IH Section Conference Call Notes – Closing the GHC

On Wednesday, May 9th, the IH section hosted a conference call to discuss the closure of the Global Health Council and what steps our Section can take to respond and work with GHC members. The call was moderated by Peter Freeman, chair of our Advocacy/Policy committee. Many thanks to all who called in and shared their ideas. You can read the notes from the call here.

Conference Call to Discuss Closing of Global Health Council

Dear IH Section Members,

As some of you may already know, the Global Health Council has recently announced that it will be closing its doors and cancelling its 2012 conference in Washington, DC. The leadership of the IH section has been discussing how best to respond to this news. Below is a message from Peter Freeman, our Advocacy/Policy Committee Chair, which outlines ways in which you can have input in this discussion. Please consider joining the conference call or at least providing him with your feedback. Peter can be reached by e-mail at pffreeman [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Hi all -

I spoken with Vina and Malcolm to start discussing the steps APHA is looking to take regarding the close of GHC and the ways in which the association can respond.

Vina informed me that APHA is in the process of a setting up a series of 2 discussions:

1. The first discussion will be internally for APHA staff only, to gather their thoughts/ideas on what GHC’s role was in the international health community, what roles make strategic sense for APHA to absolve, and our association’s current capacity (and potential growth trajectory) to take on these roles.
2. The second discussion will happen after APHA’s staff-only one, and may include interested representatives from other APHA sections (IH isn’t the only one that’s weighed in on this) as well as representation from GHC. This discussion will invite the IH section leaders; APHA recognizes the importance of everyone’s voice but having too large a group on the call may not be productive.

In light of this second call, Malcolm and I thought it would be a good idea for our section to have our own brainstorming call prior to APHA’s group call. This way, we can make sure our section’s ideas/thoughts/concerns are collected in an organized fashion; we will have these typed up and sent to whomever represents our group on the APHA group call.

Malcolm and I have scheduled this call for Wednesday, May 9th at 1 p.m. EST for 90 minutes. A prior e-mail mentioned a call on Monday, May 7th; Malcolm and I agreed to not hold the call on Monday and instead hold it on Wednesday, May 9th. I have been assured by Vina that the APHA group call will not be happening before this.

The call-in information is:
1-877-393-3856 (U.S. callers)
1-719-867-7624 (toll number and for international callers)
Participant passcode: 373785

If you are planning on attending, please let me know; an RSVP is not required, but it will help me be aware of who to expect come next Wednesday.

If you are unable to make the call, please e-mail me your thoughts/concerns/ideas around this. I have received the feedback that some of you have sent via e-mail already; thank you for sending that and I promise it will be incorporated into notes from this call.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Noncommunicable Disease conference – March 2012

APHA members may be interested in an upcoming conference concerning Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Children and Adolescents in Global Health.  The conference is being organized by a consortium known as NCD Child, which includes Caring and Living and Neighbors, the Public Health Institute, and the Global Health Council.  It will take place in Oakland, California during March 19-21, at the California Endowment’s conference center.  Themes to be covered include prevention, access to essential medicines, and health systems strengthening/work force development for NCDs in these vulnerable groups.  Individuals working in the field of NCDs, maternal and child health, social determinants of health, prevention as well as those advocating on behalf of these issues, are warmly welcome to apply.  A limited number of scholarships for students and individuals from outside the United States is available.

A draft program and application is here: www.ncdchild.com

This link also contains a call for abstracts, which closes on February 6.

Questions about this conference may be directed to APHA International Section member Jeff Meer of the Public Health Institute, at jmeer@phi.org.

Global Health Vaccines: Shaping Policy to Accelerate R&D (ASTMH/GHC Lecture in Philadelphia, PA)

Featuring the 4th Annual Beth Waters Memorial Lecture
Date: Thursday, December 8, 2011
Time: 12:30-5pm
Location: Philadelphia Marriott Downtown
1201 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA
Franklin Hall 11 & 12

At Global Health Vaccines: Shaping Policy to Accelerate R&D, public and private stakeholders will examine current barriers to vaccine research and development, especially those that disproportionately affect vaccines for use in developing countries. Discussions will focus on regulatory issues, innovative financing and incentives, and partnerships. The event will serve as an opportunity for stakeholders to collaboratively identify common obstacles and propose unified solutions to stimulate vaccine R&D for global health vaccines.

