Program

iCOMOS 2020 Themes

The iCOMOS^TM 2020 program spotlights relevant grand challenges in Latin America, including healthy living, sustainable food systems, water governance, and strengthening One Health policies.

iCOMOS 2020 Session Summaries

Session 1: Healthy Living

Social determinants of health include the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age. These social determinants of health include factors like socioeconomic status, education, physical environment, employment, and social support networks, as well as access to health care. This session will explore the interaction between biological and social determinants of health, through discussions of social inequity and migration, diet and microbiome, poverty and well-being, built and landscaped environments, and their overall role in people's ability to live healthy, productive lives.

Session 2: Healthy Food Systems

The future of global health is inextricably linked to agriculture, the key source of human and animal nutrition and energy. The session highlights the central role of agriculture in improving health, along with economic and policy issues that intersect with science. Speakers in this session will explore new analytical approaches and technological innovations, growing healthy food in stressed environments, and enhancement of food qualities that limit waste and increase nutrition and economic return.

Session 3: Environmental Health

The fundamental need for water quality and quantity to sustain health becomes increasingly difficult to fulfill as populations grow, human land use expands, and water patterns shift due to climate change. The problem facing policymakers is compounded by the fact that human, animal, and environmental health must be considered in making water policy but each are measured by different standards. Economic and social values vary across the globe and tend to compound rather than simplify issues at the local to global levels. All of this means data to adequately inform policy is often hard to come by, and putting one use of water above and out of balance with all the other uses has already led to unintended and undesirable consequences.

Session 4: One Health Policy: Emergence Planning for Preparedness and Response

Many health problems have an environmental component at some level, yet recognizing and focusing solutions on environmental linkages remains a challenge. Speakers in this session will highlight emerging scientific paradigms—new methods, approaches, or policies that offer new ways of exploring connections between human, animal, and environmental health—and the potential for fostering discovery and novel solutions to complex one-health problems. Speakers and panel discussants will present emerging approaches directed toward long-term, multidisciplinary, intersectoral health research and policy making.

Concurrent Workshops (Preliminary)

● Emergence Planning: Preparedness for Sustainable Mining Management

● Invasive Species and Climate Change

● Sustainable Food Production

● A One Health Approach for Antimicrobial Resistance in Latin America

● Comparative and Transdisciplinary Medicine

Conference Structure