Public health and Health Services at the George Washington university. Its with extreme pleasure that i welcome you here to very special afternoon at George Washington university. Im thrilled to see so many students, faculty, alumni, colleagues and supporters with us. I would like to acknowledge our friends and colleagues for joining us today via live web cast. If you are tweeting use the gwha. Its pound gwha, people in my generation. They celebrate International Womens women day. It began in the 1900s. We made tremendous progress when it comes to womens rights. But at the same time women disparity dont effect the lives of millions. Poverty, poor access to health care, inadequate nutrition and water afflict women and girls across the globe. Its a paradox we cannot and should not tolerate. Now more than ever we must focus on conducting research and conducting promises, policy, and interventions to provide solutions. Particularly proud of the work of the global womens substitute at George Washington university, University Wide initiative promotes and supports the rights of women and conducts Research Education initiative an advocacy campaign. In particular the institute is identified violence against women. According to the u. S. Government in the u. S. 1 of women or 1. 3 million women every Year Experience rape or attempted rape. Almost half are raped before the turn of the age of 18. Over a lifetime, one in four are raped one in five beaten by a partner and one in six stalked. Men are victimized as well in smaller numbers. These are devastating psychologically as well as physically. We need to develop and support efforts. In the u. S. We have made enormous strains in promoting a quality for women. While in college i didnt dream of being a dean of a school. Nor someday to have so many women working at states. We had women secretary of state, even as a president ial candidate. Women in positions, the senate, governors, and ceos. When i was in medical school, women were actively discouraged going in to specialties like surgery. There were hardly any women in medical school at all. We have seen so much progress, if they say we have come a long way we have a long ways to go. I do believe that along with the rights that we have we have responsibility and particularly the responsibility to care about the circumstances of women everywhere in the world. The situation with regard to women leads much to be desired. The Life Expectancy at birth for women in high impact countries in 2009 was 83, it was only 59 in the lowest income countries. Thats an average of 24 years of life lost. The epidemic of hiv aids is hitting women hard along with the issue of peed pediatric we know it isnt necessary for my baby to be we have measures that can be used to prevent that. The mortality death is an enormous Public Health problem in most of the world killing 287,000 women in 2010 with a rate as lowincome countries 24 times higher than the rates of internal mother talty in the u. S. Today. We know how to prevent it. We should be preventing this. Most are aware that Breast Cancer is leading the death of women. But Cervical Cancer which is preventable through advantag nation through the hpv and screening tests is a large cause of death worldwide. 80 of deaths of Cervical Cancer occur in countries. It is due to the lack of advantages nations but also screening programs. And last but not least, i want to say a little bit about cardiovascular disease. The leading cause of death among women certainly in the u. S. And a cause of death that often goes unrecognized. One of our own faculty in the university lost their life due to a heart attack that was not recognized. Women often manifest cardiovascular disease than different ways of men. Even in the u. S. , we still have a long ways to go in term of health care for women. Im proud to say we are doing a lot of wonderful things for school of Public Health and Health Services just to mention a couple a new chair of Global Health conducting research in a poll critical to maternal newborn and child health. Hes developing interventions at the Community Level to reduce indoor air pollution by cook stove which have been shown to cause poorer birth outcome for women and children. Chair of epidemiologist has promoting most of their career to this. The doctor has focused on hiv prevention work in africa and dr. Green boring the direct are of District Of Columbia a multiconstitution effort addressing the hiv aids epidemic here in d. C. Which as most of you know, has among the highest rate in the world and the highest rate in the United States. The professors made remarkable progress in addressing Womens Health issues. For instance, professors studied the Health Problem affecting minorities living in the United States and developed remitses to reduce the rate of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other serious Health Problems that disproportionately impacting such a group. Professor wood is executive director of our Jacobs Institute of Womens Health and conducted Cutting Edge Research how it [inaudible] Family PlanningServices Including their ability to obtain low cost contraception such as the pill. At the University Level we have diane knapp here with us today. She spent her career researching nutrition and Sustainable Food policy and heads up the universitys urban food task force. It partners with teachers and others in the community trying to get at children when before they develop the worse eating habits so they can develop in a healthy way and so their babies can develop