The Global Pulse Blog!

I am extremely honored to announce the “Spring 2008″ issue of Global Pulse (GP), AMSA’s International Health Journal, is now online!

http://www.globalpulsejournal.com

All of us at GP are excited with this issue. We received incredible submissions from medical students, literally around the world, and from other disciplines as well.

Here is just a sample of what we feature in this issue:

- An exclusive, in-depth interview with Dr. Joxel Garcia, the Assistant Secretary for Health of the U.S., the Medical Director in the Regular Corps of the Public Health Service, and official U.S. representative to the World Health Organization (WHO)!

- WHO’s Global Initiative for Emergency and Surgical Care

- Telemedicine in Bhutan

- Accounts from Kenya, South Africa, and the Amazon Jungle

- A fantastic photo essay from Guatemala

There is more, and it is available at Global Pulse!

We will update the blog, and the website, in the next couple of days. The blog has many goals, among them:
1) To further discuss and follow up topics that have been covered in Global Pulse.
2) To discuss topics that are timely and important, but have not been discussed in Global Pulse for one reason or the other. For example, it is difficult obtaining an article from a medical student in the middle of a war or conflict.
3) To provide student leaders in global health a forum in which to communicate directly to medical students. For example, writing about a relevant and timely topic regarding their area of expertise, or the organization they represent, or
of a project they have done.

GP is completely funded by AMSA (means not sponsored by Big Pharma or other third parties), entirely run by medical students (that have to study for boards and work the wards!), and like every AMSA project, we are passionate about what we do! Please forward our journal widely, and help make this exciting AMSA project even better!

This is done for YOU, the reader, and as such we would be delighted to read your comments and suggestions on our blog. Feel free to comment away!

A long time in the making, finally, here it is… the Global Pulse blog!

This blog has many goals, among them:

1) To further discuss and follow up topics that have been covered in Global Pulse.

2) To discuss topics that are timely and important, but have not been discussed in Global Pulse for one reason or the other. For example, it is difficult obtaining an article from a medical student in the middle of a war or conflict.

3) To provide student leaders in global health a forum in which to communicate directly to medical students. For example, writing about a relevant and timely topic regarding their area of expertise, or the organization they represent, or of a project they have done.

4) To cover, in real-time (or at least a couple of days later!) events that are relevant to Global Pulse, for example, this year’s AMSA convention, March 12-16, in Houston, Texas!

5) Finally, it is a way for the editors of GP to directly communicate with our readers.

We will debut this blog covering the GHAC events of the AMSA convention. GHAC stands for “Global Health Action Committee” for all of you that are not quite used to all of acronyms we use at AMSA. As the name implies, the convention will feature outstanding events related to global health, and we will try to blog about them so y’all can read about them. I arrived in Texas a couple of hours ago, and “y’all looking for a cab?” was the first thing that was hurled at me at the airport, and now I’m stuck with y’all!

Additionally, we will also discuss the events of AMSA’s first Environmental Health Leadership Institute.

We are extremely excited to expand Global Pulse with a blog. Please add us to your blogroll, or subscribe to our RSS feed, and pass the word on to your colleagues!

Julio Bracero, Editor-in-Chief, Global Pulse