UMass Medical School correctional health expert Warren J. Ferguson, MD, will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the conference he founded when he delivers the keynote at the Academic & Health Policy Conference on Correctional Health, March 16 and 17, 2017, in Atlanta.
“I’m honored that the ACCJH board has chosen me to give the keynote at the 10th anniversary conference. While much progress has been made to engage academic health sciences in the field of academic criminal justice health, so much more needs to be done to reduce mass incarceration in the U.S. and its downstream consequences on health,” said Dr. Ferguson, director of academic programs for UMass Medical School’s Health and Criminal Justice Program and chair of the Academic Consortium on Criminal Justice Health (ACCJH), which hosts the Academic Health & Policy Conference on Correctional Health. Ferguson also is professor and vice chair of UMass Medical School’s Department of Family Medicine & Community Health.
The conference provides an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed forum on correctional health care and health policy for researchers, clinicians, administrators, educators and policymakers. The conference draws participants from more than 100 academic and correctional institutions across the globe. The conference committee is accepting abstracts until Sept. 8 at 9 p.m. EST.
Ferguson is an esteemed speaker on correctional health. In May, he gave the keynote address at the Correctional Health Research Symposium at Augusta University, urging academic health science centers to address the public health effects of mass incarceration. He also spoke at the STFM Annual Spring Conference in May, challenging family medicine health professionals and educators to serve and advocate for populations affected by mass incarceration.
The Health and Criminal Justice Program within UMass Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine division focuses on research and scholarship; education; and service and consulting.
The program manages contracts to provide health services for federal correctional institutions. Clients include the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Federal Medical Centers in Devens, Massachusetts, and Butner, North Carolina, and its Federal Correctional Institutions in Ray Brook, New York, and Berlin, New Hampshire.