The Liam's Legacy Symposium honors the memory of Liam Rattray, an outstanding and socially-committed Georgia Tech Honors Program student who was tragically killed by a drunk driver just a few weeks after his graduation, in 2011.  We mourn his death, but we also celebrate his life in this annual event that carries his name and draws upon his legacy of engagement and activism.

This event explores the question, "what are the most successful interventions in cultivating community health, especially in communities that have been traditionally marginalized?"  This guiding question entails examining how health-related organizations and agencies differently define "good health" and how access to power (political, cultural, and financial) impacts how community members interact with health-related resources and technologies.  In conjunction with our Serve-Learn-Sustain Linked Courses Program focused on Community Health, this event also investigates the concept of "community health."   In the framework used in our program, individual health and community health are symbiotic - with community health dependent on the health behaviors and health outcomes of individuals within the community and individual health dependent on the health status of the community.

The second panel will engage global perspectives; however, both panels will highlight the connectedness of local and global community health challenges and innovations.  Featured panelists include David Addiss of the Task Force for Global Health, Hope Bussenius of Emory's Urban Health Initiative, and Rihana Nesrudin of Oakhurst Medical Center. Hence, the symposium also explores how professionals from different disciplines and sectors view the concept of "community health" through the specific lenses of the communities--whether here in Atlanta or abroad-- with which they work.