|
|
Greetings!
Global Health Dispatch: Diaries from the Field is DGHI's blog of student experiences and reflections of their time in the field. Today we feature highlights from yesterday's Capstone presentations and a special blog post by a Duke medical student who recently traveled to Honduras with Dennis Clements' Exploring Medicine class. Follow our blog as other global health students prepare for their summer adventures. Subscribe here to receive regular updates.
There's only four more days to submit your ideas for the $10K Maternal Health Challenge issued by ABC News, DGHI and the Lemelson Foundation.The deadline for entries is Friday at midnight. Winners will be announced in early May.
Until next week,
Geelea Seaford and Everyone at DGHI
|
|
|
|
Final Student Projects Address Range of Global Health Issues
Addressing health disparities in underserved populations begins with an innovative idea. On Monday, 39 graduating Duke seniors showcased their innovative ideas, research findings and proposals for a variety of global health issues in the US and around the world.
The poster session is the culmination of the Global Health Capstone course, which is under the direction of DGHI faculty members and Capstone Instructors David Boyd and Dennis Clements. Topics ranged from improving water  quality in India, to HIV/AIDS orphans in Tanzania and HIV transmission in Kenyan fishing villages, to post-disaster relief in Pakistan. Other projects focused on issues such as pesticide exposure, oral health and promotion of breast feeding in North Carolina and the Southeast region of the U.S. "A common misconception is that global health is abroad. It makes people uncomfortable to look at health issues at home," said Katherine Roemer, a biological anthropology and anatomy major whose team focused their project on imposing higher cigarette taxes in the Southeast. "Our team focused on cigarette taxes because it doesn't get as much attention in global health, and we wanted to work on something that can be useful in our own backyard." The team, which also included Sarah Chapin, Brian Clement, Alexa Monroy and Gregory Morrison, found that increasing cigarette taxes is most often viewed as fiscal policy by lawmakers rather than a public health issue-although tobacco use is the number one cause of preventable death in the U.S. After conducting research and seeking expert advice and mentorship from several state legislators, the students learned that in addition to party politics, a governor's position on the issue is influential. Factors that prove to be less influential in changing policy include the concentration of smokers in a district, tobacco lobbying contributions and the number of tobacco farms. "The Global Health Capstone has given us a skill set that is applicable and useful in the future," said senior Alexa Monroy, a neuroscience major.  See more photos from the event.
|
|
DGHI Awards Pilot Funding to Water Treatment Project in Southeast Asia
DGHI has awarded a $50,000 pilot grant to Marc Jeuland for a global environmental health project that focuses on water treatment in Southeast Asia. Co-investigators on  the project include other DGHI faculty members John Crump, Daniel Westreich and Joseph Brown of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Jeuland, assistant professor in public policy and global health, will lead the study which measures preference tradeoffs associated with technologies for point-of-use (POU) drinking water treatment, and the linkages between usage and health outcomes in Cambodia. Economic cost-benefit analyses suggest that POU treatment of drinking water can provide large health and welfare gains to households in developing countries. The research will accompany a detailed health impacts study on the effectiveness of disinfection technologies aimed at reducing disease incidence in rural communities that have unreliable water supplies.
Southeast Asia is a relevant location for this work because households have a known aversion to chlorinated water, which has been shown to affect the reliability of piped water systems by reducing community support for water treatment. Households may be unwilling to treat drinking water with chlorine because of its taste or odor, or people may find that bulky filters occupy precious space in the household. There may also be resistance to rigid treatment regimes that constrain beneficiaries' ability to use water as they please. |
|
|
DGHI Blog: A Changing Perspective on Global Health Outreach
By Wendy Zhang, MSIII in the Duke School of Medicine
It's amazing how quickly time passes. Early in March 2010, Honduras was still a dream away, and now in April 2011, I can say that it's the 4th most visited country of my life, that I saw and treated a fraction of the ~1000 people our  group has seen and treated in the past 2 years (some of them double, triple, quadruple, or more-counted...), that I shed tears after glimpsing some of the hardships the people we treat face every day, that I met amazing people who have helped me grow as a person and as someone entering the medical professions (both within our medical group and those within the communities we visited),and that I've read two books that have opened by eyes to some of the world's less-spoken-about stories of suffering and bravery ("Enrique's Journey" and "Half the Sky").
Having had the opportunity to see Honduras twice, I'm also amazed at how many things had changed in a year and also at how many things stayed the same. A year ago in Las Mercedes, there was no electricity for miles around, no "western" flushing toilets, no showerhead that was more than waist-high, (and no ginormous spiders...). The clinic didn't have painted walls or tiled floors or a working kitchen. These were luxuries, though still elusive to the people in those communities, that greeted us this year when we arrived. It's amazing how these comforts that we so take for granted here can change your experiences in Las Mercedes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Duke-NUS Awarded S$2 Million for Student Scholarships
One of Singapore's most respected institutions, The Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple, announced it is donating S$2 million to the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore (Duke-NUS). Over the years, the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple has consistently reached out to the needy. Its spirit of caring, compassion and service to the society, is exemplified through its gifts to various charities, medical and educational projects.
The S$2 million endowed gift will establish the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Scholarship Programme, which will further the education of all needy Singaporean students pursuing the four-year Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) programme at the Duke-NUS medical school, regardless of their religion.
"Our students come from some of the world's best universities including the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University," said Ranga Krishnan, dean of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School. "These bright and capable individuals are single-minded in their passion to serve the people and to deliver the best medical care to patients. Duke-NUS is very grateful to be a recipient of the Temple's generosity as the scholarships will go a long way towards helping our students to fulfill their medical aspirations, and to make notable contributions to society."
|
|
|
| Received this as a forward? Sign up for future issues.
|
|
|
|
|
|