in a healthyway way as we grow up. And we have maureen in the front row. The founder of the University Project of breastfeeding. She made tremendous progress educating our community about the importance of breastfeeding for maternal and child health. As a pediatrician its hard to me why we even need to talk about breastfeeding Friendly Initiative its basic and fundamental to the health of infants. Im proud that we are becoming a child friendly campus. We are creating opportunities for our students, faculty, and staff to be able to breastfeed as well as to collect their milk. So we have come a long way but theres so much that needs to be done. So that is why its such a delight to introduce our guest, ashley judd. Many of you certainly know her from Award Winning acting career. But shes a tireless advocate for women and children around the globe. Im finding myself in a unique position of introducing her while i have her mother, naomi judd in the front row. [laughter] im sure much of what we see here today in term of a remarkable career has do with her. She has graced the cover of countless nag zones. Bringing awareness and closest to her heart such as gender ine quality. She was the subject of three Award Winning documentaries that aired more than 150 Countries Worldwide on vh1 the discovery channel, and the National Geographic channel. In 2002, she became an ambassador for psi, a Global Health organization dedicated to improving the health of people in the developing world. She joined them as a board member in 2004, and visited the slums, broth l, school and clinic that psi programs target. I ask her if she was introduce her daughter, what she say. One thing she was struck by the courage that ashley judd shows in going and visiting these places where women and children are living in some of the worst health conditions. Conditions that are difficult experience to observe, requires a tremendous amount of courage to be willing to go out and do that work. She visited ty land, cambodia, and many other countries in what has been a passionate effort to understand the root cause of poverty, social injustice and inequality. Recently she received a masters from the Harvard Kennedy school. She earned an honorary doctorate from Eastern Kentucky in 2009. Please welcome join me in welcome miss ashley judd. [applause] good afternoon. Well, theres what four southerners in here . Take two on that. [laughter] good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you so much dean, and as far as im concerned, lass is over. I appreciate your expertise, i am totally daunted by the intellectual capital and Life Experience in this room, and students go to the Student Center and have coffee. [laughter] im very pleased and honored to be here today. This has been a date five years in the making. Get that . Based on my long standing froip with friendship we had the pleasure of traveling to india together in 2008 spending extraordinary emotionally grueling as well as aspiring three weeks visiting Grassroots Program that lift the poorest of the poor out of the worst conditions we have in the fragile world. Thank you for having issued me the invitation years ago. Amends for the delay. [laughter] and its a real pleasure to be here. I would like to thank my mom for being here too. I typical people extemporaneously. I dont keep notes. Fortunately the stuff stays clear in my head. There are additional folks here today, and i thought, i better like, have my notes in case i get stuff wrong. My mother will know. I appreciate you make the trip with me. I have a dog on hunger strike. He only wants cheese. So just a little bit about how i got started in this beautiful work, and then i very much want to sit down and hear from the students, you are going the ones who create the current and future solutions that empower the health of all people around the world, particularly girls and women. And, you know, i want to know your thoughts. Post mbg . What are we doing . Improved sanitation who is going to invent the toilet. What about the won that the prize at the Gates Foundation . What are your thoughts on women trapped in sexual slavery and transactional sexual exploitation. Do we work with them in the vulnerable situation to immediately protect and empower their health while simultaneously working on demand and supply . Abolition . What are your thoughts on that practically and morally. That and who knows what less come up. But ill tell you a little bit about how i got started. I became aware, actually of Child Survival and maternal more faulty as someone who has been blessed all her life with rich narrative about family history. We would visit, we have a lot of counties in kentucky. We would visit all the rural county which is our people come and there would be judd graveyards in Lawrence County and tome stones of little babies. It was devastating to me they were my kin or cousins or whatever and i learned it was cool and i see moms dieing in child birth. I learned more my triple great grandfather who was a civil war hero who suffered a battle field amputation a prisoner of war three times, his third wife because the second wife died in childbirth and he needed a momma quick and got a good one. I was aware of that grow. Ing up. I had the privilege and honor, really, as painful as it is being sensitized and educate about all of the preventable deaths that occur among children under the age of five, malaria, die of real disease, monopoly things which are easy solutions. So i loved being at the university of kentucky. I was in a or so or so