|
Weekly News and Notes
From the Duke Global Health Institute
Greetings!
The semester has begun which means the University Seminar on Global Health series is gearing up for another year. See the recently updated DGHI calendar and mark your calendars for the upcoming speakers and events.
Also, don't miss the semester's Global Health Kick Off "Against the Odds" event at the Medical Center Library on Sept. 3 at 5:30 pm. A dozen global health student groups and organizations will be on exhibit, as well as the national traveling exhibit and photos from Duke student fieldwork.
Today's newsletter features a student story sent to us by Duke-Engineering World Health. Your stories can appear here as well. Send them to me at gseaford@duke.edu.
Until next week,
Geelea Seaford and Everyone at DGHI |
|
Summer In the Field
Rural health in India teaches student about community development, care
By Alyssa Zamora, Duke Global Health Institute
 Duke Senior Anant Agarwalla is convinced there are infinite possibilities of a bottom-up approach to improve the health of villagers in rural communities. He completed a summer fieldwork project, funded by the Duke Global Health Institute, in the heart of Maharashtra, India where he assessed the work of the Jamkhed Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP). The 20-year-old has worked in impoverished communities in the past, and says he was drawn to CRHP for its sustainable, comprehensive model of community empowerment, especially among the poor and marginalized.
"CRHP has been so successful and innovative, and I really wanted to get a chance to learn from some of these remarkable people," says Agarwalla, an economics major and global health advocate who plans to attend medical school. "They have done a spectacular job addressing some of the most common nonmedical determinants of disease."
The Jamkhed model examines the root causes of disease by focusing on poverty reduction, nutrition, sanitation, education and social equality. For nearly 40 years, the project has impacted hundreds of thousands of people in rural Maharashtra, which is several hundred miles east of Mumbai. Its success is evident by the health challenges that exist in Jamkhed, which are largely related to sanitation and non-communicable chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension.
"That's just unbelievable in a rural village in India where people do not have access to a hospital, and is heavily affected by drought, child malnutrition, tuberculosis, leprosy and malaria," says Agarwalla.
An essential part of CRHP is the training and empowerment of locals to become village health workers - many of whom are women - who provide basic health services and support to their community. Agarwalla recalls the story of a teenage girl who was abandoned by her husband after she lost her child due to complications. He says it was not until CRHP came along to train the young woman as a village health worker that she believed she could make a worthwhile contribution to her community. READ MORE__________________________________________________________ Read about more student summer fieldwork projects on the newly updated Fieldwork section of the DGHI website. Click here. |
Duke students are lifesavers for babies born in a Nicaraguan hospital
Duke biomedical engineering students Rita Lin and Shannon Skinner spent their summer doing more than reading and relaxing. They participated in the Duke-Engineering World Health Summer Institute, doubling the capacity of a neonatal intensive care unit in a Nicaraguan hospital.  "From day one, the hospital director asked us to please find a replacement heater lamp because of the severe lack of other baby warmers," says Lin, who is pursuing the Global Health Certificate through the Duke Global Health Institute. She says there was one additional lamp in the neonatal ward and as many as four babies were placed in a space intended for a single baby. If these two Duke seniors could meet the director's request, it would double the capacity of the hospital to deal with hypothermic, or low temperature, babies. In the United States, this would be a simple matter of purchasing a replacement part. But, the part was not available in Diriamba, a small city in southern Nicaragua. The two students traveled to the capital of the country, Managua, in an attempt to find the appropriate medical equipment. The replacement part was very expensive by Nicaraguan standards, $120, but appeared trivial to two American engineering students, considering that hundreds of babies are born each year in need of a place beneath the baby warmer at their hospital. Duke-Engineering World Health is a summer program that places more than 50 undergraduate engineering majors in developing world hospitals each year. Students travel from all over the world to join the program in Tanzania, Nicaragua and Honduras. Last year, students in the program placed almost $1,000,000 worth of medical equipment back in to service. Lin and Skinner had a tremendous impact on their hospital. "The nurses ... assured us that the [repaired unit] was much stronger and better," they said. Not only did this team learn about medical technology and life in the developing world, but their efforts are literally saving hundreds of lives a year in this impoverished community. |
News and Noteworthy
August 25, 2009 The New York Times-
Research Trove: Patients' online data
DGHI Affiliate Bob Cooke-Deegan, director of the Center of Genome Ethics, Law and Policy at the IGSP, comments on genetic companies offering patients the opportunity to contribute their genetic data into an online database that can be used for research. "I'm very suspicious of a company that has tons of private data getting too cozy with the drug or biotech industry," he said. "But I don't want to say it's not going to work, because I can see all kinds of value that could come out of this." READ MORE
HIV/AIDS is the focus for a new AmeriCorps program in the Triangle
 A small team of AmeriCorps volunteers from across the nation will begin their service in the Triangle area tomorrow that will solely focus on HIV/AIDS prevention and care. The national service organization has expanded its longest running HIV-specific program, known as Caring Counts, to the Raleigh/Durham area. Five volunteers will provide residents with HIV testing, counseling, education and other outreach services over the next 11 months. The AmeriCorps initiative was funded locally by the National AIDS Fund, K.B. Reynolds, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, The Duke Endowment, and the NC Health and Wellness Trust Fund. The partnering organizations supported the creation of a North Carolina Community AIDS Fund, which will oversee the local initiative. Program leaders are excited to welcome the group of AmeriCorps volunteers to the region, and say the HIV awareness program is long overdue. "A lot of folks don't believe HIV is a critical issue in the southeast. But, we are still lagging behind in access to HIV prevention and services," says Beth Stringfield, Program Director of the North Carolina Community AIDS Fund Program, which is housed at the Center for Health Policy.
