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Local students act globally

2 April 2008

Daniel Yore and David Humphreys highlight the Global Health Conference website.

Two Monash students studying their third year of medicine at the Gippsland Regional Clinical School are taking a lead role in raising the profile of global health issues in Australia.

Daniel Yore and David Humphreys are convening the 2008 Global Health Conference, one of the main events of the Australian Medical Students' Association (AMSA). The conference, unique to AMSA, will bring 500 medicine students and junior doctors together in Melbourne this July.

The delegates will travel from across the Asia-Pacific region to attend the conference, which aims to address the key underlying social, political, economic and environmental determinants of health on developing communities.

Mr Yore and Mr Humphreys were selected as conference conveners in May of last year, and since then they have been leading a 50-strong organising committee of Monash and Melbourne University students.

"Preparing for the conference continues to involve an enormous commitment of time and energy," Mr Yore said. "However we are passionate about the issues we are seeking to address and feel it is important that Australia's future doctors graduate having had the opportunity to learn about health issues affecting marginalised and disadvantaged communities the world over."

The conference's academic program includes workshops, case-studies and keynote addresses from prominent Australians including Reverend Tim Costello, Julian Burnside QC, Sir Gustav Nossal and the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma.

"One of the key academic themes of the conference centres on Indigenous health, and particularly what we as a nation can do to improve the quality of life of Australia's Indigenous populations," Mr Humphreys said.

"Similarly, refugee and asylum seeker health is an area given little attention universally within medical curricula, yet is a reality many doctors will be faced with in their clinical practice."

The 2008 AMSA Global Health Conference takes place at the University of Melbourne from 4-6 July. For more information visit the AMSA website.