Events

Both disasters and conflict pose significant threats to human security. Separately or in tandem, they turn citizens into refugees and displaced people, stretch government capacity, and, increasingly, spark chronic disorder and instability. Despite significant gains made in other areas of global health and human development, the numbers of people affected by humanitarian crises continues to grow each year due to the effects of climate change and population movement. Yet humanitarian practice today remains much like medicine 50 years ago: based largely on anecdote with little empiric research to guide it. Humanitarian organizations and professionals respond to new disasters and complex emergencies with the same sets of tools and assumptions they used for the last crisis, never knowing whether they are truly implementing the most effective interventions possible for the populations they are working to serve. During this talk, Dr. Levine will discuss the most common barriers to conducting research in humanitarian crises, and provide some real-world examples of how to overcome those barriers from his own experiences responding to and conducting research during humanitarian crises in Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean over the past decade.