BACKGROUND
Long Wharf Theatre’s Global Health & the Arts Initiative is built on the premise that scientists and artists have something to say to each other, bringing them together to examine a pressing global health issue of our time. Conceived and led by David Scheer, along with an annual Co-Chair who is a well known thought-leader in the particular scientific field being addressed, Global Health & the Arts brings together leaders from the worlds of academia, scientific research, the pharmaceutical industry, patient care, and the arts to take part in a two day-long exploration of the disease, through panels, lectures, artistic presentations, and open discussion. In just a few short years, Long Wharf Theatre’s Global Health & the Arts initiative has established an international reputation, in both the scientific and artistic communities, for its uniquely enlightening and inter-disciplinary approach.
The Global Health & the Arts initiative was launched in 2009 with an exploration of HIV/AIDS, followed by Alzheimer’s Disease in 2010, Cancer in 2011, and Mental Illness in 2012. This year's event will focus on Obesity.
The Global Health & the Arts initiative, through exploration of the scientific and human aspects of mental illness, inspires participants to look beyond the disease’s ravaging effects to the incredible progress being made in understanding and treating mental illness of all kinds. Throughout the day, leading scientific minds, influential thinkers, and renowned artists all share in a level of creative and innovative thinking that fosters our understanding of illness as part of the human condition and inspires the quest for medical treatments and cures.
Global Health & the Arts has, from the start, attracted participants from the highest levels of academia, industry, and the arts to explore common and not-so-common themes of identifying fundamental, unmet public and global health needs, and defining paths for solving these problems from personal accounts of case studies, through to perspectives of how solutions can be achieved through vibrant, creative, entrepreneurial minds willing to tackle profoundly difficult challenges. Woven into the discussion is an evaluation of the impact of these unmet needs not only in the developed world, but also among those afflicted and impacted in the developing world. We have had high profile speakers from both domains interacting in a unique venue.