situations and behaviors that generate this ongoing risk.
 
Speaker Bio:

Dr. Luby comes to us from the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases and Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B) after serving as the research director there for the past eight years in a shared position with CDC.  Prior to this position, he taught at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan. He will be leading our research efforts within CIGH and we are looking forward to his start in September 2012.

CISAC Conference Room

Stephen P. Luby

Y2E2
473 Via Ortega
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-4129 (650) 725-3402
0
Faculty Lead, Center for Human and Planetary Health
Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases)
Professor of Epidemiology & Population Health (by courtesy)
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
steve_luby_2023-2_vert.jpg MD

Prof. Stephen Luby studied philosophy and earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Creighton University. He then earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester-Strong Memorial Hospital. He studied epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prof. Luby's former positions include leading the Epidemiology Unit of the Community Health Sciences Department at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, for five years and working as a Medical Epidemiologist in the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exploring causes and prevention of diarrheal disease in settings where diarrhea is a leading cause of childhood death.  Immediately prior to joining the Stanford faculty, Prof. Luby served for eight years at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), where he directed the Centre for Communicable Diseases. He was also the Country Director for CDC in Bangladesh.

During his over 25 years of public health work in low-income countries, Prof. Luby frequently encountered political and governance difficulties undermining efforts to improve public health. His work within the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) connects him with a community of scholars who provide ideas and approaches to understand and address these critical barriers.

 

Director of Research, Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Stephen P. Luby Senior Fellow, FSI and the Woods Institute; CDDRL Affiliated Faculty; Research Deputy Director, Center for Innovation in Global Health; Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases Speaker
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The United Nations and a World in Transition

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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented a free public talk at Stanford on Thursday, Jan. 17.

Ban, who is the eighth secretary-general of the UN, will speak about the UN's role in creating opportunities out of the challenges posed by today's rapidly transitioning world.

"Times of transition are times of profound opportunity," he recently said during his acceptance speech for the Seoul Peace Prize. "The decisions we make in this period will have an impact for generations to come.”

Ban's initiatives as UN secretary-general have focused on promoting sustainable development; empowering women; supporting countries in crisis or instability; generating new momentum on disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation; and strengthening the UN. Among his many activities as secretary-general, he has successfully raised major pledges and financing packages for aid and crisis response, established the agency UN Women, and introduced new measures to promote UN transparency and efficiency.

Ban was born in the Republic of Korea in 1944, and he served for 37 years with the ROK Foreign Ministry, in roles including that of minister of foreign affairs and trade, foreign policy adviser to the president, and chief national security adviser to the president. He took office as UN secretary-general in January 2007, and was re-elected for a second term by the UN General Assembly in June 2011. Ban will serve as secretary-general until December 2016.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies are co-sponsoring the event. Ban's talk, part of the Asia-Pacific Leaders Forum, will kick off a series of activities commemorating Shorenstein APARC's thirtieth anniversary.

Founded in 2005, Shorenstein APARC's Asia-Pacific Leaders Forum regularly convenes senior leaders from across Asia and the Pacific to exchange ideas on current political, economic, and social dynamics in the region.

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Dinkelspiel Auditorium
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Ban Ki-moon Secretary-General of the United Nations Speaker
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Global Health Diplomacy in North Korea: the Stanford Tuberculosis Project in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea

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About the topic: Stanford University, in collaboration with humanitarian NGOs, WHO, the Global Fund and the North Korean Ministry of Public Health have undertaken to develop that country's first National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory. North Korea is estimated to have the highest tuberculosis rate outside sub-Saharan Africa and is believed to have a mounting epidemic of patients infected with drug-resistant strains. This presentation will focus on the nature of the TB epidemic in North Korea, the role of this laboratory in addressing this epidemic, challenges to the laboratory's development in this isolated country and possible "dual use" concerns about the importation of equipment and expertise intended for the diagnosis and treatment of TB patients.

 

About the speaker: Gary Schoolnik is Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, Attending Physician in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Stanford Hospital, Associate Director of the Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection and Associate Dean, School of Medicine. His research laboratory studies tuberculosis and cholera using molecular, genetic and genomic methods to understand how these microbes cause disease and how that understanding might lead to improved preventive, diagnostic and treatment strategies.

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Gary Schoolnik Professor, Medicine (Infectious Diseases); Professor, Microbiology and Immunology; Senior Fellow, Institute for the Environment Speaker
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