Dr. Peter Hotez, President, ASTMH and Founding Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, will begin the summit by delivering the 4th Annual Beth Waters Memorial Lecture. This will be followed by an interactive panel discussion and breakout groups that will develop policy recommendations surrounding vaccine R&D issues. The recommendations will then be presented to all attendees for discussion.

This event is open to all ASTMH Annual Meeting registrants and Global Health Council members. Please register using the link below.

Lunch will be provided at 12:30pm and the Beth Waters Memorial Lecture will begin promptly at 1:00pm.
To register, click here: http://my.globalhealth.org/ebusiness/events/default.aspx?pid=573

Global Health News Last Week

SECTION NEWS
The Advocacy/Policy Committee would like to invite you to participate in our first Advocacy Day, led in partnership with the Global Health Council. The day, scheduled for Thursday, November 3rd, 2011, immediately following the annual meeting in Washington, D.C., will be an opportunity for us to voice support for a continued focus on international health to our elected officials. With the intense Congressional pressure to cut the budget, our voices can make a real difference. As a participant during this exciting day, you will be provided with training materials on effective advocacy techniques to ensure your message is clearly heard. Even if you do not have advocacy experience, you need not hesitate to sign up because you will be teamed with others. Please consider joining your fellow International Health Section members on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 on Capitol Hill to advocate for a healthy globe. Interested parties should register here. Please note that registration will close on October 14th. Any questions should be directed to Peter Freeman, Advocacy/Policy Committee Chair, at pffreeman@gmail.com or 773.318.4842.

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POLITICS AND POLICY

• An op-ed advocates for a new global health strategy based on a recent meeting at the United Nations aimed at incorporating chronic diseases into an agenda that had tended to emphasize infectious diseases.
• The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a bill on Wednesday that zeroes out U.S. aid to the United Nations Population Fund, a women and children’s health program that works to reduce maternal mortality, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide contraception to the world’s most vulnerable populations.
• For the second year in a row, U.S. President Barack Obama has waived a Congressionally-mandated ban on military aid for four countries that use child soldiers.
• A decision was announced that the amount of money spent on HIV/AIDS by DfID will drop by 1/3 over the next 4 years.

PROGRAMS

• Sanitation and hygiene are sensitive and unpopular subjects, but funding them is essential to fighting disease, ensuring basic rights and meeting millennium development goals.
• The Gates Foundation’s European director Joe Cerrell comes to the defense of the beleaguered Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, arguing to improve on its “impressive record and ensure that millions more lives are saved and the progress against global disease is secured for generations to come.”
• Almost four months into the Horn of Africa crisis, aid agencies are involved in much soul-searching as to whether they could have responded more quickly to the drought and famine.

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

• A Japanese company, the Sumitomo Chemical Company, unveiled a new kind of insecticide treated bed net at a product launch in Kenya.
• Pregnant women who load up on fruits, veggies and whole grains have a reduced risk of having babies with neural tube defects, such as spina bifida or cleft lip, according to one of the first studies to look at the connection between diet and birth defects.
• A study by Stanford researchers has determined that infant health can be improved when a mother has a low-fat high fiber diet up to a year prior to getting pregnant.
• A study published in the British Medical Journal says that if current smoking trends continue until 2050, TB related deaths will jump by 40 million.
• Though young, there is a lot of potential in what mHealth can offer in developing countries. Amanda Glassman shares some ways that it can be improved.
• Researchers at the University of Washington have reported some highly problematic findings regarding a common method of birth control in eastern and southern Africa. They are problematic in that they indicate a popular injectable hormone, Depo-Provera, used by perhaps 140 million women worldwide (and often in poor settings) signficantly raises a woman’s risk of HIV infection.
• Test subjects in a Spanish HIV vaccine trial have shown a 90 percent immune response.

DISEASES AND DISASTERS

• A cohort of American and British researchers say that by investing in AIDS treatments, money can be saved in the long term.
• What should be the top priorities in global health? Infectious diseases? Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)? Non-communicable diseases (NCDs)? A research scientist wonders at the confusion amid this sea of bad acronyms.
• Former US President Carter is leading the fight against guinea worm making a request that WHO members provide $93 million in funding to wipe out the disease.  DfID has committed to support the push against guinea worm by announcing it will allocating £20 million to the effort.
• The business news channel CNBC has published an extensive report on the lucrative and growing Dangerous World of Counterfeit Prescription Drugs.

