Course Focuses on Rainforest
November 6, 2009
Dee Boling
newwave@tulane.edu
Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, who led Tulane public health students to Suriname for a course last summer, envisions expanded research and teaching collaborations there, now that memoranda of understanding are in place between Tulane and the South American country.
Tulane public health students make their way through the Suriname rainforest during a course in the South American country. (Photos by Brady Skaggs)
Lichtveld, the Freeport McMoRan Chair of Environmental Policy, coordinated “Public Health Threats in Suriname: From Ecosystem to Human Health,” a course in Suriname, with students from Tulane and Suriname. She shared teaching with Dominique Meekers, professor and chair, and Katherine Andrinopoulos, assistant professor, both in the Department of International Health and Development in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
“It was a joint course on issues that are a public health threat in Suriname but that are also very pertinent to the United States, and to Tulane and to New Orleans specifically,” says Lichtveld.
It was the first joint course for the departments of environmental health sciences and international health.
The first component of the course this past summer addressed industrial contamination. One field trip consisted of a three-hour bus ride on unpaved roads, a one-hour cruise by dug-out canoe and a two-and-a-half-hour walk through the Amazon rainforest.
“Students were able to see first-hand the stark contrast between pristine Amazon rainforest and the result of gold mining being done by independent, illegal gold mines,” Lichtveld says.
Students cruise by canoe to witness first-hand the problems of industrial contamination in Suriname.
Next on the agenda, Lichtveld says, is the development of a joint master of public health degree program. She also hopes to assist the University of Suriname, her alma mater, in establishing a school of public health modeled after the Tulane school.
Tulane has signed memoranda of understanding with the University of Suriname and the Suriname Ministry of Health.
Lichtveld is running for president-elect of the American Public Health Association on a platform of addressing health disparities.
Her blog addresses pressing public health issues. The vote will be at the association’s Nov. 10 meeting in Philadelphia.
Dee Boling is director of communications for the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118 504-865-5000 website@tulane.edu