A joint conference of:

The 2nd annual University of Michigan Sujal Parikh Memorial Symposium for Health & Social Justice

and

The Physicians for Human Rights National Conference

March 24^th to 25^th, 2012 in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Featuring keynote speakers Drs. Arash and Kamiar Alaei, Iranian physicians and brothers imprisoned for over two years for their work on fighting HIV/AIDS. Learn more at http://iranfreethedocs.org/.

Program and confirmed speakers available here.

Sustainable Connections & Collaborations:

Sujal Parikh was a University of Michigan medical student and NIH Fogarty Scholar who held leadership positions on the Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) Student Advisory Board, as well as in AMSA, GHEC, UAEM, UM Center for Global Health, and UVP.  A passionate believer in the collective power of committed individuals to advance health and social justice, Sujal leveraged his networks within these organizations to make each of them stronger.  Sujal’s unique gift for bringing people together in pursuit of common goals inspired the theme for this year’s joint conference.  Learn more about Sujal here.

The Sujal Parikh Memorial Symposium:

The Sujal Parikh Memorial Symposium on Health and Social Justice began as a collaborative effort among friends, colleagues, and representatives of the numerous global health organizations to which Sujal contributed. The 2011 symposium, The Social (Justice) Network, brought together diverse students and professionals to learn from one another, create lasting connections, and generate new ideas for the advancement of health and social justice. Together, we established a community committed to carrying on Sujal’s work and ensuring that his spirit continues to inspire a better world. More information on the 2011 symposium is available here.

The Physicians for Human Rights National Conference:

PHR is an independent organization that uses the integrity of medicine and science to stop mass atrocities and severe human rights violations against individuals.  The organization was founded in 1986 on the idea that health professionals, with their specialized skills, ethical duties, and credible voices, are uniquely positioned to protect human rights.  PHR uses its investigations and expertise to advocate for the:

• Prevention of individual or small scale acts of violence from becoming mass atrocities
• Protection of internationally-guaranteed rights of individuals and civilian populations
• Prosecution of those who violate human rights

PHR’s National Student Program provides health professional students with opportunities to learn about, advocate for, and develop leadership in the field of human rights.  Information about PHR’s 2011 National Conference is available here.

We are honored to be sponsored and hosted by the University of Michigan Center for Global Health, the U of M Medical School, the U of M Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the U of M School of Public Health, and Global REACH, and to be supported by the Michigan Student Assembly.

These neglected tropical diseases include:

• lymphatic filariasis
• blinding trachoma
• sleeping sickness
• leprosy
• soil-transmitted helminthes
• schistosomiasis
• river blindness
• Chagas disease
• visceral leishmaniasis
• guinea worm

Check out the related webcast and infographic

According to the Executive Director of the Global Fund Michel Kazatchkine:

“The story about the Global Fund is a story about how the world could actually come together and turn a hopeless situation into one of promise. This amazing film tells that story through the words of some of the people who were crucial in making this dramatic turnaround. It is fantastic to be reminded of how terrible the future looked for global health ten years ago, and how far we have come.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently renewed its commitment to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, giving $750 million through a promissory note. This innovative funding method gives the Global Fund the flexibility and authority to distribute funds efficiently based on immediate needs, leading to greater impact.

SUSTAINABLE CONNECTIONS & COLLABORATIONS FOR HEALTH & HUMAN RIGHTS

A joint conference of:
The 2nd Annual University of Michigan Sujal Parikh Memorial Symposium for Health & Social Justice
and
The Physicians for Human Rights National Conference

This conference serves as an opportunity to connect students, researchers, and professionals in a variety of fields, ranging from law, health professional, business, to public policy and beyond. The goal is to bring together a diverse audience to share, learn, and foster lasting collaborations among the variety of sectors that are working to further the health of populations globally and locally through the defense of equity and human rights.

Featuring keynote speakers:

Drs. Arash and Kamiar Alaei

Iranian doctors, and brothers, imprisoned for over two years for their work on fighting HIV/AIDS.

