Health care systems in Latin America have been subject  to substantial reforms for many years. Over the past two decades, scholars and policy experts have debated between two models of health care reform: one that proposes the creation of a market for health insurance and the competition among private and public institutions, and an alternative model that proposes the expansion of high-quality public services. Asa Cristina Laurell is one of the most prominent Latin American public health scholars participating in this debate. Based on her own research and experience as minister of health in Mexico City and viceminister of the Mexican government, and presently a planning director at the Mexican Social Security Institute, she will lay out the complexity of the debate, the economic interests behind it, and the outcomes observed in each case, to finally propose some steps forward to achieve equity in health care in Latin America.

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER

Asa Cristina Laurell is recognized as one of the most emblematic figures of Latin America’s social medicine tradition and one of the most prominent scholars in the field of health systems and health reform in Latin America. A founding member of the Latin American Association for Social Medicine (ALAMES), she’s been a professor at the Universidad Autonoma de Xochimilco, has served as Secretary of Health for the government of Ciudad de Mexico in 2000-2006, and was a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Health for the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador between 2018 and 2020. Laurell is currently the Director of Institutional Transformation at the Instituto Mexicano de Seguridad Social in Mexico.

DISCUSSANT

Juan C. Ferre, Global Health, M.D., Ph.D., CUNY Graduate Center; PLAS Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer

This event is open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff. Lunch will be provided while supplies last.

Location will be announced.

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