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  1. Spring Speaker Series: Patricia Siplon

    May 3, 2013 by Alexa Dessy

    Today Patricia Siplon, Professor of Political Science at Saint Michael’s College, joined us for an exciting and motivating talk entitled, “Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: The Rise and Potential Fall of Global HIV/AIDS Treatment Access.” Ms. Siplon spoke to us from the stance not only of one who studies the issue, but who also agitates and advocates in the AIDS movement. Scientific breakthroughs in recent years have enabled the possibility of an AIDS-free generation, provided enhanced treatment programs in developing countries. However, political motivation is lacking to make this possibility a reality. Ms. Siplon believes we are at a divergent point that will determine whether we will achieve the ultimate goal of eradicating AIDS, or historians will write about these efforts in years to come as a monumental failure. She discussed the current barriers to treatment of HIV/AIDS in developing countries, and potential mechanisms by which these obstacles can be overcome. Among her many achievements, Ms. Siplon has worked in Tanzania, where she contributed to the progressive unfolding of the PEPFAR programs and was instrumental in developing the model by which those in need acquire effective antiretroviral treatment. For more on Ms. Siplon’s talk, see here: globemed2013_siplontalk

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  2. Staff Meeting 04/28/13

    May 3, 2013 by Alexa Dessy

    In this week’s meeting we had two wonderful speakers, Dr. Kim Wilson of Boston Children’s Hospital and our own GlobeMedder, Liza Herzog. Both talks were inspiring and we were so lucky to have two amazing talks in one meeting!

    Dr. Wilson’s talk was entitled, “Global Child Equity Focused Strategies.” She discussed the factors that contribute to child survival and how they relate to the Millenium Goals, chronic diseases and disability and the historical trends in child mortality. In addition, Dr. Wilson explained the barrier to access to healthcare, citing a three delay model, which includes delay in decision to seek care in the community, delay in reaching care, and delay in receiving adequate care at the health facility. She elucidated this model using the examples which respectively demonstrated these types of delays. We discussed Haitians working on sugar cane farms in the Dominican Republic, the shortage of health workers in Tanzania and Rwanda, and newborn health in the Dominican Republic. Dr. Wilson’s insight and experience was an extremely valuable view into the public health field, the issues that endure in global health, and the way we can work towards solutions.

    Liza gave an overview of her semester abroad with SIT Switzerland: Global Health and Development Policy. Given that Geneva is a hub for international health, Liza was able to get really valuable first hand experience with the various facets of public health. Specifically, she attended a lecture series which touched on water safety and health, the realities and challenges of field work, epidemiology, international migration, intellectual property, food safety and security, and mental health of victims of war. In addition, Liza did an independent project, A Tentative Model to Prevent Water Born Infectious Disease Associated with Climate Change and Disaster: An Application to Cholera Prevention. For more extensive notes on Liza’s presentation and Dr. Wilson’s lecture, please see here:globemed2013_Wilson&Liza

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  3. GlobeMed 2013 Summit

    April 23, 2013 by Alexa Dessy

    We sent 9 GlobeMedders to the National Summit in Chicago this year, which was entitled “The Student Momentum: The Unique Position of Students as Agents of Change.” The summit allowed the network to explore the question that truly sets GlobeMed apart from other global health organizations: “why students?” Our members came back to Midd inspired by their experiences, and shared the most meaningful moments with the chapter. To read more about the summit, please see this article: Summit Article Final

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  4. 5K Fun Run

    April 20, 2013 by Anoushka Sinha

    GlobeMed 5K Fun Run '13

    To sign up for the GlobeMed 5K Race, please visit the box-office page. We also welcome online donations at our Razoo page. Thank you so much for helping us fund the maintenance of the health center we helped establish in Rwanda!