Additional presentation topics include:

Climate Change and Health

Youth Violence

Human Trafficking

Global Health Supply Chain Management

Social Entrepreneurship

and more…

March 24-25th, 2012
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Ann Arbor, Michigan

For Information, participant registration, and abstract submission: www.sujalsymposium.org

For more information about the keynote speakers: www.iranfreethedocs.org

ABSTRACTS DUE FEBRUARY 15TH, 2012

Themes of interested for abstracts include:

Global health and/or human rights education initiatives

Innovative programs to promote equity

Health of vulnerable/underserved populations

Effective advocacy campaigns targeted at promoting health as a human right

Interdisciplinary models of collaboration to promote social justice

Please contact Lesley Everett (lesleyae@med.umich.edu) with any questions or for further information about the event.

3 strategic objectives are incorporated in USAID’s strategy:

1. Enhance the transition to low emission development via investments in clean energy and sustainable landscapes for climate change mitigation;
2. Grow resilience of people, places, and livelihoods through investments in climate change adaptation; and
3. Strengthen development outcomes through the integration of climate change in USAID programming, learning, policy dialogues, and operations.

“…the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing. Our generation’s response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it—boldly, swiftly, and together—we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe.”

President Obama, United Nations Summit on Climate Change, September 22, 2009

For example, JHPIEGO is working to protect women and girls with strategies like HPV vaccination and improved screening.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, lead by Dr. Carrie Kovarik, are using innovative techniques like mobile phone based telemedicine to improve screening for cervical cancer in resource-challenged countries.

The Global Initiative against HPV and Cervical Cancer also has several programs to fight against cervical cancer including education, strengthening HPV vaccination programs and improving screening and treatment programs for cervical cancer.

What other innovative programs are you aware of to fight this deadly disease? What approaches do you think will be most successful at eradicating cervical cancer globally?

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/ft/2011/12/melinda_gates_discusses_fighting_poverty_in_the_developing_world_.html

Below are some ways to reflect on recent developments and the the burden of HIV in the world:

• Take this quiz
• A successful recent mouse HIV vaccine study
• Johns Hopkins School of Public Health’s World AIDS Day Getting to Zero Slide Show
• Greater Than AIDS partnerships and collaborative efforts with leading media and other corporate allies, community organizations, and state and local health departments to increase knowledge and understanding about HIV/AIDS in America.
• HIV facts and statistics at WorldAIDSDAy.org
• Impatient Optimist’s blogs about people impacting HIV/AIDS
• Hear from people living with HIV
• Find an HIV/AIDS prevention and testing center
• Add a panel to the 2015 Quilt fighting for an AIDS-free generation by 2015
• 
  

The panel was moderated by Susan Dentzer, Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, and included representatives from USAID and several global health R&D partners from the public and private sectors (representing Product Development Partnerships – or PDPs).

• Hugh Chang, Director of Special Initiatives, PATH
• Rick King, PhD, Vice President, Vaccine Design, IAVI
• Emily Moore, Vice President for Business Development, Temptime Corp.
• Wendy Taylor, Senior Advisor for Innovative Finance and Public Private Partnerships, Bureau of Global Health, USA

Currently, over 215 million women worldwide want but do not have access to family planning tools. “We’ve made a lot of progress in putting maternal health on the global agenda; now we must call on leaders to put family planning on their to-do list. Every individual deserves this – women, men, and young people,” said Jill Sheffield, President and Founder of Women Deliver.

These speakers reinforced the importance of the demographic dividend – the concept that health and social development, enabled by full access to contraception, are inextricably linked with strong economic growth. They provide examples of success in Asia, where declining fertility, spurred by rising contraceptive use, have led to increased education, improved health, and market-driven economic policies which have allowed for significant income growth.  With an expanded world population of over seven billion, “Now is the time to prioritize family planning – as a strategy to reduce maternal mortality, to improve the lives of women and their families, and ultimately, to enable broad and enduring economic development,” said Dr. Amy Tsui, Director of the Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a lead conference organizer.

To proceed into the future, investments must be made in the health sector maintaining adequate numbers of midwives, OB/GYNs, facilities, etc. and examining past successes around the globe. As Hon. Stephen O’Brien stated, “having a child should bring joy” not dying in childbirth and women must be able to plan for the future. Family planning is smart and cost-effective. As Dr. Osotimehin stated, we must empower young people to take control of their futures along with the future of their countries and make sure that economic and social justice drives this process. Issues of family planning are issues of human rights.

