Health News and Medical Information

We are excited to announce a new guest blogger joining us from Management Sciences in Health - Sylvia Vriesendorp. We are lucky to have someone with a wealth of experience and expertise in the area of leadership and management. In addition Sylvia will certainly add diversity to the thought on this blog and challenge our own thinking in terms of where management fits into the picture (along side and versus other things like technology or technical solutions). So I am looking forward to her posts.

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Introductory post by Sylvia Vriesendorp, our new guest blogger:

“We want better leadership!” It is an often heard call in health programs around the world. Yet when asking those who make this call what exactly they’d like to see done or changed that would produce the missing leadership, the voices stop. Let’s look at reproductive health: one woman dies every minute in pregnancy and childbirth; 99% of these women live in developing countries (UNFPA).These women are not dying of medical mysteries; they are dying because they do not have access to simple, inexpensive, life saving interventions.They are dying because they do not have access to modern contraception methods, even when there are supplies in the country and trained staff to dispense them.

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Over the last year there I have noticed a tremendous up-tick in mobile phones for health/global health stories. The innovation in this area has been worldwide and the sense I get is that use outside the US and in developing countries is far more creative and wide ranging (I haven’t done the research, but this is probably a case where a country like the US will be taking lessons from less developed regions or the “South” as people love to say). We did a previous link drop on SMS/Text Messaging for Global Health that you should check out. Below I begin with two links about the power of mobile phones in general followed by recent links in a plethora of areas from countries around the world. Enjoy:

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The MIT sponsored journal (Innovations in Technology, Governance and Globalization) is free until August 30th. They have some fantastic articles in there (disclosure we have a publication on Aurolab in there), it is worth checking out. The earlier volumes have several global health articles (I have listed some examples below) and one of their most recent issues is devoted entirely to global health (click here). Click on the graphic and it will take you to the journal’s homepage.

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There has been a major boom (dare I say, even a bubble?) in global health degree programs and organizations at universities in the US. To a much lesser degree there also has been an associated growth in university based centers that are action oriented. There is one in particular (MIT center for Innovation in International Health) that I would like to highlight because they have tremendous potential and a great set of leaders. The other program I just heard about, Global Resolve, is at Arizona State University (more info at the bottom).

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More than 12 years (let that time horizon sink in) after the first indications of success,  there will be a large scale trial for a new malaria vaccine. The potential global health implications of this are obvious, read the full news article, it has some good tidbits in it:

“With the exception of Mosquirix, there’s no possibility of one coming on the market within five or six years…It took eight more years of development and testing before scientists were ready to conduct a large-scale trial of the vaccine. London-based Glaxo and its partners will begin a $100 million study of Mosquirix later this year, vaccinating 16,000 children in seven African countries. If the results are positive, the drug could be on the market as soon as 2011, making it the first vaccine against the deadly disease. “

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‘The Biggest Challenge Is There Is No Organized Supply Chain’

 

This headline in Wharton’s newsletter intrigued me, only time for a quick posting, but this is certainly food for thought. Wal Mart is expanding operations in India and there are two quotes of note that we should think about in the context of culture; delivery and distribution of medical/health goods to those in need; and in the context of refrigeration of medication and/or vaccinations:

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Everyone I have spoken to loves TED videos. If you aren’t familiar with TED, you are missing out. The Technology Entertainment and Design (there is that word again! see Jaspal’s work in the area of global health design) outfit gathers some of the best people in their respective fields to share ideas . While their annual conference is extremely exclusive, they do post their videos online. The tag line: Inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers. TED just posted on the their top 10 videos in the past 2 years. On first glance I found 2 things remarkable about this list:

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The leading health policy journal, Health Affairs, is releasing a special global health issue on China and India this week (disclosure: we have an article in this issue). The journal is paying increasing attention to global health and they offer a unique forum for discussing major policy issues. I am very fortunate to have been included in their briefing of the journal which will be a first time experience for me. I will post my notes from the meeting at the National Press Club. Pass the word: Save The Date: HEALTH AFFAIRS Briefing

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Jaspal is now back in Mongolia finishing up some research and I am posting this for him. He is a design expert and I am just beginning to learn about the impact of design on pretty much everything. In both development and public/global health communities design theory is a completely foreign concept that is not really discussed formally. However, as we will detail in future posts, the impact of design on human behavior is profound. We should be paying Read more...