Center for Global Humanities presents ‘Public Health, Public Trust, and American Fragility in a Pandemic Era’ on April 21
How can health care professionals and policymakers use the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic to inform better public policy and treatment going forward? Was it inevitable that we would emerge from the pandemic with increasing internal conflicts, or could the politicization of the pandemic have been avoided? Finally, what can we do now to increase vaccinations, decrease misinformation, and foster greater cooperation between our public and acute health care systems?
Drawing from his extensive experience in health care and policymaking, Norbert Goldfield, M.D., will take up these questions and others when he visits the University of New England Center for Global Humanities to present a lecture titled “Public Health, Public Trust, and American Fragility in a Pandemic Era” on Monday, April 21 at 6 p.m. at Girard Innovation Hall at the 51 Portland Campus for the Health Sciences.
Goldfield is a practicing internist at Baystate Health in Springfield, Massachusetts, with more than 30 years of experience restructuring health care systems at the national and community levels. He possesses extensive experience working with Israelis and Palestinians through , a non-profit organization he founded and continues to direct. In addition, he is the founder and executive director of , a bipartisan organization with a mission to help elect candidates who prioritize solutions to U.S. health care problems.
Goldfield is the author of numerous books and articles, including the 2024 book “Public Health, Public Trust and American Fragility in a Pandemic Era,” from which he will draw for his lecture at 51.
In the course of the talk, Goldfield will analyze the stages through which division entered our public health discourse and offer an alternative, community-based vision of how mental and physical health can be framed so as to be less divisive and more successful in reaching patients and addressing their needs.
This will be the sixth of seven events this spring semester at the Center for Global Humanities, where lectures are always free, open to the public, and streamed live online. For more information or to watch the event, please visit the 51 Events website.