Meet the Communications Committee’s new co-Chairs!

by ihsection, posted in APHA IH Section, Section Announcements

The Communications Committee has recently recruited two co-Chairs to revitalize the Section’s outreach and communications, and to ensure that the Section continues to be an active contributor to the global health community. Please welcome Sophia Anyatonwu, our new social media manager, and Jean Armas, our new blog admin!

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Sophia Anyatonwu

I am from Austin, Texas and have always had an interest in using my skills to make a global impact. I received my Masters in Public Health in 2015 and currently work as an Epidemiologist. In my role as the Section’s social media manager, I hope to further develop my social media skills and remain up-to-date on current trends and breaking developments in global health. Additionally, I am excited to help get the word out about what IH members are working on and passionate about. In the future, I would like to evaluate health services and policies that impact humanitarian aid and economic development.

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Jean Armas

Growing up, I was fortunate to travel to many places across the world with my family and saw how difficult life could be for others who had much less than I had. This left a strong impression on me and after many years working in public health in the US, mostly in the areas of chronic disease, health technology, and innovation, I began my career in global health. I currently work for a global health non-profit where I have helped my organization’s partners in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia introduce technology solutions to help them track vital medicines for survivors of gender-based violence, improve the care for children living with HIV, and tackle the challenging problem of reducing newborn mortality. I have always felt strongly about promoting social equality through public health practice and look forward to continuing to promote APHA’s mission of health for all including finding unique ways to keep our members informed and engaged with their section and the wider global health community, especially during these challenging times.

Don’t forget to submit your abstract for APHA’s 2017 annual meeting!

by ihsection, posted in APHA IH Section, Section Announcements

The 2017 Annual Meeting & Expo will be held in Atlanta, November 4-8. APHA 2017 will bring more than 12,000 public health professionals to Atlanta to learn, network and engage. This year’s theme is “Creating the Healthiest Nation: Climate Changes Health.”

Become a presenter and submit an abstract

Deadlines range from Feb. 20-24, depending on topic area. Authors are encouraged to submit abstracts on the theme as well as current and emerging public health issues.

You do not have to be an APHA member to submit an abstract. However, if your abstract is accepted for presentation, the presenting author MUST become an individual member of APHA and MUST register for the Annual Meeting.

Click here for more information and to start your submission.

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Watch this short video from last year’s meeting to learn more about the urgent need to address climate change and its impact on health.

Global News Round Up

by abbhirami, posted in APHA IH Section, News

Politics & Policies

With a single memorandum, President Trump may well have made it harder for health workers around the world to fight cancer, H.I.V., Zika and Ebola.

President Donald Trump has massively expanded the ban on providing federal money to international family planning groups that perform abortions or provide abortion information to all organizations receiving U.S. global health assistance.

In 2017 new developments, new leaders and new threats promise to tug the reins of global health organizations and send us off in unexpected directions. In fact, we’re already feeling the road change beneath us.

Global health watchers will pay close attention to Geneva, Switzerland, on Wednesday, when the World Health Organization (WHO) will announce the final three candidates to take the agency’s top job.

Programs, Grants & Awards

Pathfinder’s board of directors named Lois Quam CEO last week after conducting an international search.

Pathfinder partners with local governments, communities and health systems to help women get vital health services.  Those services range from family planning and access to contraception, to efforts to help stop the spread of HIV, and care for women during pregnancy and childbirth.

After Trump’s ban on funding international groups whose humanitarian healthcare includes abortion counseling or services, Netherlands announced its intent to organize alternative funding for this vital area of medicine, and today a new global alliance is already rolling $10.7 million strong and up to 20 countries deep.

The Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health has awarded funding to six multidisciplinary research teams to jump-start novel efforts to address global health challenges.

The Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and GLG (Gerson Lehrman Group, Inc.) today announced the 2017 class of Mount Sinai-GLG Global Health Scholars.

Research

Bernadette Abela-Ridder and colleagues (November, 2016) describe the commendable joint efforts of WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health, and the Global Alliance for Rabies Control to control rabies on a global level, including their endorsement of a global framework to eliminate human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030.

Development of Plasmodium falciparum specific naïve, atypical, memory and plasma B cells during infancy and in adults in an endemic area.

Researchers have identified biomarkers (a set of genes including those involved in immune response) that can predict progression of disease in humans infected with the Ebola virus.

Out of pocket (OOP) health spending can potentially expose households to risk of incurring large medical bills, and this may impact on their welfare. This work investigates the effect of catastrophic OOP on the incident and of poverty in Malawi.

