Month: March 2013

APHA’s New Networking Platform

by ihsection, posted in APHA IH Section, Information and Social Media

IH Section members: This post was originally posted in December of last year. However, APHA has recently made some changes to the platform, so I am re-posting it with updated information.

Happy Holidays, IH Section members! Hopefully this holiday season finds you all happy and healthy, with whatever projects you are working on going well. The purpose of this post is to introduce you to a new networking and communication platform that they have introduced. It is APHA’s Online Community, and it is integrated into your APHA membership profile. The purpose of the community is to encourage members of APHA to connect and discuss shared professional interests and information about events relevant to you and your colleagues. The platform was just recently opened to the general membership, so I have taken some time to explore its different features and thought I would share them here. Please note that you can click on any of the screen shots below

In order to access the community, visit http://connect.apha.org and use your APHA membership ID and password to log in. If you don’t have this information, just go to APHA’s website and request that an e-mail with the information be sent to you (About Us > Membership Information > Update Your Member Profile, then click the link that says “Forgot Your Username and Password?”).

login screen

After logging in, you should come to the following screen. From here, you can access your Member Profile, the groups you are a member of, and your e-mail delivery settings.

welcome screen

The first thing you should do is set up your Member Profile so that other members with similar interests can network with you. If you go to edit your profile, you will come to the following screen:

edit profile

Here, you can edit your name, your photo, your academic background, where you work, tags (keywords that allow other members to search for you based on your interests), address and phone numbers (only if you choose to make them available to other members), a short bio, and any social media profiles you have (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.). Once you have input all of this information, you can view your profile as others see it.

view profile

The main focus of the community, however, are the discussions that APHA is encouraging members to have within their professional sections. When you go to access “My Groups” (the link is in the upper right-hand corner of the screen), you will come to a screen that looks like this:

my groups

From there, you can access the group that corresponds to the section(s) of which you are a member.

IH section group

Within each section’s group are the tools for communication and networking with other members. Here, you can search the section membership, access e-mail listservs, put events on the calendar, post to the bulletin board (essentially a message board), upload documents to the library, and post content to the wiki.

This tool has great potential to increase communication and networking among members. I strongly encourage you all to log in, set up a profile, and have a look around!

MSF Video: “A Humiliating Situation,” Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

by ihsection, posted in Conflict and Health, Information and Social Media

This is a video by MSF taking a special look at Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon to escape the country’s civil war. It is necessary reminder of the urgency of what is currently the world’s largest refugee crisis.


Meet some of the more than 120,000 Syrian refugees living in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon while their country is at war. Families are living in camps, unfinished houses, and abandoned buildings. They are not getting adequate aid.

Climate change and public health professionals: A survey of the International Health Section of APHA

by ihsection, posted in APHA IH Section

The following report summarizes the results of a climate change survey sent out to the members of the APHA IH section. The section’s chair and co-chair, members Rose Schneider and Hala Azzam, compiled the results below.

According to the Lancet Commission’s 2010 report, Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change “global warming is the biggest threat to health in the current century.” Yet most of the public health workforce have not yet been trained to deal with the challenges of climate change. The situation is exacerbated in low and middle-income countries. Faced with limited resources to mitigate or adapt to the increased frequency of extreme weather events, these countries have little infrastructure capacity to deal with, or recover from, climate change related events.

In 2012, the APHA International Health Section Climate Change Working Group (IH CCWG) conducted a brief survey of its members. Questions revolved around the current activities, level of knowledge and interest in climate change as it pertains to the work members do in developing countries. The survey was administered online and had a response rate of about 12% (186/1600 IH members) with 82% of the respondents completing the survey.

Basic demographics results indicated that more than 60% of the respondents were female, and about 40% of the respondents were between the ages of 21-39, and 30% between the ages 40-59. The respondents came from different work environments, with the largest percentage working in academia (~40%) and in NGOS (~30%). About 90 % of the respondents held a graduate or postgraduate degree, and the majority lived in the U.S. Some respondents, however, lived in Asia, Africa, Australia, the Pacific islands, Europe and Central Asia.

When asked about their climate change knowledge and awareness, half of the respondents reported that climate change is very relevant to the international work they do, and about 30% answered somewhat relevant. When asked about climate events in the country/ies where they worked, about 70% indicated changes in rainfall patterns and severe weather events such as hail, storm and floods, and about half indicated an increase in the number of hot days or nights. Awareness of the impact of climate change was high, with about 70% reporting changes in food production, food price hikes, and decreased access to water. Nearly 50% reported awareness of increased population migration, increased malaria incidence at higher altitudes, and deaths due to severe heat. At the same time, 1/3 of respondents reported not knowing what adaptation or mitigation processes or systems exist in the countries where they work. When it came to their views on the five most important activities to address climate change in international health work, more than 40% identified water conservation, climate change adaptation planning, green technologies, research, and development of evidence based approaches.

The two most frequently identified barriers for respondents to address or to integrate climate change activities into their work were; limited political/institutional support and inadequate funding. In response to what kinds of support would help overcome barriers, about 70% reported needing information on how to integrate climate change into ongoing public health activities, and close to 60% expressed the need for training and awareness campaigns, and for tools specific to climate change activities, such as vulnerability assessments, epidemiologic mapping, community preparedness planning, and basic understanding of green technologies.

In conclusion, while 80% of the respondents identified climate change as being relevant to their international health work, less than 20% currently incorporate climate change approaches into their activities. Furthermore, only 1/3 anticipated incorporating climate change into their work in the future. Yet, respondents clearly identified water conservation, climate change adaptation planning, research and development of evidence-based approaches, as well as the use of green technologies, as important activities to be implemented in international health programs. Indeed when probed about what steps, they, as individuals, currently take to reduce their carbon footprint, 93%, an overwhelming majority, stated that they turned off unneeded lights, 86% recycled at home, and more than 65% used public transport/carpooled or walked, lowered the thermostat in winter, turned off electronics, and reduced their trash. When asked about what the IH section should do in climate change roughly 3/4 of the respondents indicated the need to be more active in advocacy and policy, and more than half indicated the need for sharing information (tools, lessons learned, a virtual library, etc.), and joint sessions with other APHA sections and working groups.

Resources
In response to the needs expressed by the respondents, we have compiled a brief key resources list that we hope will be useful to readers:

We thank the I.H. Section members for their participation in the survey.
Rose Schneider, RN, MPH Rschneider@jhu.edu
Hala Azzam, PhD, MPH, CPH Hazzam@coempower.com
IH Climate Change Working Group