"We still don't have career paths for people to lower cost and improve quality of health care," Kim said. "But we're going to invent it right here at Dartmouth College."
The speakers lectured about their specific areas of work in global health before participating in a panel discussion about their varied career paths. Jeff Ulmer, the global head of external research at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, discussed the outlook for vaccines in global health and the need for new technology in his lecture, "Challenges in the Development of New Vaccines for the World."
Ulmer said vaccine development is hampered by the vaccines themselves, as they are often "complicated, costly and very hard to regulate."
Despite the difficulties of providing vaccines, however, Ulmer said the vaccine industry is on the rise partially due to the increase in "blockbuster vaccines" such as Gardasil, a vaccine for the human papillomavirus, or HPV.
An incomplete understanding of disease biology and the difficulties of predicting vaccine safety and effectiveness are the main obstacles that can affect the future of vaccines, Ulmer said.
Ulmer said the three main tasks of vaccine makers are to improve suboptimal vaccines like the tuberculosis vaccine, develop new treatments for diseases such as HIV/AIDS and respond to new and emerging threats such as bioterror attacks.
Harvard Medical School professor Salmaan Keshavjee, who is a senior multi-drug resistant tuberculosis specialist at Partners in Health, the global health organization cofounded by Kim, focused his lecture on the difficulties of implementing treatments for challenging diseases.
"All you need is to have good diagnosis, good drugs and good care delivery," Keshavjee said. "So, why is it not working?"
Keshavjee highlighted the subtleties of implementation, including funding shortfalls, logistical difficulties and a lack of ground-level operations of many health care organizations.
Keshavjee also criticized a prominent attitude among global health workers that treatment is different in Africa than in the rest of the world.
"Are they a different species?" he asked ironically.
Patricia Doykos '86, director of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, spoke about Bristol-Myers Squibb's involvement addressing HIV/AIDS in Africa and diabetes in the United States.
The "Secure the Future" program launched by Bristol-Myers Squibb in Africa in 1999 was the "first private or public major commitment focused specifically on HIV/AIDS," Doykos said.
The program's focal points include medical research, health care and community outreach, according to Doykos.
Bristol-Myers Squibb's program in the United States, "Together On Diabetes," focuses on the significant lack of support for Americans with diabetes. Although there are many preventative action campaigns in the United States, "we noticed an incredible drop-off once someone has Type 2 diabetes," Doykos said.
Doykos emphasized the need to focus on "scalability," or techniques to treat a large diabetic population more efficiently. Doykos also said health programs should be mindful of the need for long-term treatments for diabetes.
The lecturers described their career paths that led them to positions in global health.
After graduating from Dartmouth, Doykos went to Washington, D.C., where she worked in politics and later served with an education advocacy group, she said. After studying at the University of Virginia and New York University and teaching at Vassar University, she joined Bristol-Myers Squibb.
"Everyday the work that I do I can make sense of because of my experiences," Doykos said, emphasizing that her diverse background in German studies and politics helps her succeed in her current career.
Doykos said she would have taken advantage of a global health program when she was a student at Dartmouth, had the program been offered.
Ulmer has experience as a cell biologist in both academia and at Merck, a pharmaceutical company. Ulmer left Merck because he "needed to see if [he] could come up with a way to make DNA vaccines work," he said.
Keshavjee received a PhD in anthropology and Middle Eastern studies at Harvard University. He also completed an MD at Stanford University, worked at Brigham and Women's Hospital and conducted field work in Bangledesh.
