Department of Global Health and Population

GHP News

GHP visiting graduate student, Johanne Helene Iversen, co-authors a paper in a new online journal focusing on Health Diplomacy
Kiddell-Monroe, R., Iversen, J. H., and Gopinathan, U.  (2013). Medical R&D Convention Derailed: Implications for the Global Health System.  Journal of Health Diplomacy. Published online June 12, 2013

 

Albertina Sisulu Executive Leadership Programme in Health (ASELPH), a partnership between Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and South African academic and governmental institutions, aims to strengthen health policy and health care service in South Africa.

 

 

Mary Mwanyika Sando, MD, a 2013 MPH candidate in the Department of Global Health and Population, will be joining the inaugural class of The New Voices Fellowship. The New Voices Fellowship at the Aspen Institute is a groundbreaking initiative designed to bring more expert voices from the developing world into the global development discussion. The Fellowship, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, offers development experts from Africa and other parts of the developing world a year-long program of media support, training, research and writing under the guidance of experienced mentors and trainers. As a New Voices Program Fellow, Dr. Sando will focus on maternal and child health with a spotlight on Tanzania. >>Read more information about the Program and the Aspen Institute

 

Harvard-led research to quantify economic costs of stunted child cognitive development in resource-poor countries
The Saving Brains Project brings together a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, economists, epidemiologists, nutritional scientists, psychologists, disease and risk factor modelers, and statisticians who will use comprehensive data sources to develop comparable national, regional, and global estimates of the effects of major risk factors on childhood development, educational attainment, and the economic impact of those effects.  >>Read more

 

Setting Health Priorities: Strategy Versus Tactics
David E. Bloom (Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography in the Department of Global Health and Population), Elizabeth T. Cafiero (Research Analyst in the Department of Global Health and Population) and Michael Chu (Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and Managing Director and co-founder of the IGNIA Fund) contribute to special feature in Population Services International’s Impact magazine >>Read the article here

 

Progress, Puzzles in Halting Malaria
GHP faculty Marcia Castro, Jessica Cohen, and Guenther Fink featured in recent series, “Defeating Malaria: From the Genes to the Globe” the first event in a series examining public health problems whose solutions will require large-scale, multidisciplinary efforts. >>Read more

 

 

Innovative study documents the changing health needs of African women
Allan Hill, Andelot Professor of Demography, studies the the health needs of a growing population of African women.  In large African cities such as Accra, Ghana, where Allan Hill and his Ghanaian counterparts have led a pioneering women’s health study for the past decade, women are having fewer children, living longer, and getting heavier. That presents new health challenges the current Ghanaian health system is not equipped to address, such as rising incidence of heart disease and other chronic diseases more characteristic of the Western world. >>Read more

 

Maternal health advocates push for new global goals
Ana Langer, GHP Professor of the Practice, helps lead successful Global Maternal Health Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, which was co-sponsored by Harvard School of Public Health’s Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) and Management and Development for Health (MDH), a Tanzanian non-profit. The conference included 750 audience members, who represented 59 countries and work in more than 110 countries, to continue working for the health of the 200 million women who become pregnant each year. >>Read more

 

Scale-up of HIV treatment in rural South Africa increases adult life expectancy
Global Health and Population Associate Professor Till Bärnighausen leads two studies published in Science online. According to new research, large antiretroviral treatment (ART) scale-up in a rural community in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, has led to a rapid and dramatic increase in population adult life expectancy—a gain of 11.3 years over eight calendar years (2004-2011)—and the benefit of providing ART far outweighs the cost. >>Read more

 

Adetokunbo LucasTropical disease expert Adetokunbo Lucas wins humanitarian award
Appointed as professor of international health at HSPH in 1990 and, since 1995, an adjunct professor of population and international health, Adetokunbo Lucas has worked over the years as a clinician, medical educator, researcher, administrator, policy specialist, and public health leader >>Read more

 

PrintBreast cancer in China: HSPH to partner in new awareness initiative
Yuanli Liu, founding director of the China Initiative, describes how the new effort will build upon HSPH’s 30-plus years ofcollaborations.  Breast cancer is a leading cause of death among women in China, with 1.1 million new cases annually. China’s breast cancer mortality has doubled over the past 30 years >>Read more

 

Study Finds Years Living With Disease, Injury Increasing Globally
Joshua Salomon, Professor of Global Health, co-leads two out of seven different studies published in a triple issue of The Lancet. The first is a major innovation in measuring how health conditions are perceived by the public at large and accounting for these views in evaluating the public health impact of disease and injury. These assessments of the severity of different health outcomes are known as disability weights. The second piece of work co-led by Salomon was the country-by-country analysis of health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE), also known as healthy life expectancy, which gives an overall summary measure of health in a population, accounting both for how many years people survive, and how healthy they are during these years. >>Read more

 

 

Studying the Effects of Global Adversity, Two Generations at Theresa-Betancourta Time
Theresa Betancourt, GHP Associate Professor of Child Health and Human Rights, studies children in adversity and actively works alongside nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).  Betancourt wants to help NGOs see that combining short-term survival efforts with attention to children’s developmental needs only magnifies the long-range benefits for individuals and societies. >>Read more

