The Maxwell School, the Center for Policy Research and the Central New York Community Foundation (CNYCF) will present the 26th annual Herbert Lourie Memorial Lecture on Health Policy. The lecture, “Improving Health Safety Nets after an Economic Recession” will be delivered by public health expert Sanjay Basu, assistant professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and co-author of “The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills.”
Sanjay Basu
“The Body Economic” offers unique insight into how economic recessions in many countries have led to deteriorating public health systems when leaders focus exclusively on improving financial markets and balancing budgets. Using data from around the globe, Basu and coauthor David Stuckler found that even during downturns there are government policies that can lead to better economic conditions and improved public health at the same time—and that countries including Iceland, Norway and Japan offer proof.
Basu will expand on these findings during the Lourie Lecture, which will take place on Thursday, Oct. 9, from 2-3:30 p.m. in the Regency Room of the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel. The lecture is free and open to the public and limited parking will be available at the hotel garage. A reception will follow the lecture.
Basu’s research focuses on global development and human health, including the use of econometrics and simulation models to study how socioeconomic changes and social policy interventions affect primary diseases among low-income populations. He received an undergraduate degree from MIT before completing a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford; he received an M.D. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from Yale.
The Herbert Lourie Memorial Lecture is jointly sponsored by the Maxwell School and CNYCF and is administered by the Center for Policy Research at Maxwell. The lecture is held in memory of Herbert Lourie, a physician and distinguished member of the national and international medical communities in the field of neurosurgery. Lourie understood medicine as a high calling that demands the utmost skill, intellect, compassion and character, and the lecture series is funded by his friends, patients, colleagues and family in his honor.
