Time Person of the Year Ella Stryker will give the Health Sciences Nolte Lecture at Illinois State University at 5 p.m. Wednesday, September 30, in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center.
A former teacher and current health promoter with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, Stryker will give a talk titled “The Health Educator’s Role in the Effort to Control Ebola.” The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Department of Health Sciences and the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation Nolte Fund.
Stryker has focused on global health projects in both development and emergency contexts since 2006. She began her work with Doctors Without Borders in 2014 as part of the initial response to the Ebola outbreak in Guinea. She returned for subsequent missions to Sierra Leone and Liberia. In December 2014, she was featured on the cover of Time magazine as a representative of the thousands of men and women collectively named Time Person of the Year for their role in combating the West African Ebola outbreak.
In Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) she worked with displaced persons to develop capacity for community-based health care programs focused on malaria, tuberculosis, and maternal and child health. In West Africa, she worked on strengthening child immunization and disease surveillance systems as part of the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention polio eradication initiative.
She is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
The talk is part of The Speaker Series of Illinois State University, which seeks to bring innovative and enlightening speakers to the campus with the aim of providing the community with a platform to foster dialogue, cultivate enriching ideas, and continue an appreciation of learning as an active and lifelong process.
More information on all speakers can be found on the Speaker Series website.
