Speaker: Dr Michael Marks

Associate Professor, Clinical Research Department, Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, LSHTM / Hon Consultant in Infectious Diseases, Hospital for Tropical Diseases, University College London Hospital

Dr Marks trained at UCL and undertook medical training across London. He was appointed NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow and then Wellcome Trust PhD fellow, living and working in the Solomon Islands. After completing clinical training as NIHR Clinical Lecturer, and continuing research in Pacific and Africa, he took up his current positions in 2019 / 21.

The COVID-19 Pandemic has disproportionately affected ethnic minority groups in the UK and many other countries. Data from Public Health England indicated the UK Jewish population has also been adversely affected by the pandemic. In this talk Dr Marks will discuss initial findings from a study of SARS-CoV-2 in a UK Strictly Orthodox Jewish population which indicate this population has been particularly heavily affected.

Speaker: Professor Alan Silman

Musculoskeletal Health, Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences; Senior Research Fellow, Green Templeton College, Oxford University.

Prof Silman started his career in Epidemiology at the Royal London (with Prof Eva Alberman), worked as Director of the ARC Research unit in Manchester where he devoloped his interest in population genetics, and then was Director of Arthritis Research UK from 2006-14, after which he joined Oxford.

The topics Alan will cover include:

• Are there Jewish genes and if so why?
• How different are they between different groups of Jews across the world?
• Why was the role of our Jewish mothers so important for Ashkenazi Jews?
• Can we really go back as far as the Exodus?

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Prof David Heymann CBE (Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at LSHTM, and chair, WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Infectious Hazards, advising the Emergencies Programme on the COVID-19 response)

In 1976, after spending two years working in India on smallpox eradication, Prof Heymann was a member of the CDC (Atlanta) team to investigate the first Ebola outbreak in DRC. He remained in sub-Saharan Africa for 13 years in various field research positions on Ebola, monkeypox, Lassa Fever, malaria and other tropical diseases. From 1989 – 2009 he held various leadership positions in infectious diseases at WHO. In 2003 he headed the WHO global response to SARS as Executive Director of Communicable Diseases. He has published over 250 peer reviewed articles and book chapters, is editor of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, and is an elected member of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy of Medicine.

He will explain briefly about some of his recent work, and then answer your questions – when you register, please remember to send them to us!

Watch a recording of the event here.

Speaker:Adam Wagner,Barrister, Doughty St Chambers / Specialist Advisor Joint Committee on Human Rights

Adam Wagner, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, is Specialist Advisor to the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ inquiry into Covid-19 and has worked throughout the pandemic to decode the laws for the general public.

During the Covid-19 pandemic the UK government has introduced over 200 new laws using emergency powers with little or no scrutiny from Parliament. This includes over 60 criminal laws criminalising everyday social contact and gatherings, which a court of appeal judge has called “possibly the most restrictive regime on the public life of persons and businesses ever”. Criticisms have included that the laws have been anti-democratic, inconsistent with guidance and too complex for people to understand. But in the circumstances of a public health crisis could anything have been done differently?

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Speaker: Prof Shmuel Reis (Academic Head, Centre for Medical Education, Hebrew University / Hadassah, family physician, and past chair, Israeli Association for Medical Education)

Prof Shmuel Reis has worked in medical education and family medicine in Israel for over 40 years. He was based previously at the Technion Medical School, and later chaired Faculty Development and Clinical Skills at Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Medicine in the Galilee, where he also co-ordinated a course on the doctor in the digital age. His present research interests include studies on methods used for teaching and learning of doctoring and professionalism.

Prof Reis organised the Galilee workshops on the theme of “Medicine during the Holocaust and beyond”. He has played a leading role in developing programmes which emphasise the implications of studying the history of medicine in the Holocaust, on the basis that this provides students and doctors with a “moral compass” for navigating the future of medical practice, the inherent ethical challenges which arise, such as prejudice, consent, resource allocation, and new technologies (such as genomics). He will talk about this theme on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day 2021.

