EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

DATE: 2-3:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 6, 2016.

EVENT: Advancing Global Health: Presentation of the Thomas Francis Jr. Medal in Global Public Health to Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder and chairperson BRAC

Highlights include:

• Medal ceremony: President Mark Schlissel and Regent Shauna Ryder Diggs
• Keynote by Abed: “Empowering Communities for Health”
• Panel Discussion: “A Conversation with Sir Abed: Development as Empowerment”

INFORMATION:

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed is founder and chairperson of the organization once known as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee but now, with programs in 12 countries, is simply called BRAC.

U-M honors Sir Fazle for his lifetime achievement reaching millions living in poverty in Bangladesh and 11 other countries in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.

BRAC’s programs include education, microfinance, skills and job training, health care, and empowerment to give people, particularly women and children, the tools and resources they need to overcome poverty.

BRAC owns 16 social enterprises—including a lifestyle retailer, a dairy business, hotels and conference centers, and a bank—and uses a business approach to address poverty. These enterprises provide economic resources to support the organization’s social programs. This includes some 45,000 one-room schoolhouses, a university and a number of birthing centers for pregnant mothers.

The medal is named for Thomas Francis Jr., a U-M professor who built a virus laboratory and a department of epidemiology that focused on a broad range of infectious diseases. He taught Jonas Salk the methodology of vaccine development.

After Salk developed the Salk polio vaccine, Francis was asked to design, supervise and evaluate its field trials, which involved 1.8 million children in three countries. With the world watching, Francis walked into U-M’s Rackham Auditorium April 12, 1955, and announced that the Salk vaccine was “safe, effective and potent.”

The medal in his honor was established in 2005 and Abed is the third recipient.

PLACE: Stephen M. Ross School of Business Robertson Auditorium

SPONSORS: U-M Regents, Office of the President and the School of Public Health.

More information:

• Francis Medal
• BRAC
• Live Stream