Global Health News, Week of September 26-30

SECTION NEWS
The Advocacy/Policy Committee would like to invite you to participate in our first Advocacy Day, led in partnership with the Global Health Council. The day, scheduled for Thursday, November 3rd, 2011, immediately following the annual meeting in Washington, D.C., will be an opportunity for us to voice support for a continued focus on international health to our elected officials. With the intense Congressional pressure to cut the budget, our voices can make a real difference. As a participant during this exciting day, you will be provided with training materials on effective advocacy techniques to ensure your message is clearly heard. Even if you do not have advocacy experience, you need not hesitate to sign up because you will be teamed with others. Please consider joining your fellow International Health Section members on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 on Capitol Hill to advocate for a healthy globe. Interested parties should register here. Please note that registration will close on October 14th. Any questions should be directed to Peter Freeman, Advocacy/Policy Committee Chair, at pffreeman@gmail.com or 773.318.4842.

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The University of Washington has launched the first full year of its Global Health Minor program!

POLITICS AND POLICY

• Tobacco companies knew that cigarettes contained a radioactive substance called polonium-210, but hid that knowledge from the public for over four decades, a new study of historical documents revealed.
• Latin American leaders have agreed to accelerate their efforts to address maternal health at the 51st Directing Council of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization.
• Journalist Georgianne Nienaber looks at the impact of PEPFAR and how it may be impacted by budget battles in Congress.
• Earlier this week, the World Health Organization released a report analyzing air pollution levels in nearly 1100 cities in 91 countries. The analysis was based on air particulate levels between 2003 and 2010.
• When it came out a while ago that the CIA had used a fake vaccination scheme to try to find out where Osama bin Laden might be in Pakistan, many said it would undermine real health and humanitarian efforts. Here’s one group’s story.
• Foreign aid has acquired a bad reputation in recent years, as something usually wasteful and useless. Yet all this sound and fury has overshadowed the evidence that aid often can work.
• A report by the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health finds that over 100 countries have increased financing for maternal and child health initiatives.
• The humanitarian impact of the world economic crisis became clearer this week, as the UN warned of huge job losses, a rise in the number of people afflicted by chronic undernourishment, and the “extraordinary price” being paid by children as “austerity programs” constrict the developing world.
• There is enough water in the world’s rivers to meet the demands of the expanding global population, but the rivers have to be better managed, according to a series of studies released today at the 14th World Water Congress in Porto de Galinhas, Brazil.
• UNICEF has called on the IMF and World Bank to ensure that children are not negatively impacted by austerity measures carried out by various countries.

PROGRAMS

• The New York Times shows how male circumcision is one of the most effective and simple solutions in HIV reduction, but has so far been hard to implement.  Meanwhile, a group of economists, including Bjorn Lomborg, are casting doubt on the cost-effectiveness of voluntary male circumcision campaigns as an HIV prevention measure.
• The New York Times features an article about the simple innovation of using vinegar to detect if a woman has cervical cancer by applying it with a brush to the cervix.
• The Global Fund, the world’s largest funder of global health, is set to radically shake up the way it disburses and manages donor money, in a move to boost efficiency that could reallocate a third of its financing in order to save more lives.
• On Tuesday, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization announced that it will be expanding its target vaccine areas to directly address diarrhea and pneumonia.
• UNFPA has announced that it is now collaborating with UNICEF to combat Female Genital Mutilation.

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

• Spanish researchers are pleased by the results from the MVA-B vaccine trials, but this ABC report warns that there is still work to be done until a complete vaccine can be discovered.
• A slew of mobile initiatives are revolutionizing the way that healthcare is delivered in Africa and other developing communities. Doctors and hospitals in remote areas are getting information and assistance to improve health services in poor communities across the continent.
• New research suggests that coffee may help ward off depression over the long term, especially for women.
• A way to protect newborns against the flu, say researchers, is for mothers to be vaccinated while pregnant.
• A vaccine that triggers the body to start fighting malaria earlier is being developed by a group of researchers and students at Michigan State University.
• The drug industry is increasingly running trials in the developing world because its cheaper, regulations aren’t as onerous, patient recruitment is easier and informed consent is less clearly defined.
• Unprotected sex is up and knowledge about contraceptives is down among global youth, says a recent survey.
• AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition Mitchell Warren says many folks ask whether an AIDS vaccine is still needed and if the search for an AIDS vaccine is affordable in today’s economic climate. The answer is yes, and Warren explains why.