Diseases & Disasters

Smoking consumes almost 6 percent of the world’s total spend on healthcare and nearly 2 percent of global GDP, reveals the first study of its kind, published in the journal Tobacco Control.  In 2015 the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This includes 17 goals that all member states have signed up to achieve by 2030. Goal 3 includes a target to cut by a third early deaths from non-communicable diseases, such as those caused by smoking, and to strengthen national implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Health officials in Brazil say there has been a sharp rise in the cases of yellow fever in the country.

Today marks the launch of End Malaria Council, a group of influential public and private sector leaders committed to eradicating malaria, convened by Bill Gates and Ray Chambers.

Tuberculosis (TB) is more than 15,000 years old. The tubercle baccilus was discovered by Robert Koch, MD, in 1882. From that initial discovery we have made dramatic strides in the diagnosis and treatment of this ancient disease. But it has only been in the past 70 years that we have developed effective anti-TB drugs to treat the nearly 10 million people around the globe who still fall sick to this disease every year.

A teenager who sued the Indian government to gain access to a new drug against multi-resistant tuberculosis was granted her petition in a ruling handed down by the New Delhi High Court on January 18, according to the family lawyer.

Technology

Google.org and Gavi announced a new partnership today to help tech start-up Nexleaf Analytics strengthen vaccine cold chain equipment for developing countries.  Google.org’s contribution of US$ 2 million, which will be matched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s funding to the Gavi Matching Fund, will be used to help countries to make evidence-based decisions on the purchase and maintenance of vaccine refrigerators.

Doctors in India are to get text alerts reminding them to ask families to donate the organs of deceased loved ones as part of a campaign to solve the country’s organ shortage, which has fuelled a black market trade.

PLOS NTDs co-Editor-in-Chief Peter Hotez lists the key scientific papers refuting the myth that vaccines cause autism.

Environmental Health

Once a climate-change denier, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson said during his Senate confirmation hearings that “the risk of climate change does exist, and the consequences could be serious enough that action should be taken, distancing himself from Trump’s position. But he fell short of publicly accepting the scientific community’s consensus that there is a human role.

A toxic stew from a former copper mine in Montana killed nearly 3000 late-migrating geese raising alarm and questions around how the new Trump administration is going to handle this and other Superfund sites around the country.

A new study published examines the public health risk in aluminum cookware made from scrap metals. The authors tested 42 samples of aluminum cookware from 10 countries. They found that one-third of these samples pose lead exposure hazard and have found that these cookware release significant amounts of aluminum, arsenic and cadmium.

Due to persistent conflict, severe drought and economic instability, Nigeria and three other countries face a credible risk of famine in 2017, a report has said.

Equity & Disparities

A large prospective study conducted in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh has examined the health effects of bidis. Bidis are inexpensive, hand-rolled tobacco products manufactured by cottage industries in South Asia that have avoided national and international tobacco regulations. The authors find that bidi smoking is associated with “severe baseline respiratory impairment, all-cause mortality, and cardiorespiratory outcomes.”

They came from Mozambique, India, Sri Lanka, Qatar, Switzerland, Brazil, the US and Uganda. The 20 public health experts gathered in late November in Bellagio, Italy. Their goal: Help countries strengthen public health practice so they can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Many low- and middle-income countries are too scared by the threats and misinformation of big tobacco to raise the price of cigarettes, even though it would hugely benefit both health and the economy, according to a major new report.

Maternal, Neonatal & Children’s Health

Reinstatement of policy by Donald Trump could have ‘chilling impact’ in the Latin American region which already has high rates of teenage pregnancy and maternal mortality.

It is MSF (Doctors without Borders) policy to provide contraceptives and abortion care, given that unsafe abortion in one of the top five causes of maternal mortality. The group is now concerned about implications of the US “global gag rule” that now applies to all US-funded programs including HIV and MCH programs.

Starvation in northern Nigeria’s Borno State is so bad that a whole slice of the population — children under 5 — appears to have died, aid agencies say.

With more than 90% of refugees in Lebanon short of food and facing cuts to aid, desperate families often rely on their children to boost income.

An Overview: Exploring Development Aid and Migration

by scanyatonwu, posted in APHA IH Section

This blog post explores the relationship between the history of international development aid and migration.

My previous posts have focused on high-level meetings and policies used as guidelines to advocate for development effectiveness and cooperation in the international aid and development sector. At a time when the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been rolled out to countries to make sure “no country is left behind,” nations have a shared framework to guide them and make sure their development policies support activities that lead to outcomes such as poverty alleviation, job creation, and sustainable communities. Additionally, the aim of development effectiveness and cooperation is to provide accountability for donors and financing agencies as countries move forward with their national agendas.