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  5. Staff Meeting 4/14/13

    April 14, 2013 by Anoushka Sinha

    We started off tonight’s meeting by practicing our elevator speeches for describing what we do to the “uninitiated.” The three important elements of an elevator speech are: (1) our chapter (size, fundraising, GROW, education); (2) the GlobeMed network; and (3) our partner. After taking turns running through our spiels, we listened to a debrief of the GlobeMed Summit provided by our nine members who attended the conference. The theme of this year’s summit was “student momentum,” which focused on unlocking our potential as individuals and emphasized the importance of an interdisciplinary background. Among the highlights mentioned was a panel on “Personal Narratives” that included Dr. Rishi Rattan, who was the keynote speaker of our very own Hilltop conference this past fall. Provocative as ever, Dr. Rattan described global health as a form of “neocolonialism” and emphasized the need for students to shift the field from “privilege activism” to “survival activism” by amplifying the voices of the voiceless in the regions we target.

    For GHU, we focused specifically on our partner org, Gardens for Health International. GHI was founded by two Clinton Foundation interns in 2007 with strong support from Partners In Health/Praxis Network for its multifaceted approach to public health. GHI’s success has led to support for the massive programmatic expansion of the program beyond Gukuru and the Kigali area. What makes GHI unique is its targeted focus on nutrition and poverty. GHI is founded on the belief that positive health, quality of life, and economic sustainability all stem from access to and availability of healthy food. GHI works with the infrastructure in place in Rwanda to sustainably implement its malnutrition program: it coordinates with the public health system as an outpatient extension of medical clinics, cooperates with the Rwandan government, and works with other aid agencies like USAID. GlobeMed at Midd is truly proud to be partnered with an organization as effective and fruitful as GHI, and we look forward to strengthening our partnership as well as our impact in Rwanda.

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  6. Staff Meeting 4/7/13

    April 7, 2013 by Anoushka Sinha

    Announcements from tonight’s meeting:

    • Professor of Economics Erick Gong, who gave an incredible talk last week on global health economics, is looking for a research assistant for a two-week period. Feel free to contact him if this opportunity interests you!
    • Our screening of Sometimes in April is set for tomorrow night at 7:30 pm in Axinn 229.
    • Leaders of our partner org, Gardens for Health International (GHI), are touring the US, giving talks in Boston, NYC, LA, San Francisco, DC, among other locations.
    • This summer, not only will GROW interns Cate Stanton and Ryan Brewster be working with GHI in Rwanda, but Olivia Wold, Austin Nalen, and Emily Nuss will be interning at GHI’s Boston office!
    • Looking towards the next academic year, we’re seeking new Exec Board members for the following positions: 2 Co-Presidents, 1 GHU Coordinator, 1 Design and Social Media Coordinator, 2 Co-Directors of Development (1 financially focused, 1 educationally focused), 1 Director of Community Building, and 2 Campaign Coordinators. Applications are due Monday, April 15, by midnight. Later in the fall, we’ll also be seeking a GROW Coordinator.

    In GHU we learned about prisons and the US healthcare system. Focus questions included: Who takes responsibility for prisoner health rights? What significance does their health have on non-incarcerated citizens? The US incarcerates more residents than any other country: we have less than 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners. One in 31 US adults is either in prison or on probation or parole. Furthermore, prisoners are five times more likely to have mental health illness than general citizens, largely because of the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill.

    According to the ACLU, the government has the responsibility to provide adequate medical care to prisoners in their custody. Yet with limited access to the outside world, prisoners are sometimes denied the medical attention they need. Too often conditions of confinement can exacerbate existing mental illness or have negative psychological effects on prisoners without mental illness. Prisoners must receive adequate mental health care to ensure they don’t leave correction systems worse off than when they entered. On the other hand, there are numerous instances of US citizens purposely getting arrested in order to receive better medical treatment. These contradictions complicate the issue of how the government does and should allocate its resources towards medical care both within and without the prison system.

    After an insightful discussion, we broke up into campaign groups to plan our upcoming 5K and Babysitting Night events. GlobeMedders, be sure to keep sending out our babysitting flyer to anyone with kids aged 4-12 years!

