We are a relatively new, ever-growing branch of Medsin established in 2015 based at the Royal Veterinary College which is part of the University of London. Our society is primarily made up of veterinary students due to the courses on offer, but we also have bioveterinary science students and students from the One Health MSc ran by the university in conjunction with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LHSTM).

We believe that interdisciplinary global health is vital to achieving better health for the planet, ecosystems, animals and humans. Our events are open to all and we always encourage everyone and anyone to come along, if you are a medic, social scientist, economist or even just looking to find out more about the topic of global health then please join us!

We have regular events at both of our university campuses in Camden and Potters Bar, Hertfordshire. Our events vary from talks to workshops to film showings and our biggest event is our annual symposium we hold in October each year at our Camden Campus. The symposium is an exciting half-day event involving a range of speakers, lots of discussion and of course food!

Our 2016 symposium theme was ‘Disaster’ and we had a great range of speakers including Ilan Kleman from UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction, Dr Tim Healing who worked in the humanitarian field involved with communicable disease control in conflicts and disasters and Dr. Zuzana Hrdličková, Goldsmiths, University of London. Topics covered included conflict and gender, emergency response work, impacts of droughts on childhood nutrition in Burkina Faso and antimicrobial resistance.

This year our symposium theme is ‘Food security’ and will be held at the 14th October. So far our confirmed speakers include Helen Browning, Head of the Soil Association and Rosie Boycott who is food advisor to the Mayor of London.

A few of our committee members were also involved in the National Medsin Conference held at UCL and Kings on the 25th and 26th February 2017. The theme was gender and health and it was a great opportunity to meet other students from different disciplines and discuss global health and chances for future collaborations! Summaries of all our previous events as well as our upcoming events can be found on our website here. Keep an eye out on the website for some more interesting events we have coming up!

For more info about us – like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or email us at globalhealth@rvc.ac.uk