2014 GROW Institute in Chicago, Illinois

"GROW is when the GlobeMed mission becomes human. It is when "students" becomes replaced with your names, "communities" with your partner, and your MOU becomes real." -Maya Cohen, Executive Director, GlobeMed

Hi everyone!

Over the weekend of February 22-23rd, Ilkania and I attended the 2014 GROW Institute in Chicago, Illinois. It was a weekend of training, inspiration, GlobeMed love, and cold -- that's for sure!

The weekend kicked-off with introductory remarks from the Director of Partnerships, Alyssa Smaldino, and the Executive Director, Maya Cohen, each speaking about their past experiences as GROW interns in Rwanda and Uganda, respectively. Hearing each of these inspirational women reflect fondly on their time as interns and with such passion about the GlobeMed network (all while being in a room with over a hundred other bright-eyed GROW interns, mind you) sent a shot of adrenaline throughout me. Achieving social justice and improving global health are daunting tasks -- it is too easy to feel inadequate or become inactive in the mission for fear of criticism or failure or because the news keeps telling you how bad of a place the world is. But something Maya said resonated with me. She said: "GROW is when the GlobeMed mission becomes human. It is when "students" becomes replaced with your names, "communities" with your partner, and your MOU becomes real." Maya's positive outlook and sincere investment in achieving health care equality was genuinely touching and moving-- I carried this excitement and energy with me throughout the rest of the weekend.

Saturday and Sunday consisted of various workshop activities and small-group breakouts focused on creating Partnership Action Frameworks, common goal agendas, and Monitoring and Evaluating techniques.

One of the main highlights of the weekend was the photo challenge on Saturday night. Led by the wonderful Caroline Nguyen from the National Office, the Humans of Chicago challenge sought to teach GROW interns how to take ethical, aesthetic photos by breaking us up into teams of five, sending us into the city, and giving us two hours to capture a prize-winning photo and caption.

As for the winner of the 2014 Human of Chicago challenge... Team #1! Each member of the winning team received $20 for their respective partner organizations, which means that GlobeMed at Brown received $20 for our partner, U-Tena, in Nairobi! (Check out the winning photo and caption below!)

The weekend wrapped up with an inspiring talk on fostering inclusive teams by Dominique Hazzard, the new Diversity & Inclusion Coordinator. Many fellow GlobeMed peers commented on the diversity present in the room, with one student, Breanna Wilkerson from Spelman College, calling the space "revolutionary." After reflecting on my time in the GlobeMed network, I have to agree with Breanna. The 2014 GROW Institute was, hands-down, the most revolutionary, inspiring, and diverse space that I have been in with fellow GlobeMed peers. I am so blessed to be a part of this network and cannot wait to see where the next few years bring us!

"I talk to cab drivers from Africa - Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya - they tell me that I'm right, that they hate this city too but they can't say anything because they're immigrants."

The MOST GlobeMed love,

Meygan

More on the Grassroots Initiatives for Global Health Conference at MIT

As you all already know Marisa, Meygan, and I attended MIT’s Grassroots Initiatives for Global Health conference some weeks back. Marisa wrote a blog post about the specifics of it.  I wanted to focus a bit more on the main lessons from the conference and about my personal experience.

To begin with, I would like to mention, again, that I love going to GlobeMed events hosted by other chapters and the national office! They are great for networking with public health professionals I look up to, learning about various issues, and meet great people our age with the same interests.  I have also found that talking to others involved with GlobeMed has increased my passion for our mission and I’ve received some great advice about how to improve our chapter from members of other chapters.  GlobeMed events/conferences are great for collaborative learning!  Moral of this post; attend these events!

One of the great, new opportunities I learned about is PIH Engage.  PIH Engage is a new project launched by Partners in Health that focuses on brining people together to discuss global health issues and to advocate for the social justice and health equity.  This program goes hand-in-hand with GlobeMed’s mission to give voice to the voice-less.  Check it out, here’s the link http://act.pih.org/page/content/community-organizing.

