A blog by Syamak Moattari, this blog reflects Syamak's experiences during his journey at the School of Public Health and beyond.
Syamak earned his MD in 1995 and currently is a Doctor of Public Health Candidate in International Health at Boston University.
You as a meeting moderator/facilitator want to schedule a meeting with super busy colleagues. You don’t have time to manage tons of back and forth emails or simply call one by one to find out a feasible time for upcoming meeting.
Don’t worry you can take advantage of the information age. A Switzerland based company named Doodle.com has made it easy for you. Surprisingly for using their application you don’t need to create a new account, or give your personal information or even email address . Simply go over their straightforward application and create your own poll for scheduling the event with your friend. You can link the application to your Facebook account or Google calendar as well, it is cool and fun.
During the last 13 days, up to May 6, WHO has confirmed that 25 countries are affected by the Swine flu and 31 persons have died from Swine flu. WHO data indicates that about 60 000 persons died from TB during the same period. By a rough comparison with the number of news reports found by Google news search, Hans Rosling calculates a News/Death ratio and issue an alert for media hype on Swine flu and a neglect of tuberculosis.
A poem by Sa’adi, an Iranian poet (1184 – 1283/1291?), is used to grace the entrance to the Hall of Nations of the UN building in New York with this call for breaking all barriers:
بنی آدم اعضای یک پیکرند
که در آفرينش ز یک گوهرند
چو عضوى به درد آورد روزگار
دگر عضوها را نماند قرار
تو کز محنت دیگران بی غمی
نشاید که نامت نهند آدمی
Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.
In harmony with the rebirth of nature, the Iranian New Year Celebration, or Nowruz, always begins on the first day of spring. Nowruz ceremonies are symbolic representations of two ancient concepts – the End and the Rebirth; or Good and Evil. A few weeks before the New Year, Iranians clean and rearrange their homes. They make new clothes, bake pastries and germinate seeds as sign of renewal. The ceremonial cloth is set up in each household. Troubadours, referred to as Haji Firuz, disguise themselves with makeup and wear brightly colored outfits of satin. These Haji Firuz, singing and dancing, parade as a carnival through the streets with tambourines, kettle drums, and trumpets to spread good cheer and the news of the coming new year.
The origins of Nowruz are unknown, but they go back several thousand years predating the Achaemenian Dynasty. The ancient Iranians had a festival called “Farvardgan” which lasted ten days, and took place at the end of the solar year. It appears that this was a festival of sorrow and mourning, signifying the end of life while the festival of Nowruz, at the beginning of spring signified rebirth, and was a time of great joy and celebration.
Today (December 18th)is International Migrants Day and despite the controversy about immigration in any country you can see a lot of positive impacts of immigrants in their destinations. Maliheh Free Clinic is a clinic started by an Iranian immigrant to the United States.
Garland Waller, an assistant professor of film and television in the College of Communication at BU, has produced a short film about mothers who lose custody of their children to their abusive partners. Click on the video above to watch the film.
Using internet technology and search engines for learning about health problems trends is cost effective and cheap tool in the hand of today’s epidemiologists.
Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends. But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?
Google team has found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. Google compared its query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and discovered that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States.
At the end of his second term as the 42nd President of the United States, President Clinton established the William J. Clinton Foundation. Since then the Foundation has grown into a global nongovernmental organization with more than 800 staff and volunteers around the world, with offices in New York City, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Boston, Massachusetts.
On the top of its web page, you can see this simple and powerful measure:
The success of our work is measured by a single question: Are people better off now than we started?
The Clinton Foundation generally does not make grants to outside organizations. The Clinton Foundation directs its financial resources to its own programs, both domestically and throughout the world. Combating climate change, treating HIV/AIDS and Malaria, fighting childhood obesity, promoting economic opportunity, and creating sustainable development in Africa are among current initiatives in the Foundation.
In 2002, President Clinton established the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) to reorganize markets and work with governments to make treatment more accessible in the developing world. Just six years later, CHAI is providing 69 countries with access to affordable drugs and diagnostics, and working intensively with 22 countries to scale up care and treatment. More than 1.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS are now on lifesaving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment purchased under CHAI agreements.
In addition, CHAI’s efforts are helping to create and improve overall health systems in several ways: lowering the cost of essential tests and treatments, establishing major programs that focus on bringing HIV/AIDS care to vulnerable populations, building human resource capacity, and providing targeted assistance where it is needed most.
Total revenue of the organization in 2007 was $131,450,000. Only 3.2 % of expenses were related to administration and management.
“ If we work to leave people better off than when we started, if we give our children more opportunitiesand a chance to live their dreams, if we focus on our common humanity instead of our interestingdifferences, and if we value our shared responsibilities, we can build a community of global citizensand have a tremendously positive impact on our world and the lives of others.”
Based on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Report in October 2008, job losses continued in manufacturing, construction, and several service-proving industries. Health care and mining continued to add jobs. Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percents. Employment has fallen by 1-2 million in the first 10 months of 2008; over half of the decrease in the past 3 months.
