Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/519582
t m c » p u l s e | j u n e 2 0 1 5 6 for Friendship with Foreign Countries, and featured several of the world's most renowned scientists and policymakers. Participants were encouraged to share their experiences on social media using the hashtag #endpandemics to increase awareness of the issues discussed, and both Chinese and English translation services were available at all sessions. The dialogue addressed many facets of the issue at large, including vaccine development, policy guidelines, ethics, research advancement, the role of commercialization and corporate programs in promoting global health security, insights from the front line of the Ebola outbreak, and more. Roundtable symposia provided the opportunity for attendees to convene and review the critical role of research collaboration between China and the United States. Each roundtable encompassed multiple sessions, giving participants time to outline an agenda for future collaboration in science and policy for the topics addressed, which ranged from new tuberculo- sis diagnostics to mobile health technology to natural remedies and products. One of the predominant themes of the confer- ence was the importance of assisting less developed countries in the global fight to promote health for the poorest populations. During a plenary session focused on public health preparedness in the developing world, and how China and the U.S. could provide leadership, Nils Daulaire, M.D., senior visiting scholar on Global Health Security at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and U.S. Representative to the Executive Board of the World Health Organization, discussed the pol- icy roles of the two countries in developing ongoing and robust programs at home while assisting less developed countries as a whole—and not just when a pandemic strikes. "The bottom line is that we're in this together," he said. "We're talking a lot about pandemics and global infectious diseases, but we also recognize that the emerging health issues in the least developed countries is this overlap of two great sets of issues. One is what I call the unfinished agenda—maternal and child health, infectious diseases, the spread of anti-microbial resistance—and that is an area that requires ongoing attention, assistance and work, but on top of that, we now have emerging, throughout the world, the non-communicable diseases catastrophe." "The point of this conference is to develop a sus- tainable, close tie between the two most powerful and influential countries on earth so that we can act more efficiently and effectively in preventing and responding to an outbreak of infectious disease," said Neil Bush, son of George H.W. Bush and a co-chair of the conference. Robert C. Robbins, M.D., president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center, added, "While the confer- ence provides many opportunities for collaboration and cooperation between clinicians, scientists and educators around important issues such as emerg- ing pathogens and emergency preparedness, it also promotes discussion on other topics critical to health care today, including cancer genomics and cardiovas- cular diseases." The event was co-chaired by Bush and Madame Li Xiaolin, president of the Chinese People's Association Sometimes, curing and preventing infectious diseases means more about economic development than it does a specific vaccine. There can never be global economic development until we release the poorest 1.5 billion people on the planet from the traps of poverty and illness. — BRETT GIROIR, M.D. Chief Executive Officer of Texas A&M Health Science Center From left to right, conference co-chair Neil Bush, keynote speaker Thomas Frieden, M.D., director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Brett Giroir, M.D., chief executive officer of Texas A&M Health Science Center.