PHFI Foundation Day
March 28 2008
India Habitat Centre
Foundation Day of the Public Health Foundation of India was celebrated on March 28, 2008. The first Foundation Day Lecture, an oration to be delivered by a distinguished leader in a public health area of great national and global significance was held in the presence of an august gathering in New Delhi. The PHFI Award, another novel endeavour, was instituted to honour Indian contributions in the field of public health.
The inaugural Foundation Day Lecture and Award function was held at the India Habitat Centre and attended by more than 400 people from government, academia, multilateral organizations, NGOs, donors, the media, and the corporate sector and by university and school students. Shri Naresh Dayal, Secretary Health, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, was the Guest of Honour at the function. The event was extensively covered in both print and electronic media.
In keeping with global recognition of the challenge from rapidly occurring climate change and its impact on health, the PHFI Foundation Day lecture focused on “Environment, Climate and Health: An Expanded Public Health Research and Policy Agenda for the 21st Century” by Professor Anthony J McMichael, NHMRC Australia Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University, Canberra.
On 28 March 2006, Honourable Prime Minister of India Sh. Manmohan Singh launched the Public Health Foundation of India.
PHFI celebrated its inception with a Foundation Day lecture by a renowned expert and instituted the PHFI Award to honour outstanding contribution in the field of public health. |
This year’s PHFI Award was presented to Professor Kalpana Balakrishnan, Professor of Biophysics and Head, Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai for her abiding commitment to environmental health environmental epidemiology, industrial hygiene and safety, and occupational health. Dr. Balakrishnan obtained her undergraduate degree from AIIMS, New Delhi, and subsequently her doctoral and post doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA in Biophysics and Environmental Health Engineering respectively. She is also Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Occupational Health at Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai.
The Foundation Day celebrations also included an exhibition on the “Impact of climate Change on Health” by our partner organization, Hriday Shan. The exhibition featured a series of posters and children’s electronic games prepared by Hriday Shan for spreading awareness about how climate change is affecting human health.
PHFI thanks the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation (NJKF) for co-organizing this event as part of the NJKF’s Climate Change Series.
Useful links:
Detailed Programme of the Foundation Day Lecture 2008
Prof. Anthony J McMichael’s Profile
A brief abstract of the lecture
