Speaker: Prof Eyal Leshem

Director, Institute for Travel and Tropical Medicine, Sheba Medical Centre; and Clinical Associate Professor, Tel Aviv University Medical School

Prof Eyal Leshem studied medicine at the Technion, and trained in medicine and infectious diseases at Sheba. After working in Nepal he trained as an EIS officer at the CDC, where he investigated multiple infectious diseases, including MERS, and then worked as a medical epidemiologist in the CDC viral gastroenteritis team, focussing on diarrheal diseases surveillance and rotavirus vaccine impact. He continues to participate in CDC surveillance, and is a consultant to the WHO, assessing vaccine preventable diseases in many countries. He continues to be involved in evaluating both HPV and rotavirus vaccines, and in studies of Dengue, Zika, malaria and travel associated infectious diseases. Recently he has played a leading role in the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine programme in Israel, and will talk about his experiences, and about the impact and effectiveness of the programme.

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Speaker: Rabbi Edward Reichman, MD

Professor of Emergency Medicine and of Bioethics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York

Edward Reichman is an Attending Physician in the Emergency Department of Montefiore Medical Centre. He received his rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University. He teaches, writes and lectures internationally on Jewish medical ethics. His research is devoted to the interface between medical history and Jewish law.

Rabbis across the globe are addressing an array of complex Jewish legal questions spawned by the Covid 19 pandemic. He will discuss the rabbinic responses to pandemic in previous centuries, addressing issues including masking, social distancing, modified prayers and mourning. This current pandemic is unprecedented in many ways, but there are striking commonalities with issues faced in the past.

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Speaker: Dr Brooke Vandermolen

Obstetrics and Gynaecology Registrar, Barnet Hospital

Brooke Vandermolen studied medicine at University College London and is now specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology. She blogs about women’s health issues. She will speak about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on women’s health, and about the innovative ways of communicating that are evolving in healthcare.

You can watch a recording of the event here.

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.