Hala Madanat, PhD, MS, Director and Professor in the School of Public Heath at San Diego State University presented the keynote address at the 5th International Conference of Public Health in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia on July 10, 2018. The title of her talk “Breaking Barriers to Achieve Health Equity Now!” In her presentation, Dr. Madanat discussed the importance of using evidenced-based public health to address inequities, stressed the importance of within and country collaboration, the need to include innovate health technologies, and the focused on the need for a Health in All policies approach. She also focused her examples on the work being in San Diego, through the efforts of the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency including the innovative work of the Live Well San Diego Vision and the CoSD- HHSA office of border health.
In addition to her keynote address, Dr. Madanat held a workshop on the “Strategic Academic Career Planning.” This workshop supported young researchers to work out next steps and plan future within and beyond academia. The participants were invited to consider how their research interests align with the researcher’s institutional areas of strength, what formal university structures exist for acknowledging, resourcing and supporting areas of strength and how their contribution fits with the overall University research plan as well as funding. The workshop focused on self-assessment of research capacity, funding environment, university support and barriers, and both short and long-term career goal planning. The ICOPH was attended by several hundred researchers from Asia and around the world.
