Contagion! “COVID-19 and the Effectiveness of Our Response”

The COVID-19 pandemic renewed interest in the global history of infectious diseases. This year’s lecture series presented by History Department faculty and other experts focuses on different periods in world history when societies faced pandemics and their consequences.

In the final lecture, Dr. Robert J. Kim-Farley will examine COVID-19, the greatest infectious disease pandemic since the 1918 Spanish influenza. The lecture will cover the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and its place within the context of the pandemics of the past. It also will review how these lessons can — if we heed them — help to reduce needless suffering, disability and death when the next pandemic inevitably arises.

Dr. Kim-Farley is professor-in-residence at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He recently served as the director of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. He previously served as the head of the World Health Organization in India and in Indonesia; Director of the WHO Immunization Program based in its headquarters in Geneva; Public Health Advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington, D.C.; and regional advisor for the immunization program for the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office in New Delhi. He is the author of numerous articles and publications in the field of public health.

Admission is free, but registration is required.

The series is sponsored by Cal Lutheran, the Thousand Oaks Grant R. Brimhall Library and Ventura County Library, and generously funded in part by a Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation grant. For information, contact David Nelson at dnelson@CalLutheran.edu.

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