To help with the reimagination of local, national and international structures used to respond to global public health emergencies such as the emergence and spread of COVID-19, the University of Georgia School of Law will host a daylong, virtual conference titled "The Future of Global Health Governance" starting at 10 a.m. on January 25.

Organized by the Dean Rusk International Law Center and the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, the conference will address three crucial questions of global health governance:

  • Whether and how the ailing global public health infrastructure might be reinvigorated.
  • How the pandemic has threatened and exposed limitations of the social safety net in the United States and other economies around the world.
  • The phenomenon of vaccine refusal and what national and international legal institutions might do to curb it.

The conference will feature keynote addresses by Marice Ashe, the founder and leader of ChangeLab Solutions who regularly consults with federal and state agencies on how best to incorporate legal and policy tools into public health strategies, and Elsie E. Hayford, director of Lamèsè Ghana and sole director of Lamèsè Ltd UK who has undertaken health projects in Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States ensuring adherence to the law, the implementation of sound health policies and the building of robust health systems.

Experts from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law as well as scholars from the Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security, Harvard Law School, Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and the Yale School of Medicine will serve as panelists, among others.

Several conference presentations will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law.

For more information, please visit the conference website at www.law.uga.edu/gjiclspring2021 or email Catrina Martin at Catrina.Martin@uga.edu .

Event sponsors include School of Law health law and international law student organizations in addition to UGA's College of Veterinary Medicine, School of Public and International Affairs and School of Social Work.