Health care employment continued to expand in October, with an increase of 26,000. Over the past 12 months, health care employment has grown by 348,000. The mining industry added 7,000 jobs in October. Since a low in April 2003, mining employment has grown by 246,000.
Each time I watch his speech at Grant Park in Chicago, I can’t control my tears. Can you understand this moment? He is not only a black candidate (now elected president of the United States of America), but also a son of an immigrant from Kenya. The son of an African man can be the president of the United States of America. This is the moment, this is the reason that why so many people want to come to this country. Your son can be the president of the US if he is qualified. Can you imagine? a black family will live in “White House” for at least four years? This is the moment; this is the moment of change. I am sure Martin watches this moment and can tell you, his dream finally came true.
This generation may forget many things, but the past generation remembers how Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a public bus to a white passenger. She was arrested and convicted for disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance in 1955. The past generation remembers 200,000 people joined the March on Washington D.C and Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous speech “I have a dream”.
Each time I think about Barak and Michelle and their dates in Harvard Square, I feel more connected to these respectful fellows. I usually do my groceries at Market Basket very close to the Harvard Law School, because of better deal, who knows, may Barack and Michelle would go there as well.
Devex is a resource for jobs, business opportunities, professional networking, and news for professionals working in international development, global health, and foreign assistance.
Vision, Do Good, Do it well
Each year, international development agencies such as the World Bank and foundations such as the Gates Foundation spend over 200 billion euros on projects to improve lives in the developing world. We are doing our small part to empower the professionals who implement these projects to spend each of those euros, dollars, pounds, and yen more efficiently toward more effective development projects.
It’s time to open up the development industry to new participants and ideas – by creating partnerships among firms and NGOs from around the world and by increasing the involvement of the people of the developing world. It’s time to spend more money on the development projects themselves and less on administrative expenses. It’s time that we ensure development assistance truly brings about development.
We know that today’s international development professionals are seeking out innovative tools to make their work more efficient and effective, rather than just relying on old methods of doing business. That’s why we have a vision to “Do Good. Do It Well.TM” by supporting all of you who make development happen. We are a small, focused organization and we are striving to be your first resource and your long-term partner for improving lives in the developing world.
During the time of economic crisis finding a right job for an entry level international health professional is not easy. It is a process and you need to plan the process in advance.You need to practice preparation and develop your skills for getting a job. Hunting a job, conducting a successful interview, starting a job and maintaining the job need a lot of skills. Communication skills, stress management and technical skills are among most important skills that you need to master.
Remember, job market is very competitive during the economic crisis. Suppose you are an employer with a lot of financial stress and for an important task you want to hire somebody, sounds like gambling. There is no room for making mistake. On the other hand, because of the economic problem a lot of qualified people are out there looking for job. If you are an entry level professional you have very difficult time to find a right job. So be prepared.
The first step is that you must be patient. The average job search is 2-6 months. Get ready for 6 months of hard work. Keep calm and remind yourself you need to keep trying hard. Job hunting is a job itself. You need to work day to day on this job. Everyday work on it and let your friends know that you are on the process, so you may take advantage of their social networks as well. Don’t wait for the job to come to you, go and get it. Walk around; go to companies, meet people and ask colleagues in different companies to set an informational interview with you (1) . Sitting with middle and high level employees in your job category and asking them to tell you about their experiences for job hunting and the nature of the job will give you a better picture of the process and it is a kind of formative evaluation.
Knowing the job market means knowing who is hiring. Increase your network, participate in professional events, conferences, seminars, and meet as many as people you can. Let everybody know you, as a hard worker and enthusiastic professional, are looking for a job. Go review your courses and books. Sharp your professional knowledge. Be flexible, don’t be idealistic, reduce your expectations, you need to go through the door, so start with a low level job, if you are qualified soon you can get promotion or even find a right job in another company with your experiences in the low level job.
Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, get your career plan flexible, and have different strategies. If there is no job in the field of international health, find a domestic work. If there is no program manager position available, ask for research assistant position. Job hunting is a job itself, as soon as you start it, you actually start a job, so don’t postpone it. You need to make a living, work on it and Good Luck.
[1] I learned this fact from Professor Donald Thea at the BU School of Public Health when I asked him for job hunting advice last week.
The Economist has created a global virtual electoral college with each country represented according to the size of its population. The votes will not really count for the US election of course, but the results could be revealing all the same.
Will the world divide into a clear pattern of “red” countries and “blue” ones? Who is your country supporting? And how do readers around the world, given the chance to comment, view the candidates and the issues? Log on now and find out.
So far, Democratic candidate Barack Obama is winning the poll by 8,932 to 130 electoral college votes.
The Global Electoral College is running alongside The Economist’s regular coverage of the election and its blog dedicated to American politics, “Democracy in America”.
The nomination deadline for the Gates Award is October 31, 2008.