According to Judy Manning from USAID, their priorities include: 1) Improve existing methods to make them more acceptable, easier to use and more affordable like injectable forms of contraceptives. 2) Develop new contraceptives to fill gaps such as duration of effectiveness between 3 month injectables and 5 year inserted rings. 3) Develop technologies that simultaneously prevent pregnancy, HIV & other STDs like the silk diaphragm which delivers tenofovir.

Clearly there is an immense need for family planning access, affordability, and effectiveness. Fortunately, there are also attainable solutions. Meetings such as ICFP brings together a wealth of scientific knowledge, family planning experience, and critical discussions to help ensure that universal access to family planning becomes a reality.

World AIDS Day is a time to renew our commitment to the 34 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide and the recent developments revolving around HIV, including several scientific breakthroughs in HIV prevention research and Secretary Clinton’s recent remarks declaring that it is possible to reach an AIDS-free generation, make this an especially exciting time to reflect on the epidemic.

According to Dr. Bertozzi, the strategy of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation includes both decreasing new infections and improving quality of life of those currently infected. A large focus of this strategy is on the delivery of current strategies in large part through the Global Fund as well as smaller national programs.

Despite the proven effectiveness of existing prevention approaches, there are limitations. For example, many women are not in a position to insist that their partners wear condoms and daily adherence to prophylactic treatments is difficult. The development of a vaccine and other new prevention options is critical for successfully fighting the epidemic, especially in developing countries. The largest investment in newer technologies is currently in trying to develop a HIV vaccine. As such, a focus is on the success of the RV144 HIV vaccine trial, which recently showed encouraging results in Thailand and advancing that to the next generation of the vaccine with hopes of increased efficacy.

They are also investing heavily on products that can be used by individuals to protect themselves either topically in the vagina or systemically. While daily use of vaginal microbicides has shown mixed results, many reasons may contribute to this, especially lack of adherence which is a common problem with daily use products. To address these challenges, they are working on products which are less dependent on adherence such as a vaginal ring which slowly releases the antiretroviral compound dapivirine and can be left in for up to a month.

Another strategy is systemic daily antiretroviral prophylaxis which has also had mixed results and faces problems with adherence, but looks promising. They are focusing on injectables which can be injected every 1 to 3 months, decreasing the need for adherance. The Gates Foundation is currently supporting clinical trials to evaluate the effectiveness of Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) such as this for HIV prevention.

Images from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Additional efforts are on enhancing the delivery of male circumcision and scaling up these programs with fewer resources. Despite three clinical trials demonstrating the protective benefit of the procedure, donors and countries have been slow to invest in voluntary male circumcision for HIV prevention. The foundation is investing in advocacy efforts to encourage more rapid scale-up of male circumcision for HIV prevention and funding research on new technologies and methods for performing male circumcision safely and less expensively. This strategy is so cost effective that it costs more money to NOT implement such programs due to the future treatment savings.

The Gates Foundation is also working towards improving the delivery and effectiveness of current programs. With decreasing funding in a faltering global economy, scale up of treatment has continued at the same pace by improving efficiency of programs. Fortunately this has been happening in HIV treatment. Continuing efforts to reduce the cost of drugs, design and implement more efficient delivery systems and further task shifting and sharing among health providers is needed without compromising care and can even lead to improved quality of care.

On Monday, Nov. 21^st 9:30am EST, Research!America will be webcasting a briefing on USAID and the agency’s impact on global health research and development.  The panel will be moderated by Susan Dentzer, Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, and will include representatives from USAID and several global health R&D partners from the public and private sectors (representing Product Development Partnerships – or PDPs).  Panelists include:

• Hugh Chang, Director of Special Initiatives, PATH
• Rick King, PhD, Vice President, Vaccine Design, IAVI
• Emily Moore, Vice President for Business Development, Temptime Corp.
• Wendy Taylor, Senior Advisor for Innovative Finance and Public Private Partnerships, Bureau of Global Health, USAI

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is marking its 50th anniversary as the main U.S. humanitarian relief and international development agency. This conversation regarding USAID and its global partenrs will shed insight into instrumental partnerships in global health work.

