Health | Humanity | Ethics
Established in 2016, The Park Street Corporation Speaker Series seeks to engage students in exploring values and ethics related to health and healthcare practices.
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Fall 2025 Speakers
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September 10, 2025
Nuila鈥檚 stunning debut听The People鈥檚 Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine, which details the stories of five Houstonians unable to access healthcare in his hometown of Houston, TX, was selected as a semi-finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Amazon,听Kirkus Reviews, and听The Washington Post. Dr. Nuila is an associate professor of medicine, medical ethics, and health policy at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Humanities Expression and Arts Lab (HEAL) program. His work and research on the use of arts and humanities in medical practice have been supported by the Association of American Medical Colleges, and he has received fellowships for his writing from MacDowell, Yaddo, the Logan Nonfiction Program, and the Texas Institute of Letters. His features and essays have appeared in听Texas Monthly,听The New York Times Sunday Review,听VQR,听The Atlantic, and听The听New England Journal of Medicine. His short fiction has appeared in听The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney鈥檚,听Guernica, and other magazines.
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October 23, 2025
Over the years, Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) has played a key role in enhancing economic and social progress and narrowing the equity gap, contributing to improved education, health, environmental sustainability, good governance, gender equality, and access to global public goods. Recent cuts by global donors signal a rapidly evolving global development landscape.听Although these shifts in the global development ecosystem pose serious challenges, particularly for Africa, they also bring tremendous opportunities to redesign strategic approaches towards building more resilient health systems for the continent. Lia Tadesse Gebremedhin听served as the Minister of Health of Ethiopia from March 2020 to February 2024 after serving as State Minister of Health from November 2018. She听is currently the Executive Director of the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program and a Professor of the Practice of Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
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November 4, 2025
Emily St. John Mandel is the bestselling author of numerous novels, including听The Glass Hotel,听Station Eleven, and听Sea of Tranquility. Her novel听Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Toronto Book Award, and the Morning News Tournament of Books, and was adapted into a limited series for HBO. A previous novel,听The Singer鈥檚 Gun, was the 2014 winner of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France. Her short fiction and essays have been anthologized in numerous collections, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She is a staff writer for The Millions.
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November 23, 2025
Dr. Tamarra James-Todd is a Professor of Environmental Reproductive Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She directs the Environmental Reproductive Justice (ERJ) Lab, which seeks to investigate the role of consumer product chemicals on reproductive and cardiometabolic health and health disparities. She takes a solution-oriented approach that includes running several randomized controlled trials to improve environmental health literacy of consumer product chemicals as a strategy to reduce risk of adverse health outcomes and health disparities. She is the PI of several NIH R01s, including the ERGO Study.听