Another important point of the conference was to highlight the fact that we don’t have to dedicate our lives/careers to global health in order to make a difference, we just to contribute however we can.  There are so many different ways to contribute (if you have any questions about how your interests/major fit into the fight for global health equity and social justice in general, let me know and I’ll try to give some guidance).  However, if you guys are interested in devoting your lives to the fight for global health the speakers (global health practitioners) gave some great advice as to how to enter a career in global health.  I know this is a question I’ve asked many times, global health’s multi-faceted so it is hard to know a exact career path.  Most of us think medical school is necessary, but this is not the case! We need economists, politicians, scientists, humanitarians, public health practitioners, etc on our side! All of these fields are imperative for the fight for global health equity and global justice.

Here’s a link from Columbia that describes some career paths in global health:

http://new.sipa.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/Career%20Op%20Global%20Health.pdf

-Ilkania

Lupita Nyong'o and the Oscars

So I'm sure most of y'all were like me and spent your time this Sunday night glued to the tv watching the 2014 Oscars. And if you did this for even 5 minutes you probably saw 12 Years a Slave winning every award possible. What you might not know is that Lupita Nyong'o, the winner of "Best Supporting Actress" for her role as Patsey, actually started her career in the Kenyan TV show, Shuga.

Shuga is actually a show produced by MTV with the goal of using popular entertainment as a vehicle for communicating and promoting messages about healthy sexual behavior among African Youth. Not only was Lupita an actress in the series, but she is also a co-director. After the Oscars ceremony, the president of Kenya went so far as to tweet that Lupita is the "Pride of Africa", demonstrating just how much Lupita means to the country

If anyone wants to check out this incredibly entertaining TV show- that also has a great public health message- here's the link to the first episode! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo4l1VJUFkQ

I know I actually watched some episodes in the U-Tena office this summer and would strongly recommend it!

- Maggie

Some Reflections on Ugandan HIV/AIDS...

Hey guys!

So last week in ghU, Annabel, our lovely coordinator, brought in a TED talk to share (http://www.ted.com/talks/emily_oster_flips_our_thinking_on_aids_in_africa.html). Emily Oster, a UChicago economist, presents data to show that HIV prevalence relies on more than success or failure of prevention campaigns. She focuses solely on Uganda to show the correlation between economic well-being and decreases in HIV prevalence; coffee exports in Uganda increased with decreased HIV levels.

Our discussion last Tuesday brought up some key points. Clearly, as Oster states, high HIV prevalence should not be completely attributed to prevention campaigns themselves. Cultural and economic well-being should be considered as well. However, the example of Uganda may just be a unique case study that does not provide blanket statements on how other countries should handle the HIV problem.

This TED talk was filmed in 2007--therefore some of Oster's data is outdated. According to the AIDS Indicator Survey conducted by Demographic and Health Surveys, rates of HIV infection increased from 6.4% to 7.3% from 2004 to 2011. Though this increase may not be as statistically significant as the drop in rates from the 1990s to the 2000s, this is significant nonetheless. Uganda may not be a success story at all. According to Oster's position, one may blame this on the recession in the latter part of the decade. However, this increase was not significant enough to have it linked to such a large economic problem. Uganda is a large portion Christian, and church-goers have voiced negative opinions on prevention campaigns. Stigma and risky sexual behavior (see AIDS Indicator Survey in 2004 and 2011) has also increased.

Therefore, each case of HIV/AIDS is different, and to solely attribute the prevalence rates to one reason may need some reconsideration. There are many factors, and addressing all the nuances of individual countries might tackle the HIV epidemic more effectively than what Oster has managed to suggest.

Hopefully this triggers some thought on a relevant public health concern.

~Erica

Hey everyone,

In current Global health news, a new report has been written on attempting to reduce maternal and neonatal deaths from childbirth in Indonesia, where childbirth related deaths are still incredibly high. Indonesia signed the Millennium Development Goals, but it is estimated that they will not achieve these goals by the target date. The country is spread out over an archipelago of thousands of islands, and though the country has been greatly urbanized into over 10 megacities, most of the population lives in rural areas in islands where medical attention is really hard to get. Though there are many midwives in Indonesia that can attend to women in childbirth, most of them are not properly trained to deal with crises. In those cases women must be sent to hospitals, but transportation problems between islands continue.