 

 

The Value of Vaccination: An Application to HPV
Co-authors Till Bärnighausen and David Bloom, publish article on the value of HPV vaccination in a special issue of the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection. In this article, a conceptual framework for capturing the benefits of vaccination is presented and several categories of potentially important gains to consider when valuing HPV vaccination are discussed >>Read the article

 


GHP Alum Awarded First Prize in Young Investigator Competition
Jennifer Manne was awarded first prize for her research on, “Barriers to Treatment Access for Chagas disease in Mexico,” in the Young Investigator Competition at the 2012 American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene’s Annual Meeting on Nov 11, 2012.  Under the direction of Professor Michael Reich her research has included interviewing those responsible for drug treatment policy in Mexico, and an analysis of the global supply chain based on research at the World Health Organization.  View the announcement: http://www.astmh.org/Young_Investigator_Award.htm

 


New Test for Tuberculosis Could Improve Treatment, Prevent Deaths in Southern Africa
Joshua Salomon and colleagues conduct a modeling study to investigate the potential health and economic consequences of implementing the new Xpert test in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland. Prof. Salomon and his colleagues found that replacing the current diagnostic approach (which relies on identifying TB in patient’s sputum using a microscope) with one based on the Xpert test would prevent an estimated 132,000 TB cases and 182,000 TB deaths in southern Africa over 10 years, reducing by 28% the proportion of the population with active TB >>Read more

 


Reclaiming Childhood
Theresa Betancourt, Associate Professor of Child Health and Human Rights, studies the world’s most neglected and traumatized youths. Her work in India was recently featured in the November-December issue of Harvard Magazine >>Read the feature story here

 

 

Researchers Examine the Impact of United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals
Alicia Ely Yamin, lecturer on Global Health in the Department of Global Health and Population, co-leads research project examining the impact of the United Nations’ health-reform goals known as the MDGs.  Yamin and Saikiko Fukuda-Parr, professor in the international affairs program at the New School in New York, are leading a group of 17 researchers in the international development and human rights communities in examining the consequences of the MDGs.  >>Read more

 

 

img Harvard Brazil SymposiumSymposium Focuses on Health Reform in Brazil
The Harvard-Brazil Symposium featured discussions of the eight Millennium Development Goals and of Brazil’s progress in meeting them. These goals set targets to attain international development objectives, including reducing extreme poverty and hunger; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; achieving universal primary education; increasing equality for women; fighting AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and fostering global partnerships for development.  The symposium was sponsored by the Department of Global Health and Population as well as the Harvard Global Health Institute and Fundação Maria Cecilia Souto Vidigal.  Learn more about the symposium here: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/09/for-a-health-reform-model-try-brazil/

 

Creating a New Measure of Child Development
Günther Fink, Assistant Professor of International Health Economics in the Department of Global Health and Population and an affiliated faculty member of the Center on the Developing Child, has been studying a major, ongoing anti-malaria initiative in Zambia. >>Read more

 


Congratulations to our 2012 award winners!

 


GHP doctoral candidate awarded HGHI Doctoral Research grant
Jennifer Manne has recently been awarded a Harvard Global Health Institute Doctoral Research grant for her research proposal: “Chagas disease: expanding access to treatment for a long neglected disease.” >>Read more on this study

 


GHP student selected as a Boston Schweitzer Fellow
SM Candidate (2013) Stephanie Loo has been selected as a 2012-2013 Boston Schweitzer Fellow. The Boston Schweitzer Fellows Program is a one-year interdisciplinary, mentored fellowship program focused on health-related community service and leadership development.

 


GHP and CPDS Dillon Family Fellowship Awards
The Department of Global Health and Population and the Center for Population and Development Studies are pleased to announce the following recipients of this year’s Dillon Family Fellowship awards.  These fellowships provide key support for doctoral research, and encourage and promote student involvement in seminars and networking activities.

GHP Dillon Family Fellows:

  • Huan-Ying “Kristy” Lin, SD Candidate in Global Health and Population (Health Systems): 
Does Democracy Matter for Health? Evidence from Developing Countries
  • Plamen Nikolov, SD Candidate in Global Health and Population (Economics): 
Economic Response to Nutrition Interventions
  • Zubin Shroff, SD Candidate in Global Health and Population (Health Systems): 
The Political Economy of Publicly-funded Health Insurance in India

Pop Center Dillon Family Fellows:

  • Jacob Bor, SD Candidate in Global Health and Population (Economics): 
Public Policy and HIV/AIDS in South Africa
  • Corrina Moucheraud, SD Candidate in Global Health and Population (Health Systems): 
Resource Allocation to Prevent Maternal Mortality: The Role of Health Systems

 

 

michael-vanrooyen_congo-abbieMichael VanRooyen and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) look for new ways to improve disaster response
In a January 2012 Boston Magazine article titled “The Saving Game,” Michael VanRooyen talked about how relief workers — if their efforts aren’t properly coordinated — can sometimes do more harm than good >>Read more

 


SM2 Candidate Co-edits Environmental Migration Study
While interning with IDDRI (Institut du développement durable et des relations internationales), SM2 candidate Joshua Glasser had the opportunity to co-edit an environmental migration study, The State of Environmental Migration (SEM) 2010 (co-published by IDDRI and OIM). This volume is intended to be the first of an annual series, which will aim to provide the reader with regularly-updated qualitative assessments on the changing nature and dynamics of environmental migration throughout the world.

