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August 16, 2011
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Greetings!
After much fanfare and a few delays, the Duke Men's Basketball Team have arrived in Shanghai for the start of the Friendship Games in China and Dubai. DGHI will join the team in Beijing where we've planned a number of events to highlight the work of our faculty and partners at Peking University and the George Institute for Global Health. Look for regular updates and pics on the DGHI Facebook and Twitter pages beginning Monday. We're now accepting registrations for DGHI's fifth anniversary celebration event on October 3, Global Health 2020: Acting Today to Improve Tomorrow. Registration is required and free, so take one minute to complete the short form today! Our last issue incorrectly listed the title of former DGHI faculty member John Crump. Crump was appointed to an endowed professorial chair in the Centre for International Health at the University of Otago.
Until next time,
Geelea Seaford and Everyone at DGHI
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DGHI Explores Neonatal Health Training Partnership in Ghana
DGHI is looking to expand its global health education and training opportunities for students and trainees through a neonatal fellowship program under development with partners in Ghana. This summer, Dr. Ronald Goldberg, chief of the Neonatology Division at the Duke University Medical Center, and Sarah Trent, assistant director for International  Operations at DGHI, traveled to Accra and Kumasi to explore collaborations and to facilitate the development of the fellowship training program.
Goldberg and Trent, along with partners at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, met with academic and clinical collaborators, political officials including the Minister of Health and Deputy Minister of Health, and the King of Asantehene Kingdom to seek support for the neonatal fellowship program. The main Ghanaian partners for the program are Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, and University of Ghana Medical School. During a visit with King of the Asantehene Kingdom, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and his wife Lady Julia, they expressed gratitude for Duke's interest in developing a fellowship in Ghana, concern over the dismal state of neonatal and pediatric health care and a desire to partner with Duke to improve infant mortality.
The neonatal fellowship program would help to address the country's high rates of neonatal mortality and morbidity by training Ghanaian and West African physicians as neonatologists in Ghana and at Duke. This partnership aims to build capacity in country to decrease neonatal morbidity and mortality rates. The program could begin as early as January 2012. 
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DGHI Student Council Member Petitions for More Foreign Aid Support in Guest Column
On Monday, The Durham Herald-Sun featured a poignant guest column by Braveen Ragunanthan, a global health certificate student and undergraduate co-chair of the DGHI Student Council. He calls on the public to demand more from their elected officials and the 2012 presidential candidates with more support for foreign aid, which he points out is less than one percent of the annual budget.
 Where is the Foreign Aid Discussion?
Special to The Herald-Sun
By Braveen Ragunanthan
"During the Republican debate in Iowa this past Thursday night, issues of HIV/AIDS or famine in Somalia were absent from the discussion on foreign policy or the rest of the debate.
Certainly, there are far more important issues than the 12 million people at risk of death from starvation in the worst famine that the Horn of Africa has seen in 60 years. Flat-line funding or cuts to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) seem irrelevant to what America is facing, too. Today, many of my fellow Americans would demand that I see a psychiatrist for crying out against cuts to our foreign aid - specifically humanitarian aid. But I pray some of us simply pause and realize that America's foreign aid is barely 1 percent of the annual budget. Less than 1 percent. That's it. A recent national poll suggests that Americans estimate that we are spending 20 to 25 percent of our budget on foreign aid. Democratic voters feel that 10 percent would be appropriate while Republicans assert that 5 percent is enough. Reality is not even 1 percent of the budget. I am still listening to what so many tell me right now: "America is in debt. We're extended all over the world. American families are hurting right now. The United States can no longer afford wasteful foreign aid or assistance." I agree that our enormous problems require urgent action in the best interest of our nation. However as we work to implement cuts and increase efficiencies in defense spending and other targets, I urge us not to fall under the impression that the grand solution is reducing humanitarian aid..."
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OGACHI, Partners Explore Methods for Improving Elder Care
With a growing adult population age 60 and older and a spike in chronic diseases, such as diabetes, cancer, heart and cerebrovascular diseases, many Caribbean nations find it difficult to meet the health care demands of its citizens. To address this, the Duke University School of Nursing Office of Global and Community Health Initiatives (OGACHI), along with the Pan American Health Organization - Office of Caribbean Program Coordination, the Regional Nursing Body of the Caribbean Community and the University of the West Indies School of Nursing developed a comprehensive, community-based framework that highlights ways to improve the longevity and healthy aging of the Caribbean's elder population.