There are roughly two thousands new cases of HIV in North Carolina a year, and this rate is growing rapidly to surpass many other parts of the country.
"This initiative is incredibly important because it brings awareness and attention to the issue and increases the capacity for local organizations to provide essential services," says Stringfield, who anticipates the program will touch thousands of North Carolinians who have HIV or may be at risk of contracting the virus.
The five AmeriCorps members will work at local organizations four days a week. The fifth day will be dedicated to additional training. Local participating organizations include the Wake County HIV Clinic, the Piedmont HIV Health Care Consortium, North Carolina Central University and the Healthy Schools Initiative through the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
Since 1993, more than half a million Americans have served in AmeriCorps. For more information, contact Beth Stringfield. |
Funding Opportunities Network Infrastructure Support for Emerging Behavioral and Social Research Areas in Aging (R24)
The purpose of this FOA is to provide infrastructure support in specific emerging interdisciplinary areas of behavioral and social research in aging using the NIH Resource-Related Research Project (R24) mechanism. The infrastructure support will facilitate research networks through meetings, conferences, small scale pilots, training, and dissemination to encourage growth and development in specified emerging areas and resources. Mechanism of Support. This FOA will utilize the NIH Resource-Related Research Project (R24) grant mechanism. Funds Available and Anticipated Number of Awards. NIA expects to make 3-5 awards totaling $750,000 total costs in the first year for all projects, and up to $3.5 million over the 5 year project period. Because the nature and scope of the proposed research will vary from application to application, it is anticipated that the size and duration of each award will also vary. The total amount awarded and the number of awards will depend upon the quality, duration, and costs of the applications received. READ MORE
Healthy Aging through Behavioral Economic Analyses of Situations (R01)
The National Institute on Aging (NIA), National Institutes of Health, solicits Research Project Grant (R01) applications that propose to translate basic findings from Behavioral Economics into behavior change interventions targeting health behaviors associated with chronic health conditions of mid-life and older age. Applications should propose small pilot clinical trials or demonstration projects, ideally based on collaborations between individuals with expertise in behavioral economics and psychologists, psychiatrists, clinicians, or others with expertise in aging or implementing behavioral interventions. Mechanism of Support. This FOA will utilize the R01 grant mechanism. Funds Available and Anticipated Number of Awards. Depending on the availability of funding, the NIA expects to make 4 or 5 awards totaling $1,250,000 total costs in the first year, and $3,750,000 over the 3 year project period. READ MORE
* * *
For additional funding opportunities, click here.
|
Get Involved in Global Health!
DGHI has made it easier for you to get involved in global health at Duke. Click below for an easy-to-use guide to global health education, fieldwork, events, service and more.
Funding Opportunities
DGHI Request for Proposals: Small International Travel Grants DEADLINE: 5 pm, October 1, 2009
DGHI is offering small international travel awards of up to $5,000 each to Duke graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty to pursue global health research opportunities in low or middle income countries (see World Bank list). These grants are aimed at researchers looking to explore research collaborations by visiting an international site. Applications will be reviewed on a biannual schedule, and should include a brief (no more than three pages) description of proposed activities, budget, and applicant's CV. Applications should emphasize the relationship of the proposal to the six Signature Research Initiatives, and the prospects for longer term research funding support. Proposals will be reviewed by DGHI internal and external reviewers.
Proposal due dates: October 1, 2009 and March 1, 2010
Funding award dates: October 30, 2009 and March 30, 2010
For questions, please contact Kelly Deal
Overseas Fellowships in Global Health and Clinical Research DEADLINE: December 3, 2009
The Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholars and Fellows (FICRS-F) Support Center at Vanderbilt is offering a one-year clinical research training experience for graduate-level U.S. students in the health professions. This is an opportunity for highly motivated individuals to experience mentored research training at top-ranked NIH-funded research centers in developing countries. MORE
* * *
| |
|
|
|
|
Become a DGHI Fan, Follower and Subscriber:
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter Flickr
| |