This important event will be webcast live at http://bit.ly/vWwx9o where you can also submit questions. You can also join the conversation on Twitter under the hashtag #GHPDP.

Hosted by GHDonline in collaboration with PIH, the panelists include:

• Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Minister of Health of Rwanda
• Ted Constan, Chief Operating Officer, Partners In Health
• Dr. Felix Kayigamba, Access Project Country Director
• Christina Bethke, Program Coordinator, Tiyatien Health
• James Pfieffer, NGO Code of Conduct author and Director of Mozambique Operations, Health Alliance International

To join the discussion, please sign up today!

People are also increasingly moving to urban areas, leading to denser living with increased pressure to reduce energy use and build new infrastructure . Currently over 50% of people live in cities compared to just 28.8% in 1950 with the United Nations projecting that 69% of people will live in cities by 2050 when the world population is projected to be 9.3 billion.

Another challenge is the increasing number of mouths to feed with a finite amount of land suitable for agriculture. In a new article Worldwatch proposes “two main approaches to mitigate the impacts of a soaring global population:    1) Empower women to make their own decisions about childbearing and 2) Consume fewer resources and waste less food.”

National Geographic magazine special year-long series on population explores many of the challenges we face with our growing world population. Additionally, they are offering a limited time  free iPad app 7 Billion: How your world will change - to coincide with the arrival of the 7 billionth human being to our world, exploring the challenges of a growing human population in a world of limited resources with informative videos, interactive maps, in-depth articles, and photography.

During the week of October 10-14, 2011, the Botswana-UPenn Partnership celebrated its ten year anniversary with events highlighting the past, present and future of the program. Check out the archives to learn more about this program, its history and where it is going!

For more on world population growth see this previous Global Pulse Blog posting.

Check out this issue’s featured articles including:

The Stopgap Midwife

NCD Prevention Begins in the Womb

Paying for a Healthier Future

A Malaria-free World is Within Reach

Opening the Door to Global Health Talent

Post-Conflict Liberia

Is Latin-America Ready for It’s Aging Revolution

World Hepatitis Day

From Washington D.C.'s Department of Health Page

According to a recent study, the estimated number of people living with Diabetes is now at 347 million worldwide. This figure shows that the prevalence of this chronic condition has doubled since 1980.  With 2.7 million participants, this study was the largest of its kind for diabetes. It was led by Majid Ezzati, from Britain’s Imperial College London, and Goodarz Danaei from the Harvard School of Public Health and the results were published in the Lancet.  Diabetes is a progressive condition that can affect all the organ systems of the body leading to serious complications like heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, nerve damage, and blindness. It is as a metabolic ailment in which the body fails to adequately move sugar from the blood stream into tissues.  Diabetes comes in two forms.  Type 1 is an autoimmune disease that is usually acquired in childhood to early adulthood and requires the person with type I to take insulin for their rest of their life in order to survive.  Type 2 accounts for 90 percent of diabetic cases and is more common to develop after the age of 25, even though it is becoming more common for those younger than 25 to develop the metabolic disease. It is controlled by insulin, oral medication and, for some people, it can be controlled with weight loss and exercise.

• cardiovascular disease
• diabetes
• cancers and
• chronic lung diseases

According to the WHO, 36 million of the 57 million global deaths in 2008 were due to Non-Communicable Diseases. Of these deaths due to Non-Communicable Diseases in low- and middle income countries in 2008, 29% occurred before the age of 60. Further, 80% of premature heart disease, stroke and diabetes can be prevented.

With the upcoming UN High Level Meeting on NCDs, there is a current opportunity for a renewed focus and action against Non-Communicable Diseases. For more, check out this recent article from The Huffington Post.

Food Safety News recently published an article about the lessons learned from the E. coli O104:H4 outbreak in Germany that began on May 1^st and is the deadliest in recorded history.  The culprit behind this outbreak is believed to be bean and seed sprouts.  This article discusses the need for closer surveillance on growing fruits and vegetables.