The focus on how to best do development has me wondering why development is necessary in the first place and, furthermore, what role migration plays in this discussion. To start off, the United States Agency on International Development’s (USAID) mission  is to “partner to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing [the United States’] security and prosperity.” When I personally consider the end goal of development, I think about countries across the globe being able to support themselves economically. I envision healthy communities and the elimination of poverty. This is what I envision. However, in order to have a better understanding of development today, its history has to be re-visited.

In the United States, the concept of economic or international development first became widely circulated during the Truman administration, a period where there was a strong belief that science and technology could solve human problems like disease and malnutrition. More specifically, President Truman proposed an international development assistance program in 1949 called the Four Point Program. This development program built on the 1947 Marshall Plan  that focused on rebuilding Europe after WWII and promoting an exchange of U.S goods with European countries. It was also established to prevent vulnerable countries from joining the Communist party. Overall, European countries showed that reconstruction and development were possible in areas of technological and social infrastructure, and such a blueprint could possibly work in developing countries. During the time period of 1952-1962, the plan transitioned into the: Mutual Security Act, Mutual Security Agency, Foreign Operations Administration, International Cooperation Administration, and the U.S Foreign Assistance Act (which led to the creation of USAID). There were a few overarching goals of aid assistance: 1) promote economic development and support democratic societies, and 2) actively apply Rostow’s Modernization Theory to help countries out of poverty and provide the end products of urbanization, technological advances, and durable consumer goods. Other theories, such as the Dependency Theory, proposed that disparities existed not because countries were undeveloped or not “modern enough,” but were underdeveloped as a result of exploitation of human capital and natural resources by Western countries. In conclusion, both theories, in a way, try to explain the cause of disparities between richer and poorer countries. Over time, foreign aid, education, and investments in infrastructure are inputs that have been used by countries to close economic gaps and try to achieve some version of sustainable development.

So, what role does migration have to play in all this? I initially thought that more development gave individuals and families an incentive to remain in their countries of origin due to increased economic opportunity. However, this is not actually the case. In its initial stages, development inspires emigration, especially for those who are more educated. While this benefits destination countries, and even migrants, it often leads to “brain drain” in countries that are initially struggling to produce or maintain an adequate level of economic growth, particularly those below $6,000–8,000 GDP per capita. About half of all countries fall under this threshold. Brain drain can lead to shortages of talent in sectors that are necessary for infrastructure such as engineering, health, and education. Ultimately, these shifts in the population contribute to and perpetuate inequality on a global level. According to the Center for Global Development, there are at least six reasons why development initially causes these disadvantages:

  1. Development is usually accompanied by a demographic transition that favors a corresponding mobility transition
  2. Development means that more people can afford to emigrate
  3. Development means that more people can access the information they need to emigrate
  4. Development tends to disrupt economic structures that keep people immobile
  5. Development shapes domestic inequality in ways that foster migration, and
  6. Development in country A means that people in country B are more likely to give visas to migrants from A.

Although emigration can become beneficial when origin countries are able to retain educated natives, both the development level of the country and probability of emigration have to be just right – not too low and not too high. Emigrants are more likely to return to their countries of origin in response to increased development efforts that are competitive. In light of such data, development assistance programs may not actually be able to bridge the gap between rich and poor countries. In fact, questions have been raised concerning the effectiveness of aid in countries that have been receiving money for years but still remain impoverished.  Another thing to consider about migration is that economic mobility is not the only reason why people migrate. Migration is fueled by what is going on in home countries compared to what is going on in destination countries- political instability and corruption, religious persecution, limited career paths, or lack of economic growth. Ultimately, a combination of push and pull factors that can be related to international development activities make emigration desirable. For example, the initial stages of international development aid in the United States simultaneous occurred during the decolonization of Asian and African countries, some of which are the main recipients of foreign aid. Additionally, wars have continued to contribute to economic and political instability throughout the world.

Despite push and pull factors and challenges with ensuring that foreign aid actually benefits those it’s supposed to help, education continues to empower individuals and communities to be leaders and brainstorm new ways to create healthy, sustainable communities. Furthermore, educational settings may prove to be an effective bridge to foster relationships between receiving countries and countries of origin that make it easier for emigrants to return and provide human capital that is needed to reach the SDGs.

 

2017 Call for Award Nominations

by ihsection, posted in APHA IH Section, Section Announcements

Recognizing our finest in International Health (IH) through the IH Section Awards

Each year, the International Health (IH) Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA) recognizes outstanding contributions of its members through its Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in International Health, its Mid-Career Award in International Health, the Gordon-Wyon Award for Community-Oriented Public Health, Epidemiology and Practice, and the Distinguished Section Service Award. The Section is now seeking nominations for deserving candidates for these awards, to be presented at its Awards Ceremony at the APHA Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia in November 2017.

