Event Calendar

Nuila’s stunning debut The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine, which details the stories of five Houstonians unable to access healthcare in his hometown of Houston, TX, was selected as a semi-finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, and The Washington Post. Dr. Nuila is an associate professor of medicine, medical ethics, and health policy at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Humanities Expression and Arts Lab (HEAL) program. His work and research on the use of arts and humanities in medical practice have been supported by the Association of American Medical Colleges, and he has received fellowships for his writing from MacDowell, Yaddo, the Logan Nonfiction Program, and the Texas Institute of Letters. His features and essays have appeared in Texas Monthly, The New York Times Sunday Review, VQR, The Atlantic, and The New England Journal of Medicine. His short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Guernica, and other magazines.

Cosponsored by the Park Street Corporation Speaker Series.

Dr. Tamarra James-Todd is a Professor of Environmental Reproductive Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She directs the Environmental Reproductive Justice (ERJ) Lab, which seeks to investigate the role of consumer product chemicals on reproductive and cardiometabolic health and health disparities. She takes a solution-oriented approach that includes running several randomized controlled trials to improve environmental health literacy of consumer product chemicals as a strategy to reduce risk of adverse health outcomes and health disparities. She is the PI of several NIH R01s, including the ERGO Study. She also is the Principal Investigator for the Community Engagement Core of the MEMCARE P42 Superfund Research Center, the Deputy Director of the Harvard Chan NIEHS P30 Center, and co-founder of the Community Environmental Health Bootcamp, a multi-P30 Center funded training on community environmental health and health disparities research methods. Dr. James-Todd received her B.S. in molecular biology from Vanderbilt University; MPH in International Health from Boston University; and PhD in Epidemiology from Columbia University.

Lia Tadesse Gebremedhin is currently the Executive Director of the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program and a Professor of the Practice of Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Lia served as the Minister of Health of Ethiopia from March 2020 to February 2024 after serving as State Minister of Health from November 2018. As a Minister, she spearheaded the COVID pandemic response and helped her country navigate the pandemic with resilience. Before that, she served as Program Director at the University of Michigan’s Center for International Reproductive Health Training (CIRHT). She was also the Project Director of USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP) at Jhpiego-Ethiopia and CEO and Vice Provost of St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College (SPHMMC) in Addis Ababa, where she led hospital service and academic reforms.

Lia is passionate about strengthening and reforming health systems and has received several recognitions for her accomplishments in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, in advocacy for gender equity, access to quality health services and training, and has published over 40 articles, commentaries, and papers. 

During her tenure as minister, Lia was co-chair of the COVAX AMC Engagement Group, co-chair of the Global Financing Facility (GFF) Investors Group, the Vice board chair of the Africa CDC, and a member of the Gavi board and the WHO Executive Board. She currently serves on the board of Directors of JSI and Resolve to Save Lives, as a Commissioner in the Lancet Commission of Investing in Health, and serves on various Advisory boards including the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, the Center for Global Health Equity at the University of Michigan, the Advisory board for the Lancet Commission on Evidence-Based Implementation in Global Health, and the Global Advisory Board for the QuEST Network at Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health.

She earned her medical degree from Jimma University, specialty training in Obstetrics and Gynecology from Addis Ababa University, and a master’s degree in health care administration from Jimma University.

Emily St. John Mandel is the bestselling author of numerous novels, including The Glass Hotel, Station Eleven, and Sea of Tranquility. Her novel Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Toronto Book Award, and the Morning News Tournament of Books, and was adapted into a limited series for HBO. A previous novel, The Singer’s Gun, was the 2014 winner of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France. Her short fiction and essays have been anthologized in numerous collections, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She is a staff writer for The Millions.