Award-winning physician, sociologist, anthropologist and educator, Henry Perry, M.D., Ph.D., will be the featured speaker at the Berggren Lectureship at noon on April 12 in the Maurer Center for Public Health, Room 3013. Lunch will be served to the first 100 attendees.
Dr. Perry serves as senior associate in the Health Systems Program of the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. He has a formal background in medicine including general surgery, public health, sociology and anthropology.
Dr. Perry has three decades of experience in the management and evaluation of health programs in developing countries. He is the founder of the NGO Curamericas Global, a health organization that works with communities that have some of the highest child and maternal mortality rates in the world and in areas where preventable diseases like malnutrition, pneumonia, and complications from childbirth can quickly lead to death. Measureable impacts on the health of the community are made by focusing on prevention, health education and establishing relationships with existing health facilities.
He has lived and worked in Bolivia, Bangladesh and Haiti, and he has provided on-the-ground assistance to programs in 15 countries around the world. From 2003-2009, he worked with the NGO Future Generations to establish its innovative master’s degree program in Applied Community Change and Conservation.
Dr. Perry is the author or co-author of more than 100 publications about primary health care, health manpower and community-based approaches to health improvement. He has a broad interest in primary health care and community-oriented public health, community participation and equity and empowerment.
Dr. Perry has received the Gordon-Wyon Award from the American Public Health Association for Excellence in Community-Oriented Public Health, and the Dory Storms Child Survival Recognition Award from the NGO community “for exceptional efforts resulting in more effective child survival program implementation and increased impact in improving the health of the poorest of the poor including mothers, children, and infants in underserved communities throughout the world.”
The Berggren Lectureship was endowed by Carol Swarts, M.D. (a 1959 graduate of the UNMC College of Medicine) to honor the work of Gretchen Berggren, M.D. (a 1958 graduate of the UNMC College of Medicine), and the late Warren Berggren, M.D. (a 1955 graduate of the UNMC College of Medicine). After graduating from UNMC College of Medicine, the Berggrens spent a lifetime pioneering and implementing community-oriented primary care interventions in Africa and Haiti.
We're thrilled to welcome Dr. Perry. Dr. Gretchen Berggren and Dr. Perry will also host student conversations. More information to come.