With amazing speed, biological threats - such as HIV/AIDS and SARS - have spread globally, capturing the attention of the worldwide medical community and the public. From June 20 to 25, chief nursing officers, physician leaders and health administrators from more than 80 countries will convene at The Carter Center to discuss the global health impact of these and other emerging biological threats during the Global Government Health Partners Leadership Forum, "Managing biological threats through professional collaboration."

The event is sponsored through the Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing.

"This meeting will have a biological threats focus, and [address] what we can do to impact this at a global level," said Marla Salmon, ScD, RN, FAAN, dean of the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.

The conference also is drawing expertise from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and the new Southeastern Center for Emerging Biologic Threats, based at Emory.

"We understand that both intended and unintended biological threats have no border," Salmon said. "The conference focuses on what we can do to impact these threats at a global level."

Bringing together chief nursing and medical officers from different countries is critical to help develop policy frameworks that support adequate public health infrastructure, she said. And that includes looking at nursing shortages in areas such as South Africa and the Caribbean, where HIV/AIDS is debilitating the nursing populations.

"Drugs are going to those countries - but there are few people dispensing those drugs" because of the shortage, Salmon said. "It is critical that CNOs and chief medical officers conceive of their roles as being collaborative and communicative and develop policy frameworks that support adequate public health infrastructure, appropriate training of health professionals and the appropriate protection of those health professionals."

The CNO and CMOs "should have prevention and early detection [methods in place] that contain these treatment. And these things should cross borders," she said.

Changes in international travel and changes in climate have contributed to the rapid spread of biothreats, she said. But the worldwide medical community has not adapted, leading to serious public health consequences.

"Our society became enamored of illness-focused, technology-driven care provided within an institutional context," Salmon said. "In fact, that's where the work of nurses was focused - this belief on how do you cure people; with the belief that we're beyond the age of communicable diseases.

"We thought that door was closed. The result was [that] the systems for protection and prevention were seen as relatively unimportant and were neglected."

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