|
Noted Science Writer to Speak at Forum on March 11
Laurie Garrett Will Be the Keynote Speaker for a Forum
Hosted by the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation
| March 5, 2007
As a medical and science writer for Newsday in New York City, Laurie Garrett became the only reporter ever to have been awarded all three of the Big "Ps" of journalism: the Peabody, the Polk (twice), and the Pulitzer. Garrett is also the best-selling author of “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance” and “Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health." Garrett will be the keynote speaker at a forum hosted by the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation March 11 at the Estancia Hotel.
 |
|
Laurie Garrett |
|
Chancellor Marye Anne Fox will introduce Garrett, now a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. The event is not open to the public.
Garrett, who is an expert on global health with a particular focus on newly emerging and re-emerging diseases and their effects on foreign policy and national security,
won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1996 for her writings about the Ebola virus. In 1998, she received the George C. Polk Award for International Reporting, for her series of stories titled "Crumbled Empire, Shattered Health," which took an in-depth look at health care and diseases in the former Soviet Union after its collapse.
Garrett was born in Los Angeles. She graduated with honors in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and attended graduate school in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at UC Berkeley. She also did research at Stanford University in the laboratory of Dr. Leonard Herzenberg. During her doctorate studies, Garrett started reporting on science news at KPFA, a local radio station. The hobby soon became far more interesting than graduate school and she took a leave of absence to explore journalism. Garrett never completed her doctorate.
At KPFA, she worked in management, news and radio documentary production. A documentary series she co-produced won the 1977 George Foster Peabody Award in Broadcasting.
After leaving KPFA, Garrett worked briefly in the California Department of Food and Agriculture assessing the human health impacts of pesticide use. She then went overseas, living and working in southern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, as a freelance reporter for Pacifica Radio, Pacific News Service, BBC-Radio, Reuters, Associated Press and others.
In 1980 Garrett joined National Public Radio, working out of the network’s San Francisco and, later, Los Angeles bureaus as a science correspondent. During her NPR years, Garrett received awards from the National Press Club (Best Consumer Journalism, 1982), the San Francisco Media Alliance (Meritorious Achievement Award in Radio, 1983) and the World Hunger Alliance (First Prize, Radio, 1987). In 1988 Garrett left NPR to join the science writing staff of Newsday.
Her Newsday reporting has earned several awards, including the Newsday Publisher’s Award (best beat reporter, 1990), Award of Excellence from the National Association of Black Journalists ("AIDS in Africa," 1989), Deadline Club of New York (best beat reporter, 1993) and the Bob Considine Award of the Overseas Press Club of America ("AIDS in India," 1995).
During the academic year 1992-93 Garrett attended Harvard University as a visiting fellow in the Harvard School of Public Health.
Over the years Garrett has contributed chapters to numerous books, including “AIDS in the World,” edited by Jonathan Mann, Daniel Tarantola and Thomas Netter (Oxford University Press, 1993) and “Disease in Evolution: Global Changes and Emergence of Infectious Diseases,” edited by Mary E. Wilson (New York Academy of Sciences, 1994).
Garrett has also written for many publications, including Foreign Affairs, Esquire, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and Current Issues in Public Health. She has appeared frequently on national television programs, including "ABC Nightline," "The Jim Lerher NewsHour," "The Charlie Rose Show," "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Dateline," "The International Hour" and "Talkback,” both on CNN.
Garrett also is a member of the National Association of Science Writers and served as the organization's President during the mid-1990s.
|