DISEASES AND DISASTERS

• Roads may accelerate spread of antibiotic resistance: Samples from villages by major roads in Ecuador compared to more rural villages shows antibiotic resistant E. coli is spreading along roads.
• The recent heavy flooding caused by the monsoon in Pakistan, most devastating in Sindh, has affected the lives of over five million people. The Health and Nutrition Cluster is appealing for US$45.9 million. WHO requires US$14.8 for response for Health, Nutrition and Water and Sanitation intervention.
• New enterovirus causes respiratory disease: Promed reports on 6 clusters of respiratory illness associated with human enterovirus 68 in Asia, Europe, and the United States during 2008–2010.
• More than 20 percent of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean lacks basic sanitation and 15 percent has no access to drinking water because of poor management, said experts at a meeting that ended Thursday in Brazil.
• The likelihood of water-borne disease outbreaks is high in areas in Philippines recently devastated by Typhoon Nesat.
• Aid groups are criticizing the U.S.government delay on deciding whether to resume large-scale food donations to North Korea. The charities warn that many vulnerable people in the impoverished communist state could die from starvation.
• In a new report on rabies, the WHO finds that 45% of cases in the world take place in Southeast Asia.
• A decade-long study of 135,000 men found that those who did not have children had a higher risk of dying from heart disease than those who did, raising new questions over the links between fertility and overall health,U.S. researchers said on Monday.
• More money is needed to save lives in famine-ravaged East Africa, with the UN saying it’s something like $700 million through year’s end. The World Bank announced from Washington it would boost its aid to area countries to nearly $1.9 billion.  As if famine weren’t enough, Nick Kristoff tells us that as Somalis stream across the border into Kenya, at a rate of about 1,000 a day, they are frequently prey to armed bandits who rob men and rape women in the 50-mile stretch before they reach Dadaab, now the world’s largest refugee camp.
• An explosion of new technologies and treatments for cancer coupled with a rapid rise in cases of the disease worldwide mean cancer care is rapidly becoming unaffordable in many developed countries, oncology experts said on Monday.

TOTALLY UNRELATED TO ANYTHING – Twitter knows what you’re feeling!

All Kinds of Belated News (Week of September 18-24)

SECTION NEWS

The Fall 2011 Newsletter has been posted!  Be sure to check out recent announcements, section updates, links to recent blog entries, and lots of fellowship opportunities!

The Advocacy/Policy Committee would like to invite you to participate in our first Advocacy Day, led in partnership with the Global Health Council. The day, scheduled for Thursday, November 3rd, 2011, immediately following the annual meeting in Washington, D.C., will be an opportunity for us to voice support for a continued focus on international health to our elected officials. With the intense Congressional pressure to cut the budget, our voices can make a real difference. As a participant during this exciting day, you will be provided with training materials on effective advocacy techniques to ensure your message is clearly heard. Even if you do not have advocacy experience, you need not hesitate to sign up because you will be teamed with others. Please consider joining your fellow International Health Section members on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 on Capitol Hill to advocate for a healthy globe. Interested parties should register here. Please note that registration will close on October 14th. Any questions should be directed to Peter Freeman, Advocacy/Policy Committee Chair, at pffreeman@gmail.com or 773.318.4842.

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The G+ Vaccines Challenge has been launched!  G+, a new online community launched by Gerson Lehrman Group, has partnered with IndieGoGo and StartUp Health to solicit early stage ideas for tackling problems and inefficiencies in vaccine delivery  in-the-field, distribution and development. Finalists will have the unique opportunity to present their ideas to a panel of investment, NGO and corporate and life sciences professionals with the influence to advance those ideas towards realization.  You can find more information about the challenge here.

APHA NEWS

Dr. Benjamin is currently on a teaching sabbatical at Hunter College in NYC. Alan Baker (former Chief of Staff at APHA) returned to serve as Acting Executive
Director in the interim.