 

photo: Aubrey LaMedica

photo: Aubrey LaMedica

HSPH seminar features GHP faculty
Ana Langer, Jennifer Leaning, Wafaie Fawzi and HP&M professor Atul Gawande, spoke about their efforts to boost the health of mothers and prevent unnecessary maternal deaths at the seminar, “Advancing Maternal Health: Reflections on the Role and Contributions of the Harvard School of Public Health,” on Nov 7, 2011.  Also at the seminar, Dean Frenk announced a $2 million gift from Katie Hansen, to help the school advance its work in maternal and child health  >>Read more

 


Prof. Richard Cash Receives the 2011 Fries Prize for Improving Health
Prof. Richard Cash, senior lecturer on global health, will be presented with the 2011 Fries Prize for Improving Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on November 8, 2011. The James F. and Sarah T. Fries Foundation is honoring Prof. Cash for his leadership in the development and dissemination of Oral Rehydration Therapy, a practical treatment for cholera and other diarrheal diseases that has saved the lives of at least 60 million children worldwide.

 


China Initiative Hosts Inaugural Harvard America-China Health Summit
The China Initiative, housed in the Department of Global Health and Population, launched the first 2-day Harvard America-China Health Summit on September 21-22, 2011.  Public health experts and leaders from the United States and China convened at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center, to discuss a wide range of topics relating to progress and major challenges of health care reform in the two countries >>Read more

 


Paul Campbell and Pedro Saturno (University of Murcia, Spain) lead training course to improve the conceptual and practical skill of senior officials
Around the world governments are trying to assess and improve the quality of health services. These tasks are of even greater importance in those countries where the responsibility for providing health care is being decentralized and the private sector in taking a steadily larger role. This course has been designed to improve the conceptual and practical skills of senior officials. Learn more: Improving the Quality of Health Services

 


Professor David Bloom is Lead Author on a New Report:  The Global Economic Burden of Non-Communicable Diseases
This is the first report to identify the total global costs of NCDs.

>>Read more

 

 

HSPH Awarded $12 Million to Improve Global Maternal Health
The Women & Health Initiative led by Ana Langer, has been awarded a $12 million grant to help improve maternal health in developing countries. Under the grant, the W&HI will host the Maternal Health Task Force—an initiative bringing together major global and country-level maternal health organizations to improve maternal health in developing countries by leading, coordinating, and promoting innovative and effective knowledge management, technical exchanges and consensus building activities; strengthening countries’ health care capacity through mentoring and training; and supporting strategic research on critical issues >>Read more


Michael Reich & Marc Roberts Co-author a new Book
This book, published by the World Bank, applies an established analytical framework for health sector reform (Getting Health Reform Right, Oxford, 2004) to the performance problems of the pharmaceutical sector. Review it here: Pharmaceutical Reform: A Guide to Improving Performance and Equity

 

Live Broadcast of Japan Lancet Series Launch
Dr. Michael Reich is currently in Japan participating in the Lancet Special Series on Japan Launch Symposium: Restructuring Japan’s Healthcare System? Beyond the March 11 Disaster. There will be a live broadcast beginning at 8:30pm (EST) Thursday, September 1st.  If you cannot watch this live, archived footage of the sessions will be available online at a later date if you are interested.

 

 

Gareth Green Award for Excellence in Public Health
Pictured on the right: three GHP graduating SM2 students, Michael Hadley, Tom McHale, and Dana Thomson, who have been selected as the winners of this year’s Gareth Green Award for Excellence in Public Health Practice. Also pictured: Marcia Castro, Assistant Professor of Demography was awarded the HSPH Mentoring Award.

 

 

 

Takemi Fellow Honored at Poster and Exhibit Day
Congratulations to 2010-2011 Takemi Fellow Joseph Okeibunor whose poster was selected by Poster and Exhibit Day judges for Honorable Mention in the Postdoctoral category of the 25th annual HSPH Poster & Exhibit Day competition.

 

GHP Doctoral student honored at HSPH’s Poster & Exhibit Day
Congratulations to Yanfang Su, who’s research on New Estimates of Elasticity of Demand for Healthcare in Rural China won first prize at HSPH’s 25th annual Poster & Exhibit Day.
Click here to read the full article.

 

GHP Professor Joshua Salomon selected for Burke Global Health FellowshipThe Harvard Global Health Institute announces the selection of the second annual Burke Global Health Fellows. Faculty member Joshua Salomon, Ph.D., Associate Professor of International Health in the Department of Global Health and Population,has been awarded a Fellowship to support original research.