Image: Wheel of public health interventions, developed by the Minnesota Department of Health (2019).

Nadav Davidovitch, Professor of Health Systems Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, gave the 2021 Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Lecture in Israel Studies, discussing Israel’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in conversation with Abraham Flaxman, Associate Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington.

Watch the presentations now:

About this talk

Nadav Davidovitch, a public health professor and epidemiologist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, will explore the different meanings of public health from historical, sociological, political and health policy perspectives, focusing on several case studies from the Israeli perspective, from the 1950s absorption of mass immigration and related vaccination and public health efforts to the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the present day.

In conversation with Abraham Flaxman, UW professor of global health, Davidovitch will discuss the interaction between scientific advisory committees and policy makers, and pressing issues including health inequities, the influence of politics, and the role of trust and solidarity in public health practices and policy-making.

About the speakers

Nadav Davidovitch, M.D., MPH, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist and public health physician. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Systems Management in the Faculty of Health Sciences and the Guilford-Glaser Faculty of Business and Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He teaches on health policy, public health, health promotion, the Israeli healthcare system, public health ethics, and global health. He is also affiliated with the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at the School of Public Health, Columbia University, NY, and with the School of Public Health, University of Illinois – Chicago.

Abraham Flaxman is Associate Professor of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, where he is currently leading the development of new methods for cost effective analysis through microsimulation. Prior to becoming an associate professor, Dr. Flaxman was a post-graduate fellow at IHME, and before that he was a post-doctoral fellow at Microsoft Research. Originally from Evanston, IL, Dr. Flaxman earned his B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned his Ph.D. in algorithms, combinatorics, and optimization from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006. Dr. Flaxman has written his popular blog, Healthy Algorithms, since 2008. His posts cover mathematics, computer science, and his research at IHME.

This event made possible through the generosity of the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Fund for Excellence in Israel Studies, and is cosponsored by the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology and the Population Health Initiative at the University of Washington, and by Americans for Ben-Gurion University.