As featured online this month in Public Health Nursing, Pillars for the Care of Older Persons in the Caribbean: A Comprehensive Community-Based Framework aims to assist health care professionals, service providers, researchers and policy makers in developing and implementing strategies, policies and regulations needed to provide holistic care for older Caribbean adults. The recommendations were developed with extensive input from health and social service professionals in the Caribbean and the US.
The Pillars framework is built upon four interrelated themes: primary care with care management; integrated services coordination; population-based health promotion and disease prevention; and planning and accountability.
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BennettLab Uses Technology to Help Patients Manage Weight Loss
Helping Americans lose weight remains one of the major challenges of the 21st century. Nationwide, over two-thirds of adults are overweight, and the rates are higher among socially-disadvantaged populations. Recent figures show that obesity rates are higher among African American women (49%), compared to their non-Hispanic white counterparts (31%). To combat this epidemic, it will take more than fad diets and relying on individuals to change their lifestyles. It will take creative innovation and a population-relevant, holistic approach.
This is what DGHI faculty Gary Bennett and his research team at The BennettLab realized when they launched Shape, a series of weight loss studies that  combine the newest evidence in weight loss with the latest web and telephony technologies to create personally-tailored weight loss programs for obese women.
Bennett, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience and global health, and his team were looking for a program that would help them leverage the web, IVR, and text messaging to improve the efficacy of their weight loss studies, as well as lower its cost in order to extend its reach. Twilio powers the underlying communications platform for outbound/inbound calls and text messaging.
The research team selected Twilio because it enabled them to quickly and easily integrate voice and SMS capabilities into the underlying technology used to power Shape.
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CHPIR Research Scholar Publishes Series on US Health Care System
 Christopher Conover, a research scholar of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research (CHPIR), has written a series of blog posts on the American healthcare system on the Enterprise Blog, a publication of the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute.
The topic will be the focus of his new book American Health Economy Illustrated, which is slated to be released in January 2012.
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News from Duke Global Health Libraries
The journal AIDS is now available online! The Medical Center Library has purchased online access to AIDS from 1997 to present. Links are available from the E-Journals page, Catalog, and from individual citations in PubMed and other article databases. Print volumes are still available from volume 1 - present.
Learn a new language: The Libraries now provide free access to Byki language learning software with learning materials for over 70 languages. We've pulled together a lot of other language learning resources in a guide, and also have a guide for English language learning.
Schedule a library research instruction session or consultation: Subject specialist librarians are available to help your students do effective research for papers and presentations. Call on us as you plan your assignments or to schedule a hands-on library session for your students. Contact information for librarians and data specialists appear below.
Also see:
-Customize PubMed and Get Alerts with MyNCBI:
-Web of Science Improved
-Find, Use and Manage Datasets
-School of Medicine Construction Impacts Medical Center Library
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 | | Progress Against Polio in Nigeria |
DGHI Adjunct Professor is Committed to Eradicating Polio
Muhammad Pate, DGHI adjunct professor and newly-appointed Minister of Health in Nigeria, says his country is committed at all levels to eradicate polio.
In 2009, there were 388 polio cases in Nigeria. In 2010, there were 18. Now, Nigeria is in the final push to wipe out this disease.
Pate is a 2006 alumnus of the Fuqua School of Business and an adjunct professor of the Duke Global Health Institute. He also serves as Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency.
He is featured in this new video from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Robert Malkin Featured in USAID Video for Award-winning Maternal Health Innovation
 | | Saving Lives at Birth: The DevelopmentXChange |
Pratt School of Engineering and DGHI faculty member Robert Malkin is featured in a new video that highlights the winners of USAID's Saving Lives At Birth Grand Challenge. The ketchup-like pouch developed by Malkin and DHT-lab at Duke helps to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and is one of 19 innovations that were recognized at a special ceremony which was attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah.
Malkin's invention is the type of low-tech, high-impact device that can prevent the hundreds of thousands of newborns from contracting HIV at the time of birth. Sec. Clinton praised Malkin's innovation as a good idea to save the lives of mothers and babies.
Gates Foundation Grant to Fund Duke Medicine Pneumonia Research
Geoff Ginsburg, professor of medicine (Cardiology) and pathology and director of the Center for Genomic Medicine in the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, learned that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will award a Duke research group $2.7 million to develop a non-human primate model of bacterial pneumonia and discovery of novel diagnostic biomarkers.
The group's proposal will create a model for bacterial pneumonia in non-human primates and will use the model to explore the development of a host-based genomic signature specific for pneumococcal pneumonia that is distinct from the signatures they previously developed for viral respiratory infection in humans (under a program funded by DARPA).
DGHI faculty Chris Woods, associate professor of medicine (Infectious Diseases), is one of six co-investigators on the grant.
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