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  7. GHI Update

    April 7, 2013 by Alexa Dessy

    In the upcoming weeks, Jesse Cronan and Claire Ingabire, one GHI’s Rwandan health educators will be traveling around the U.S. to come speak in Boston, NYC, LA, San Francisco, DC and New Jersey. GHI will be hosting events to celebrate their work to end chronic childhood malnutrition in Rwanda. Not only will this visit will give Claire a chance to tell her story but it will be her first time traveling on an airplane and her first time in America! Watch this video to get an introduction to Claire and follow GHI on facebook to stay tuned with updates.

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  8. Prof. Erick Gong Kicks Off Spring Speaker Series

    April 4, 2013 by Alexa Dessy

    Economics professor, Erick Gong, gave the first talk of our Spring Speaker Series entitled, “The Economics of Global Health.” Prof. Gong began with a discussion of how we can think about global health issues using economics, then explained his own research regarding transactional sex and HIV/AIDS, and ended with suggestions for students interested in pursuing global health through an economic perspective.

    Prof. Gong helped us define global health and noted its relationship to discrepancies in health outcomes between high and low income countries. He observed that there are technologies that can dramatically reduce the risk of disease, such as chlorine or filters to prevent diarrhea, condoms to help prevent HIV/AIDS and insecticide treated nets to prevent malaria. Economics can be used to try to understand the constraints that prevent people from using these technologies, especially in low income countries.

    Sub-Saharan Africa bears a disproportionate burden of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Though there are several possible reasons for the high prevalence in this area, Prof. Gong hypothesizes that multiple concurrent partnerships may play a substantial role in the transmission of the disease in Sub-Saharan Africa. His research examines the notion that income shocks lead to increases in transactional sex, which leads to higher rates of HIV infection. The data, taken from weather reports and demographic and health surveys among men and women in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in Kenya, suggests that negative income shocks lead to increased risk of HIV infection. The response of transactional sex to income shocks may be due to lack of access to savings, insurance or other social safety nets, and Prof. Gong suggests providing access might reduce this response.

    For a more detailed write-up of Professor Gong’s talk, see these notes: globemed2013_gongtalk

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  9. Staff meeting 3/10/13

    March 12, 2013 by Alexa Dessy

    In this week’s GHU we continued to look at health as a human right through the view point of specific case studies. In particular, we examined the differences between health in urban and rural environments.

    We thought about the 2010 WHO guidelines on urban health, which were spurred by the fact that over 50% of the world population is living in urban areas. The 5 categories for improvement set forth by WHO include: 1. Urban planning; 2. Improve urban living conditions; 3. Participatory urban governance; 3. Ensure cities are accessible and age friendly; 4. Make cities resilient to emergencies and disasters. We asked our members: Do you agree with these categories? Why or why not? How can urban planning improve health? What role can clinical care with respect to improving urban care play? What role can public health play? Are their goals in line with each other?

    To get a sense of the challenges faced by health care providers in rural environments, we watched this video about primary health care in Nepal. We asked our members: How can rural health in the most remote parts of the world be improved? Why hasn’t it been improved already? What problems are unique to rural areas? Are their limitations to the efforts of NGOs such as Nyaya Health?

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  10. GHI Update

    March 10, 2013 by Alexa Dessy

    Our co-presidents caught up with GHI this week to hear about what’s happening on the ground in Rwanda. First, the funding we brought to GHI last year helped them expand their program to the Nyrigi Health Center, which has not only thrived but become GHI’s all-star program. This season there are 46 mothers enrolled full time in both the agricultural and health training programs, and 13 mothers enrolled in the health program only. Right now, they are four weeks into their health curriculum, and this week’s unit is on HIV/AIDS. The mothers have contagious enthusiasm and passion for the training, which is inspiring and heart warming.
    In other exciting news, GHI opened their fourth site, which is starting off the growing season wonderfully. Next September, they will be expanding to 4 more health centers, which will be a total of 8! At each partner health center, 40 families are enrolled in the program per season. There are three growing seasons in Rwanda, meaning the program reaches 120 families per year per health center. Thus, in each community GHI works with, an average of 480 children receive the food necessary to help them grow and thrive. It is so rewarding to be involved with an organization whose program is able to reach so many families each year. We look forward to the expansion and improvement of the coming months!

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