The Carl Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award in International Health was created by the IH Section to honor the visionaries and leaders in APHA who have shaped the direction of International Health.  The evaluation criteria for the Lifetime Achievement Award include: (1) Quality/creativity/innovativeness of the individual’s contributions to the field of International Health; (2) The individual’s contributions to the development of APHA or the IH Section; (3) Application of the individual’s work to service delivery (as opposed to primarily theoretical value); (4) The individual’s contributions as a leader/visionary/role model; (5) The volunteerism/sacrifice associated with the individual’s contributions; and (6) Membership in APHA (preferably with primary affiliation with the IH Section), a State affiliate, or a national public health association that is a member of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. No self-nomination is allowed.

Prior winners of the Carl Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award in International Health include: Jeanne Foster, Joe Wray, Carl Taylor, Milton Roemer, Warren and Gretchen Berggren, John Wyon, Derrick Jelliffe, Tim Baker, Cicely Williams, Bud Prince, Veronica Elliott, Moye Freymann, Dory Storms, Tom Hall, Samir Banoob, William Reinke, Michael Latham, William Foege, Clarence Pearson, Stanley Newman, Jack Bryant, Richard Morrow, Ray Martin, Miriam Labbok, Douglas Huber, Henry B. Perry, III, and Peter Berman.

The Mid-Career Award in International Health is intended to recognize outstanding young professionals in the IH Section. The evaluation criteria for the Mid-Career Award include: (1) The individual must have committed herself/himself to the promotion and development of primary health care in a cross-cultural setting over a period of 5-15 years [Primary health care is meant here to encompass a broad array of public health issues, including HIV/AIDS prevention and environmental health]; (2) The individual must have demonstrated creativity in expanding the concepts pertinent to the practice of public health with an international focus; and (3) Membership in APHA (preferably primary affiliation with the IH Section), a State affiliate, or a national public health association that is a member of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. No self-nomination is allowed.

Prior winners of the Mid-Career Award in International Health include Laura Chanchien Parajon, Margaret Henning, Elvira Beracochea, Laura Altobelli, Matt Anderson, Padmini Murthy, Gopal Sankaran, Jean Capps, Tim Holtz, Kate Macintyre, Sarah Shannon, Adnan Hyder, Stephen Gloyd, Luis Tam, Marty Makinen, Colleen Conroy, Mary Ann Mercer, Irwin Shorr, Walter K. Patrick, Dory Storms, Clyde “Lanny” Smith and Theresa Shaver.

The Gordon-Wyon Award for Community-Oriented Public Health, Epidemiology and Practice is intended to reward outstanding achievement in community-oriented public health epidemiology and practice. This award was established in 2006 by the IH Section. It is administered by the Community Based Primary Health Care Working Group. John Gordon and John Wyon were pioneers in this field, so encouraging and recognizing others in this field is one important way of honoring their memory. The evaluation criteria for this award include: (1) The candidate must have had a central role in an outstanding achievement in community-oriented public health and practice; (2) The candidate must have demonstrated creativity in expanding the concepts pertinent to the practice of community-oriented public health with an international focus; and (3) The candidate must have membership in APHA or one of its affiliates (either a State affiliate or a national public health association that is a member of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. No self-nomination is allowed.

Previous winners of the Gordon-Wyon Award for Community-Oriented Public Health, Epidemiology and Practice are Rajnikant Arole, Carl Taylor, Henry B. Perry, Bette Gebrian, Jaime Gofin, Warren and Gretchen Berggren, Tom Davis, Jr., Malcolm Bryant, Sandy Hoar,  William Robert Brieger and Mizan Siddiqi.

In addition, the Distinguished Section Service Award is intended to honor outstanding service to the IH Section. Award criteria are: (1) Dedication to the IH Section mission and goals as demonstrated by continuing exceptional contribution to its activities; (2) Serving on the section elective positions or chairing its committees with remarkable or unusual effort and achievements; (3) Distinguished achievement in the international health field with a remarkable career; (4) Excellence in leadership and strong ability for team work with peers in the IH Section and the APHA.  Current membership in APHA is essential.

Nomination Process

Award nominations should include:
i)      A detailed letter explaining why the individual nominated should receive the award, addressing the criteria for the specific award; and
ii)     A current curriculum vitae of the nominee.

Both documents (the nomination letter and the curriculum vitae) should be forwarded as e-files (Word or pdf). Only nominations with required documentation will be considered for the awards. Nominations should be submitted by email to Gopal Sankaran (gsankaran@wcupa.edu), Chair, Awards Committee, International Heath Section.

Deadline for Nominations

Please submit the required documents by Monday, May 1, 2017.  Late submissions will not be reviewed.