Breaking Barriers in Global Health with Fernando Simón

The event will take place in the Paranimf of the Facultat de Medicina of the University of Barcelona. The space will be sign-posted, and Paranimf is on the 3rd floor of the building. The space is accessible.

Fernando Simón (Zaragoza, 1963) is an Epidemiologist and Director of the Health Alerts and Emergencies Coordination Center (CCAES) at the Ministry of Health since 2012. He is a Lecturer at the National School of Health and member of the Advisory Committee of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. He is known for his role as spokesperson of the special committee of the ébola virus in Spain in 2014 and as spokesperson for the Ministry of Health of Spain during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020. He will give the keynote discussion for this event that is the Barcelona Kick-off for the series Cases in Global Social Medicine. This series centers real clinical cases from around the world that together form a practical social medicine toolkit.

Each case traces a clinical course shaped by social forces, introduces a social theory concept to make sense of those forces, and distills actionable implications for clinicians, public health practitioners, health system leaders, and policymakers.

Designed for scholars and practitioners of medicine, public health, the social sciences, and related fields, the event emphasizes how social analysis can sharpen diagnosis, guide care delivery, and inform structural intervention across clinical settings.

Experts will then present cases from the Sahrawi refugee camp in Algeria, and from followed by a keynote discussion with Fernando Simón and a panel discussion, lead by ISGlobal director Quique Bassat.

Salek Ali Mohamed Elabd and Maria Carrion will discuss the case outlined in the paper “Improvisation in contexts of infrastructural violence: a physician practising medicine in Sahrawi refugee camps.” From a snake bite to a complicated delivery, improvisation becomes key to effective medical care while providing medical care without electricity or standard supplies, such as gloves, bandages, or splints.

Mayssa Rekhis and Muriel Darmon will discuss a case from the Paris outskirts in which a north-African patient. The authors of this paper, not yet published, discuss this case as emblematic of the harms that permeate the experiences of marginalized, including migrant, populations.

With the presence of:

The vicerector of the UB; Gemma Tarafa, diputació de Barcelona; Dr Arcadi Navarro, director of the Fundació Pasqual Maragall; Dr Maria Soler, dean of the Faculty of Geography and History of the University of Barcelona; Dr Antoni Trilla, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona; Dr Quique Bassat, director of ISGlobal; Dr Antoni Plasència, general director of Reseach and Innovation in Health for the Generalitat de Catalunya; Dr Seth M Holmes; Dr Mirko Pasquini; Dr Muriel Darmon ; Dr Mayssa Rekhis; Dr Maria Carrión; Dr Salek Ali Mohamed Elabd.

Reception to follow from 6:30pm to 7:30pm for all guests.

Co-presented by the Universitat de Barcelona and the Hub for Global Social Medicine (Barcelona), co-sponsored by UC Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, Fundació Pasqual Maragall, ISGlobal, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, University of Chicago Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, Harvard Medical School Blavatnik Institute for Global Health and Social Medicine, and Riskbankens Jubileumsfond.

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Host or Publisher Hub for Global Social Medicine, UB