AUC welcomed guests from the Fellowship in Disaster Medicine program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) to our St. Maarten campus last week to discuss plans for a new Caribbean Center for Disaster Medicine. During their visit, AUC students, faculty, and staff had the opportunity to hear a guest lecture from the program’s Director of Global Disaster Response, Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, on the topic, “Surge, Crisis, Continuity, and Coalitions: Dealing with Biological Risk and Mathematical Myths in Outbreaks of Highly Infectious Diseases.”
Using case studies and personal experiences from his work with international public health emergencies, including pandemic and avian influenza, Ebola, cholera, Zika, yellow fever and more, Dr. Macgregor-Skinner discussed common pitfalls inherent in many response plans against biological threats and ways to meet these challenges. He noted that many plans tend to lack the necessary functional-area expertise for a robust incident command structure, while overemphasizing clinical skills.
During the talk, Dr. Macgregor-Skinner encouraged students to learn from his experiences and consider how they’ll ensure that they gain the necessary skills and competencies to be deployed for disasters and medical emergencies.
Missed it? Watch a full recording of the lecture on Echo360.
About Dr. Macgregor-Skinner
Dr. Macgregor-Skinner is the Senior Global Health Security Advisor for Abt Associates and has over 20 years of technical experience in infectious disease surveillance and response. He’s worked on these issues with U.S. and international governments, United Nations agencies, and the private sector in the U.S., Africa, Asia, Middle East and Latin America. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Penn State Hershey College of Medicine, and has appeared on CNN, BBC, CTV, Australia ABC, C-SPAN and other news outlets.
