It was in this capacity that he was recently invited to be a keynote speaker at the 75th anniversary summit of the World Health Organization in Berlin.
Following remarks by Tedros Ghebreyesus — the esteemed director general of the WHO — Dean Youde delivered a presentation on the broader social and political contexts for global health governance and policy. Afterward, Dean Youde was the only academic on the keynote panel, entitled “World Health Organization: 75 Years of Striving for Health for All,” speaking alongside policy makers, medical doctors, and experts in the natural sciences.
AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: Watch the full program, or skip right to Dean Youde’s speech.
For Dean Youde, it’s important to continue to find the time and energy for his research activities.
“The curiosity that propelled me as a faculty member is still there,” he says. “If we [administrators] want to support people being out there doing research and applying it, if we are asking it of our colleagues, we should do it too.”
But it’s not just his sense of equity that keeps his scholarly fires burning.
“I think ultimately I’m driven by a relentless sense of curiosity,” Dean Youde says. ”What I do as an administrator and as a researcher is all about taking in new information, adjusting prior beliefs, looking at the difference between theory and application.”
Ultimately, he celebrates that there’s always new stuff to discover.
“There will never be a perfect outcome, but we can keep trying to improve things — taking in the new and seeing how we can apply it for better outcomes,” Dean Youde says.