The report indicates that Indonesia needs hundreds more clinics to treat emergency patients for cesarean sections, blood transfusions, and neonatal intensive care. Dr. Adashi, an obstetrics professor at Brown’s Alpert Medical School, was a part of the committee writing the report and says that he expects the Indonesian government to embrace the goals.

~ Catherine

MIT's Grassroots Initiatives for Global Health Conference (Saturday February 8, 2014)

Hi everyone,

Two weekends ago, Meygan, Ilkania, and I took a day trip to MIT's campus in Cambridge, MA to attend MIT's first GlobeMed and global health conference: Grassroots Initiatives for Global Health.

Our day began at 10 AM in an auditorium in MIT's Green Building (aesthetically, the MIT equivalent of Brown's SciLi) with opening remarks by members of MIT's GlobeMed chapter, followed by a touching personal story (relevant to global health) by Liana Woskie of the Harvard Initiative on Global Health Quality. While munching Dunkin' Donuts Munchkins and sipping hot coffee, we attendees expressed our inquisitiveness and passion for the subject of global health by asking challenging and complex questions of a panel of Boston-area global health organizations. The members of this panel were Owen Robinson of Haiti Cardiac Alliance (the moderator of the panel), Adam Korn of Save a Child's Heart, Ann Peralta of the Peace Corps, and Partners in Health. After an hour of mentally stimulating panel-audience Q&A, we broke for lunch and small-group discussion.

The auditorium-sized audience split up into four groups of about 25 people each, and each of these groups went to a smaller classroom for discussion. In my group, I had the chance not only to talk to undergraduate GlobeMed members from other schools, but also to grad students and adults in global health-related careers who hadn't even necessarily known before what GlobeMed is about. Between swapping stories with these attendees, we were fed a tasty Whole Foods buffet lunch and got to hear Amee Amin and Suchitra Kulkarni talk to us about Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: that "(1) everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessarily social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control and (2) motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance; all children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection." Once they finished, Jon Shaffer of Partners in Health told us a little of his background and how his experience as a GlobeMed member has been incredibly beneficial to his work with Partners in Health.

After a little over an hour in the small groups, everyone returned to the auditorium to watch a screening of Pray the Devil Back to Hell (and a Q&A with the director, Gini Reticker), which was followed by closing remarks by Peter Luckow of Last Mile Health, GlobeMed at MIT, and others. Meygan, Ilkania, and I decided to head back to Brown after the small group discussion, however, so unfortunately we did not participate in this portion of the conference. Still, from what we did get to see of the conference, it was a very fun, educational, and inspiring day –– listening to real global health leaders describe how they got into their work, meeting others in the Boston area who are interested in global health, and seeing the GlobeMed network come together as a community to discuss all that GlobeMed stands for and how we can make the world a better place.

Jon Shaffer in small group discussion, talking about the impact of
GlobeMed in his life and his work with Partners in Health

Marisa

The New Global Health Security Agenda

Hey all, 

     Just wanted to give you an optimistic update on the global health front. A little over a week ago, Secretary of State John Kerry announced the Global Health Security Agenda. Involving twenty-six countries, various departments of the U.S. government, and American global health organizations, the GHSA is an international effort to improve prevention, reduction, and response techniques to pandemics. Despite the existence of effective antibiotics, the leading cause of mortality worldwide is still infections--bacterial,viral, parasitic--leading to one-third of all deaths. What was equally alarming to me was that the GHSA is also a response to the increasing threat of not only natural outbreaks of disease and the rise of drug-resistant pathogens, but also terrorist attacks that release harmful biological or chemical agents. While the specifics of the agenda are yet to be revealed, it is a hopeful first step that so many leading countries have acknowledged global health security as an urgent priority, and are working together towards eliminating these devastating infectious diseases.

-Kaori