UN HIGH-LEVEL MEETING ON NCDs

• The UN held its first-ever meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases.  Global health journalist Tom Paulson provided some great coverage of the event on the Humanosphere blog.
• World leaders unanimously adopted the NCD Summit Outcome Document at the General Assembly in New York.
• On the sidelines of the General Assembly meeting in New York, the United States and WHO signed a memorandum of understanding to help developing countries boost capacity to meet the International Health Regulations.
• The cost for the developing world to address NCDs, based on the WHO’s recommendation to increase budgets by 4%, will be $11.4 billion.

POLITICS AND POLICY

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates appears poised to endorse the adoption of a controversial financial transactions tax (FTT) to be used as a new source of development aid for poor countries.

PROGRAMS

• The multibillion dollar Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria must do a better job managing its grants to partner countries, according to an independent review panel.  A seven member panel investigating the Global Fund has recommended that it place greater emphasis on results and improve risk management.  In the Center for Global Development blog, William Savedoff is concerned that the new report suggesting changes for the Global Fund will move it away from innovating.
• USAID has announced that it will be giving a $200 million grant to the Public Health Institute to support its global health fellows program.
• Private and public actors have lined up to support Every Woman Every Child and its goal of preventing 33 million unwanted pregnancies.

RESEARCH

Researchers at the 51st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Chicago announced that they were able to reduce the level of HIV in infected people through cell-based therapy.

DISEASES AND DISASTERS

• The privacy curtains that separate care spaces in hospitals and clinics are frequently contaminated with potentially dangerous bacteria, according to a U.S. study.
• If today’s momentum and progress against malaria can be sustained, deaths from this infectious disease could be reduced to near-zero, and cases of infection cut by 75 per cent in the next decade, says a recent report by the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership.
• Depression may go hand in hand with a number of other physical health problems, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Now the latest evidence suggests that depression may also increase the risk of stroke.
• Polio has spread to China for the first time since 1999 after being imported from Pakistan, the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed.

TOTALLY UNRELATED TO ANYTHING: Melinda Gates is now on Twitter!

Global Health News Last Week

SECTION NEWS
The Advocacy/Policy Committee would like to invite you to participate in our first Advocacy Day, led in partnership with the Global Health Council. The day, scheduled for Thursday, November 3rd, 2011, immediately following the annual meeting in Washington, D.C., will be an opportunity for us to voice support for a continued focus on international health to our elected officials. With the intense Congressional pressure to cut the budget, our voices can make a real difference. As a participant during this exciting day, you will be provided with training materials on effective advocacy techniques to ensure your message is clearly heard. Even if you do not have advocacy experience, you need not hesitate to sign up because you will be teamed with others. Please consider joining your fellow International Health Section members on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 on Capitol Hill to advocate for a healthy globe.  Interested parties should register here.  Please note that registration will close on October 14th.  Any questions should be directed to Peter Freeman, Advocacy/Policy Committee Chair, at pffreeman@gmail.com or 773.318.4842.

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POLITICS AND POLICY

• GOP Presidential hopeful Michelle Bachmann has been slammed by scientists, doctors and others for claiming that the HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccine can cause mental retardation. An ethicist has now put up money behind his challenge to her claim.
• A commitment by G20 nations to strengthen agricultural research in developing countries will help reduce food insecurity as long as it focuses on small farmers and their needs, officials and experts said at a G20-backed conference this week.

PROGRAMS

• The Gates Foundation is often, not always fairly, criticized for being a techno-fix bunch. Melinda Gates heralds the value of community health workers in poor communities and their powerful, inexpensive ability to save lives.
• One of the international community’s goals is to eliminate mother-to-child-transmission of HIV by 2015 by expanding access to drugs for HIV-infected mothers and pregnant women.
• A primary school in the South African city of Port Elizabeth has given girls a contraceptive injection to prevent early pregnancies, angering some parents.
• Andrew Harmer reflects on what will happen to the MDGs as the original 2015 deadline draws nearer and draws some parallels to the traditional Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling.

