Time: 10:30AM – 12:00PM, Thursday, March 12
Venue: AB 3101
Speakers:
Dr. Brian G McAdoo
Associate Professor, Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Professor of Geosciences Bass Chair, Duke University
Dr. William Pan
Professor of Population Studies and Global Environmental Health, Duke University
Topic1：Planetary Health and Disaster Risk Reduction
Abstract: Anthropogenic global change is intensifying natural hazards, creating an urgent need for just and sustainable solutions that reduce risk without undermining Earth systems vital to human survival. Research in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) shows that risk is deeply shaped by social systems, including economic and political inequalities, discrimination, and large-scale landscape change. The challenge is to support communities in developing DRR strategies that also protect biodiversity, water, atmosphere, and landscapes essential to health and safety. This talk introduces Planetary Health as a framework for DRR, offering policymakers, engineers, healthcare providers, and investors a more integrated understanding of how changing planetary systems and social complexity influence human health, well-being, and disaster impacts, and how this approach can support more equitable and sustainable solutions.
Speaker’s Bio: Dr. Brian G McAdoo is an Earth and Climate Scientist with over 25 years of interdisciplinary research in Disaster Risk Reduction, focusing on how natural hazards disproportionately affect different socio economic groups. His work integrates Earth, social, and technical systems to inform equitable risk reduction strategies. Before joining Duke, he spent nearly a decade at Yale NUS College in Singapore as a faculty member and senior administrator, helping build Asia’s first fully residential liberal arts college while overseeing student well being in a diverse, international community. As a member of the UN International Tsunami Survey Team, he has worked on major disasters across Asia, the Pacific, the Caribbean, and the United States. These experiences underpin his lab’s interdisciplinary approach at Duke, which applies physical, biological, and social sciences to support risk reduction interventions by policymakers, engineers, healthcare providers, and investors. Current projects focus on water, ecosystems, and disease in Madagascar; glacial lake outburst floods and mental health in Pakistan; geothermal resilience in North Carolina; and financing tools for risk reducing ecosystems.
Topic2：Research and Sustainability related to Climate, Biodiversity and Health
Speaker’s Bio: Dr. William Pan is a professor of Global Environmental Health, joined the faculty at Duke in 2011. He holds a joint appointment at DGHI and the Nicholas School of Environment, and is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Pan’s research interests focuses on population, health, and environmental interactions in developing countries, with particular interest in translational research directed toward sustainable development activities and global environmental health. He has worked in countries throughout Latin America and Africa on topics ranging from land use change, reproductive health, migration, tuberculosis, HIV, enteric infections, and childhood nutrition. Pan received his doctoral training in Biostatistics from UNC-Chapel Hill with a focus on demography and spatial analysis. He also received a Master of Public Health from Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
