The Most Important Diseases You’ve Never Heard of: Neglected tropical diseases and the END7 campaign - Emily Conron
About the lecture:
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) infect over 1.4 billion people worldwide – disabling and disfiguring adults, stunting the physical and cognitive development of children, and limiting the economic productivity and development of families and communities. But there is good news about NTDs: for the extremely low cost of 50 cents per person, per year, we can treat and protect someone from all seven of these diseases – and experts say we could actually control and eliminate the seven most common NTDs by 2020. Learn about the part you can play in this momentous global effort to end not just one, but seven diseases, in less than a decade.
About the speaker:
Emily Conron is the grassroots outreach coordinator for the END7 campaign at the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases. She got involved in the movement against NTDs after learning about them in a biology class as a freshman at the University of Notre Dame where she co-founded the first NTD-focused student advocacy and fundraising group in 2009. After seeing the effects of NTDs firsthand while interviewing elephantiasis patients in Haiti for a psychology research project, Conron joined the END7 team to help create an international movement of students advocating for this neglected global health issue.
