Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
10-3-07
 
Contact: Laura Miller, (515) 294-5272, [log in to unmask]
 
OCTOBER 22 LECTURE LOOKS AT AGRICULTURE-PUBLIC HEALTH CONNECTION
 
AMES, Iowa -- Physician, environmental researcher and human rights advocate Robert Lawrence will explore the linkages between health, agriculture and U.S. farm policy when he speaks at Iowa State University on October 22.
 
Robert Lawrence, M.D., will present "The Agriculture-Public Health Connection" at 7 p.m. in the newly renovated Curtiss Hall Auditorium. His speech is the Keeney Distinguished Lecture honoring Dennis Keeney, who directed the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture from 1988 to 1999. The lecture is part of the Center's 20th anniversary commemoration as well as ISU's Sesquicentennial celebration.
 
Lawrence, M.D., is professor of environmental health sciences and director of the Center for a Livable Future at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a world leader in human rights and the environment, receiving the 2002 Albert Schweitzer Humanitarianism Prize for his lifelong efforts to improve health care, human rights and the environment.
 
"We have created schools and communities where unhealthful foods are cheaper and more accessible than healthful foods. This is especially true in lower-income communities, where childhood obesity has hit hardest," Lawrence wrote in a recent essay. "Critical pieces of the farm bill could open the door toward making more healthful foods accessible and affordable for more people."
 
In 1996, Lawrence founded the Center for a Livable Future to examine the relationships among diet, food production systems, the environment and human health. He also helped found Physicians for Human Rights in 1986, which launched the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. He has degrees in history and medicine from Harvard and holds a joint appointment in medicine, international health, and health policy and management at Johns Hopkins.
 
Earlier in his career he worked as an epidemic intelligence service officer at the Centers for Disease Control and was a member of the medical faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Harvard University. He has chaired a number of task forces and participated in human rights investigations in countries throughout the world.
 
The public is invited to an informal reception in the first floor rotunda area of Curtiss Hall following the speech. The lecture is hosted by the Leopold Center and co-sponsored by the ISU Committee on Lectures funded by GSB.
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Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
Iowa State University/209 Curtiss Hall
Ames, IA 50011-1050
(515) 294-3711; FAX: (515) 294-9696
All news releases also are posted on our web site: http://www.leopold.iastate.edu
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