• The Gates Foundation has presented the Harvard School of Public Health with a $12 million grant to support its maternal health task force.
• USAID is teaming up with former President George Bush to reduce cervical cancer deaths by 25% in five years for target developing countries.
• The magic number may be $6 billion to make a real dent in ending the spread of AIDS.
• A collaboration between UK and US funding agencies has announced more than £3.5M new funding for research aimed at controlling the transmission of diseases amongst humans, animals and the environment.

RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

• The number of African countries with national policies on traditional medicine increased almost fivefold between 2001 and 2010, according to a report on a decade of traditional medicine on the continent.
• The recently published results from two malaria vaccine trials appear to show that scientists are getting closer to developing a vaccine against the mosquito-borne illness.
• Effective nursing is the backbone of a high quality health care delivery system. GHDonline’s nursing community will discuss how ongoing mentoring and training programs can enhance nursing in an expert panel discussion September 19-23.
• The number of young women with breast cancer has more than doubled worldwide since 1980, say researchers at Seattle’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
• After 2 years of analyzing the results of the largest AIDS vaccine clinical trial ever held, the so-called Thai prime-boost trial, and the only one so far to show some protection against HIV, researchers say they have discovered insights that could lead to an effective vaccine.
• IUDs can prevent cervical cancer, finds a study published in the Lancet.
• Reducing the incidence of malaria could also drastically reduce the number of deaths from bacterial infections among children in Africa, a study has found.

DISEASES AND DISASTERS

• Authorities worry that tropical mosquitoes found in San Gabriel Valley could spread disease if they gained a foothold in Southern California.
• A human rights investigator for the United Nations says up to a quarter of the world’s trash from hospitals, clinics, labs, blood banks and mortuaries is hazardous and much more needs to be done to regulate it.
• A report from UNICEF and the WHO shows the decrease in the rate of deaths for children under the age of five.
• The WHO warns that thousands may die if multi-drug resistant and forms of tuberculosis continue to spread throughoutEurope.
• One of the scientific advisers to the new blockbuster movie “Contagion” says the “risks are very real — and are increasing drastically… Our vulnerability to such diseases has been heightened by the growth in international travel and the globalization of food production.”

FOCUS – NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES

• Cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness and diabetes account for 63 percent of all global deaths, yet up to half could be prevented, according to a new report, Noncommunicable Diseases Country Profiles 2011, released Wednesday by the  World Health Organization.
• The WHO released a 207 page “global score card” on the prevention of chronic illness, one week ahead of the NCD summit at the UN.
• Eli Lilly and Company has committed $30 million to the Global Health Initiative. The Lilly NCD Partnership will work to identify comprehensive, sustainable approaches to patient care. Initially it will concentrate on diabetes.

Thanks to Tom Murphy and Mark Leon Goldberg, Tom Paulson, Isobel Hoskins, and Public Health Newswire.

Global Health TV Video: Interview with Jeff Sturchio, President and CEO of the Global Health Council

Stories from the Field: Just and Lasting Change

On May 28^th, Prof. Carl Taylor was honored as the inaugural recipient of the Global Health Council Lifetime Achievement Award for his dedication to improving the health care of the world’s most marginalized people through innovative and sustainable community-based interventions. During his acceptance speech, Dr Taylor discussed the future of global health and that new directions will be required to meet the challenges as globalization takes over. He talked about the need to focus on “peoples self reliant social change” and that the greatest problem is going to be the issue of the “worlds total health ecology”. This is when the “3-way partnership” is important; where in addition to the top down officials and programs, and bottom-up self reliant communities, a new generation of health professionals must emerge that specialize in bringing the top and bottom together to find new patterns for collaboration. When this is accomplished, Dr Taylor believes that health for all will be possible and mutual empowerment will begin. (Photo by Medora Hebert, Global Health Council)

Stories from the Field: What is your vision 200 years from now?

It’s impossible not to be moved by William Foege, MD, MPH, a leader in public health who continues to educate, motivate and challenge those who are searching for new solutions to complex global issues.  Last week at the Global Health Council’s annual meeting, Dr Foege spoke to individuals interested in pursuing careers in global health.  He chose to share lessons from his years of experience…. lessons we can all learn from.

1. Preparation:  You cannot know everything in advance, public health combines multiple disciplines. Become a generalist and find a specialty that interests you.
2. Possibilities: 10 years ago the options were few, now the possibilities are endless.