i was i became aware of what was happening in south africa with appar tide government there was a comfortable couple in the music business in south africa. They were activists against the racist regime. And they were about to be placed under house arrest again. They decided that it would be better for them and the effort for racial equality if they left south africa. They managed to flee before their house arrest and they smuggled out of the country with them records, vinyl actual records of speeches given by a fellow. And because they had been in the music business, they settled in nashville and my mother and sister came to know this couple and spotted in me a little something, something and loaned me the records. I started to connect my christian values with social justice. Those records made me cry. They they just litany soul on fire. Then i started listening to youtube. Why not . Had great record came out 88 joshua tree in and they were on the cover of Rolling Stone and i started studying the notes and learning about Amnesty International and learning the lyrics in a particular way, where the streets had no name that sounded like heaven. At the same time the board of trust agrees having a meeting talking about divesting from the racist appar tight government. A wonderful guy who given Incredible Service in the commonwealth of kentucky is beloved by our people and served as commissioner of baseball when baseball was integrated and Jackie Robinson began to play. Made an unfortunate and probably generational remarking about why are we talking about this anyway . Isnt it a bunch of ns down there anyway . And we have strong Student Newspaper at the university of kentucky. I think it might be the oldest continuing running newspaper. Go with it. I like it. [laughter] and we had a member of our press corp. There. And he wrote about it in the Student Newspaper. And i was so devastated i started to lead campus wide walks out of campus to say welcome pledges and that stuff. I started saying thank you for your service. Please retire. And the governor published a wonderful memoir around the same time and signing books and downtown lexington and my friends were standing in line to have the book signed and i was standing in a shorter line with a sign saying lflt and then i joined the peace corp. And i dropped out. Thats the short version of that story. [laughter] my sister used to say to me, show us how you squat and get the sanitation here thing soon anyway. And i loved that idea. I loved that idea. I would go anywhere but yemen. Im scared of that place. I hear the congress go is the worse place to be a woman. Ive been there four times. I was willing to do anything until i realized that hollywood was a younger womans game if i didnt give it a try in the early 20s i might later have a regret in life. And if i got started fully invested in service work, that would be my life path without exploring the creative part first. And so i stopped returning i did it 22yearold style. I stopped returning that peace corp. Recruiters calls. Talk about emotional immaturity. Bead i made my amends to her and the organization and all of his children multiple times. And i was loved the peace corp. Volunteers. I was fortunate to meet with ministers and heads of state and talk about the narratives. But boy, can i pick out an American Peace corp. Volunteer across the room. Good people. You ask fantastic staff how many local dialect . Three. You ask the peace corp. Fourteen, i speak them all. They are amazing. I went to the other jungle hollywood, did my thing there and had success much to my own what would the word be . Success. I didnt know it was success until i looked back on it last year. It happened so fast. And i remember when i was going, i was talking to a family friend, and i was so frightened. Amazingly i was lazed raced with the gratest voice in my generation. I didnt have an arts education. I didnt know what it meant to be an actor. I was scared. I was nervous and talking to the family friend and said im going to do a lot of service. Im going help advocate that women need access to medically accurate Sex Education and have access to a full basket of Family Planning. And i went on to list the other things and are you going to be an actor or save the world . In 2002 i was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I didnt know what was wrong. I knew something wasnt at that time it turned out i was the highest paid women. And i like to say adjusted for inflation not including bettys leagues. The rumor they were ensured. Im sure it was. You can tell its Public Health. You dont get the jokes. Look her up. She was foxy. I was working on a film and we were doing a lot of consecutive night shoots. I was basically doing shift work as my loved one dollar owe calls it. And i came home, exhausted, i was waiting for the shower water to get hot and i literally fell asleep on my feet. Have you ever done that cramming for an exam . [laughter] checking those footnote on the ph. D. Dissertation. I hear it takes a year. At this point it sounds nice. I feel asleep and i jolted away and so surprised and discombobulated i got in the shower and the water was ice cold. San francisco tap water is cold. Its the second or third time i had done that. I got to the Big Pity Party for myself. And then i had this gift of getting other myself. Ing . Snapped inside of me. I got sick and tired of my own, you know, pity for myself. And all of these statistics that were still in the side of my awareness came to mind. How dare i be so pitiful stan