Haroutune Armenian’s Book Presentation: Epidemics and Mortality in the Parish Records of Diasporan Armenian Churches (1732-1982)

About the Event:

The presentation of the newly published “Epidemics and Mortality in the Parish Records of Diasporan Armenian Churches (1732-1982)” book, authored by the President Emeritus of the American University of Armenia, founding dean of the Turpanjian College of Health Sciences Dr. Haroutune Armenian will take place on September 23, 2022, at Akian Art Gallery.

For centuries, data on births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths of the population of Armenian origin have been recorded in Armenian church parish records, as a result, becoming a rich source of demographic data and providing an opportunity to study the patterns of development of Armenian society in the context of various historical and environmental events.

The book presents an epidemiological analysis of data taken from church parish records of the population of Armenian communities in 11 countries, covers a period of 250 years, and makes a number of remarkable discoveries.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Haroutune K. Armenian is Professor in Residence of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Fielding School of Public Health and served as the Associate Dean of Academic Programs. He is Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he received his MPH and Dr.P.H. degrees (1972-4). His career in epidemiology has spanned a number of countries and regions of the world. He has special interests in the application of epidemiologic methods to health services research and chronic diseases. He is one of the earliest to apply epidemiologic methods to study the effects of the civil war at the population level during the 1980s in Lebanon, and the long-term effects of the 1988 earthquake in Armenia. In the 1980s, he pioneered epidemiologic research by using Armenian Church parish records to study infant mortality as well as other health indicators in 16 diasporan countries over a timeframe of 300 years. His more recent research includes the 23-year follow-up of survivors of the earthquake in Spitak. Dr. Armenian’s academic and development leadership has included program development at the Ministry of Health in Bahrain, dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut, director of the MPH Program at Johns Hopkins University, and dean of the College of Health Sciences at the American University of Armenia (AUA). As president of AUA for fourteen years, he was at the forefront of the establishment of novel educational and development programs in Armenia and the Middle East. Recent awards include the Ernest Lyman Stebbins Medal for Excellence in Education and the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Movses Khorenatsi Presidential Medal of Service in 2001 from the Republic of Armenia, the Presidential Medal of the Order of Cedars from the Republic of Lebanon, and membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha medical and Delta Omega public health honorary societies. Dr. Armenian is also a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London and a member of the American Epidemiological Society. He has been on the central executive council of the Armenian Church in Lebanon, as well as on the executive of the Hamazkaine Cultural Association and the Karageuzian Foundation. Dr. Armenian has been for 15 years the Editor in Chief of Epidemiologic Reviews and on the editorial board of a number of professional journals and publications. He has published over 100 scientific papers and peer reviewed chapters as well as 20 books. He recently published two collections of his watercolors and prose-poetry in Armenian and English: Colors and Words and Past Here Does Not Yet Melt. The latter was composed while they climbed Mount Ararat in an AUA expedition led by Sona Armenian to Ararat and Western Armenia in 2006. In 2009, he published a new textbook on the Design and Applications of the Case-Control Method at Oxford University Press and became the supervisor of the Chair in Epidemiology and Public Health at the King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In Armenia, he continues to lead the Turpanjian Rural Development Program with over 250 businesses established in the villages and 600 people trained in entrepreneurship.

Language: Armenian