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Greetings!
DGHI was established more than four years ago to be a catalyst for global health education, research and service-learning. In addition to our education and training programs and more than 100 faculty-led research projects, DGHI facilitates global health at Duke through a series of grant opportunities for students and faculty. Today's newsletter highlights several of these opportunities.
Students: Read how DGHI fieldwork grants have inspired Duke students to expand their horizons and engage with the world. You too can be inspired and changed by participating in a global health fieldwork project. The deadline for applications is March 5.
Until next week,
Geelea Seaford and Everyone at DGHI
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Global Health Fieldwork: The Necessary Ingredient
 Behind every groundbreaking global health project is funding to help make it possible. For Duke faculty working with partners in the field, DGHI funding has jumpstarted scientific discoveries with important policy implications. For students and trainees engaging in service-learning projects, DGHI fieldwork grants enable and facilitate valuable on-the-ground experience in global health research.
Over the past three years, DGHI has awarded 65 Duke students more than $206,000 in grants as part of its Student Fieldwork Program. This fieldwork experience often proves to be a rewarding one for students, who return to Duke with a deeper understanding of the rewards and challenges of conducting project work in a resource-poor setting and who then go on to explore promising careers in global health. "DGHI funding was instrumental to my success during my second summer in Brazil," said global health certificate student and senior Rollin Say, whose research project with community partner Edumed Institute examined the effects of a new telemedicine system in a remote Brazilian community in the Amazon basin. "The grant allowed me to put myself into a challenging situation where I saw the classroom lessons about international research color themselves into real-world obstacles, and the experience was extremely formative for my development as a future physician and scholar." Say encourages Duke students who are interested in pursuing global health fieldwork to make use of the mentoring and funding opportunities available at Duke and DGHI. He supplemented the DGHI grant last summer with additional funding from other departments at Duke. For Duke senior Austin Mattox, the DGHI-funded project last summer challenged him to delve deeper into the health challenges facing health care workers and patients at the Mwika Uuwo Lutheran Dispensary in Moshi, Tanzania. The process of securing funding for his trip became an important step in designing a fieldwork project that would not only apply learned global health principles to a field setting, but could also benefit his Tanzanian community partners.  Apply for a DGHI Fieldwork Grant by Saturday March 5, 2011 at 5pm. |
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Service-Learning Experience Added to Global Nutrition Course
With support from Duke's Service-Learning Program, students enrolled in Global Nutrition this semester will complement their coursework with fieldwork experience in Durham that serves the most vulnerable population - children. It is the first DGHI course to include service-learning as part of its curriculum.
Taught by DGHI faculty member and Nutritionist Sara Benjamin-Neelon, students will help prepare backpacks full of food for low-income children at a Durham elementary school. The backpacks are distributed each Friday afternoon to children who lack sufficient food over the weekend, when school meals are not available. Students will examine the nutritional value of foods distributed to children and use past distribution records to calculate the total number of calories and percent of calories from fat, carbohydrate and protein in the foods distributed to children each weekend. Duke students will also have the opportunity to volunteer to cook and serve a meal at the Inter-Faith Council (IFC) soup kitchen in Chapel Hill.
"This service-learning experience helps connect students to the issue of food insecurity in Durham and strengthens the relationship between Duke and the community," said Benjamin-Neelon, who has worked with a number of emergency food assistance programs in the Triangle over the past 13 years. "Hunger and food insecurity are global issues affecting millions of children worldwide, and this experience will help students understand that these issues affect children both globally and locally."
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DGHI Gives Interactive Presentation of iPad Program at Technology Conference
DGHI is taking a major step toward more efficient data collection, organization and sharing of global health research in the field with the use of the Apple iPad. The iPad pilot program began in the fall, and last month sent a  global health fellow into a low-resource setting with the iPad for research, a first for Duke. Outlining the successes and opportunities of the program thus far, DGHI's Educational Technologies Consultant Marc Sperber and Duke Center for Instructional Technology's Shawn Miller delivered an interactive poster presentation at last week's EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) 2011 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The unique poster presentation "iPads as a Fieldwork Research Tool" was in the form of an interactive experience for the user on the iPad tablet itself. As part of the presentation, Sperber and Miller highlighted both the usefulness and limitations of using iPads as a teaching and field research tool based on five in-class exercises and student feedback. Last semester, students learned how to use the iPad in Research Methods in Global Health Sciences II, a Master of Science in Global Health (MSc-GH) course taught by DGHI faculty member Jen'nan Read. Ayaba Worjoloh, an OB/GYN fellow in the Global Health Residency and Fellowship Pathway Program, is currently using the iPad for her qualitative research at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania. This summer, MSc-GH students will conduct their global health research in locations around the world using the iPad.
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WISER Featured in UN Publication: "Education Boost for girls in Muhuru Bay"
 Carol Gor, 36, thought her chances of obtaining a secondary education ended 11 years ago when her parents, who rely on fishing along Lake Victoria, failed to raise the fees. She stayed at home for a few years, got pregnant and was soon married.
"When I completed primary school at the age of 15, I hoped my parents would somehow find the money to take me to secondary school; but they did not," Gor told IRIN. "With peer pressure, I soon found myself pregnant; I then got married and before too long I had had five children, but I didn't give up, I persuaded my husband to allow me to return to primary school and try again."
For Gor and 60 other girls, the establishment of the Women's Institute for Secondary Education and Research (WISER) by DGHI faculty member Sherryl Broverman and Duke alumnus Andy Cunningham has helped them obtain an education that was otherwise only a dream. Dorcas Oyugi, the school's principal, said the institution would help bridge the gap between boys' and girls' education in the division. WISER also offers several subjects that are not mandated in the Kenyan secondary school curriculum, including sign language, French, business and computer studies.
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