Background

The HealthMap team at Children's Hospital Boston is proud to present a special screening of the upcoming Steven Soderbergh film, Contagion. Contagion follows the emergence of a novel pathogen and its impact on public health. The film weaves a series of storylines including the efforts of a team of CDC epidemiologists as they race to prevent a global pandemic. The film highlights just how easily in today's interconnected world a fatal disease could quickly spread from person to person, multiplying to a worldwide scale in a matter of days.

After the film, you will hear from a panel of experts in public health and infectious disease epidemiology. Our special guests include leading scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. We will also feature one of the film's technical consultants who helped craft both the script and social action campaign.

The creators of HealthMap are sponsoring the event in celebration of the website’s 5th anniversary and the launch of their new design. This effort started five years ago with the idea of timely identification and dissemination of epidemic intelligence. Today, we continue to advance this cause with ever expanding social media surveillance, our news feature The Disease Daily and our local 'disease forecast' feature. We look forward to your participation is this exciting event.

For more information, please contact Leila Amerling.