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Prof Stanley J Weiss – Prof of Medicine, Dept of Medicine and Prof of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

Prof Weiss graduated from Yale (Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry) and Harvard (Medicine, Infectious Diseases). He has worked at the National Cancer Institute in Medical Oncology and Epidemiology, and has been honoured by the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association as having made “a significant contribution to addressing a public health issue of major importance by applying epidemiological methods”. He is past chair of the International Joint Policy Committee of the Societies of Epidemiology (now the International Network for Epidemiology in Policy, INEP).

Prof Weiss will talk about how, in the context of the pandemic, research evidence is being published and cited, utilised for policy decision making, etc, and about some of the flaws that might be relevant to those decisions.

ou can watch a recording of the event here.

Speaker: Miss Joanna Franks

Consultant Breast and Oncoplastic Surgeon, UCLH

Miss Franks qualified from Imperial College Medical School, and trained in the London Deanery, including time in the Oncoplastic Breast Unit and Macmillan Cancer Centre at UCLH. She sees and treats patients who present to the symptomatic clinic, those who have been recalled via the NHS breast screening programme, and those from a high-risk family background. She chairs the UCLH breast multidisciplinary team and the Breast Board for HCA UK

She was one of the Pan-London Breast Hub Co-ordinators managing the regional response to COVID, prioritising patient safety and ensuring capacity for time critical breast cancer surgery, including the reintroduction of complex and reconstructive breast surgery at the earliest opportunity

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Speaker: Ruth Waitzberg

Research Scholar, Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, Jerusalem, Israel and Dept of Healthcare Management, Technical University, Berlin

Ruth Waitzberg is a Hebrew University graduate in public policy, and is completing her PhD. She is currently the Israeli representative to the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, a network of health policy researchers from > 30 countries working together to improve policymaking worldwide. Her research covers payment to health providers and financial incentives, health insurance, access to care, policy evaluation, health and long-term care systems, and international comparisons

European health systems differ in their features, level of funding, density of resources and workforce, and organization of service provision. COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges to all health systems, even the most generous and prepared. Many public health measures to prevent transmission were implemented across most countries, such as limiting movement of individuals, imposing physical distancing, and mandating use of face masks. Yet, the way through which health systems re-organized to treat COVID-19 patients while maintaining essential services to non-COVID-19 patients diverged. We will review different strategies used in European countries and Israel to mobilize resources and workforce to meet pressing needs. We will discuss how governance influenced health system’s responses to COVID-19 so far, and what we can learn to better respond to future waves.

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Chronic respiratory care in the time of Covid-19, and Post-Covid clinics

Speaker: Dr Nicola Marks

Nicola Marks trained at Cambridge University and Eastern Region, with research at Hammersmith Hospital. She is a respiratory consultant at the Whittington Hospital

Nicola will review how our respiratory out-patients has been managing since March, caring for chronic respiratory patients, as well as new reviews; with the added burden of Covid-19 follow-up reviews and referrals.

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Why people go along with authority, why they follow COVID measures ….and how the UK Government has blown it

Speaker: Prof Stephen Reicher (Wardlaw Professor of Psychology, University of St. Andrews)

Steve Reicher is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Currently he sits on SPI-B (the Behavioural Science Advisory Group to SAGE), and the Scottish CMO Advisory Group. He is also a member of Independent SAGE. His work is on social identity and group processes. He has researched topics such as crowd behaviour, leadership, conformity and obedience, intergroup hatred and the psychology of tyranny.

Steve will contrast two different approaches to the psychology of the pandemic: the one rooted in a notion of individual fragility and ‘panic’ under conditions of crisis, the other based on the notion of collective resilience which flows from the emergence of a sense of shared identity when people faced a common threat. He will analyse the ways in which shared identity impacts adherence, mutual support and mental (as well as physical) well-being. He will consider how leadership can serve either to buttress or undermine shared identity. Ultimately the success with which authorities handle the pandemic is dependent upon whether they treat the public as the problem or as the solution and are able to work in partnership with the community in order to limit transmission of infection.

You can watch a recording of the event here.