In December, 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced the establishment of the International Gates Award for Global Health. The Gates Award has been established to recognize an organization yearly that has made a major and lasting contribution to the field of global health.
The prize consists of a distinctive award sculpture and a prize amount of 1 million dollars.
The Gates Award for Global Health was established by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to reward and exemplify organizations which have developed processes for improving health, especially in resource poor settings, with measurable results. The Gates Award for Global Health recognizes past achievements and the promise of continuing activity and improvement.
Any organization from any country in the world that has substantively improved the health and the lives of people in need may be nominated for the Gates Award for Global Health; the organization may be a charitable institution, a private company, or a public entity.
Nominations will be considered by an international jury consisting of health professionals from developing countries and the Global Health Council’s Board of Directors. Nominations submitted will be reviewed by this jury and a winner will be selected. The jury member names will be publicized on the Global Health Council website once it is established.
The award will be presented in Washington, D.C., at a special Awards Ceremony during the Global Health Council’s Annual International Conference. The winner’s name is embargoed until the time of the ceremony.
This will be the 9th year that this award will be presented. The past seven recipients have represented a broad range of global health players.They are:
2001 ICDDR, B, a research-based organization
2002 Rotary, a large service based organization
2003Brazil’s National AIDS Program, a governmental program
2004 BRAC, a community-based health program
2005 AMREF, an organization who’s mission is to improve the health of disadvantaged people in Africa as a means for them to escape poverty and improve the quality of their lives
2006 The Carter Center, guided by a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering
2007The Population and Community Development Association, leading the way in Thailand with their groundbreaking AIDS and Positive Partnerships programs
2008Aravind Eye Care System, fulfilling their mission of eradicating needless blindness through highly effective sustainability models
Each year more than 4 million children are born with birth defects. This book highlights the unprecedented opportunity to improve the lives of children and families in developing countries by preventing some birth defects and reducing the consequences of others. A number of developing countries with more comprehensive health care systems are making significant progress in the prevention and care of birth defects. In many other developing countries, however, policymakers have limited knowledge of the negative impact of birth defects and are largely unaware of the affordable and effective interventions available to reduce the impact of certain conditions. Reducing Birth Defects: Meeting the Challenge in the Developing World includes descriptions of successful programs and presents a plan of action to address critical gaps in the understanding, prevention, and treatment of birth defects in developing countries. This study also recommends capacity building, priority research, and institutional and global efforts to reduce the incidence and impact of birth defects in developing countries.
Birth outcomes have improved dramatically worldwide in the past 40 years. Yet there is still a large gap between the outcomes in developing and developed countries. This book addresses the steps needed to reduce that gap. It reviews the available statistics of low birth weight, prematurity, and birth defects; reviews current knowledge and practices of a healthy pregnancy, identifies cost-effective opportunities for improving birth outcomes and supporting families with an infant handicapped by birth problems, and recommens priority research, capacity building, and institutional and global efforts to reduce adverse birth outcomes in developing countries. The committee has based its study on data and information from several developing countries, and provides recommendations that can assist the March of Dimes, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and NIH in tailoring their international program and forging new partnerships to reduce the mortality and morbidity associated with adverse birth outcomes.
The below training resource is designed by Family Health International, to build skills for conducting quality monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities. The course is anchored by three core modules: Introduction to M&E; Collecting, Analyzing and Using Monitoring Data; and Developing an M&E.
Work Plan. The course features seven additional modules designed for specific contexts, such as home-based care programs, voluntary counseling and testing programs, programs for orphans, and clinical care activities. Each module includes both a facilitator’s guide and a participant’s guide. The training is based on adult learning theory and is a combination of lectures, discussions, small group work, interactive practical exercises and role-plays. The course was produced by the IMPACT Project, managed by FHI for USAID.
Environmental management systems (EMSs) are tools that corporations and some government agencies use to manage environmental issues. These systems may vary from facility (or agency) to facility but the basic premise is to implement the broader concept of sound and proactive environmental management. In recent years, EMS has evolved further to respond to increasing stakeholder pressure to improve social responsibility. As more companies, federal agencies, and organizations choose to implement EMSs, such as ISO 14001, it is important to consider the current state of the research concerning the relative successes and obstacles associated with existing systems in practice and what impact it will have, if any, on environmental health.
Sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancies, infertility, and other reproductive problems are major concerns around the world, especially in developing countries. This book describes the magnitude of these problems and what is known about the effectiveness of interventions in four areas: infection-free sex, intended pregnancies and births, healthy pregnancy and delivery, and healthy sexuality.
Cancer is low or absent on the health agendas of low- and middle-income countries (LMCs) despite the fact that more people die from cancer in these countries than from AIDS and malaria combined. International health organizations, bilateral aid agencies, and major foundations—which are instrumental in setting health priorities—also have largely ignored cancer in these countries.
This book identifies feasible, affordable steps for LMCs and their international partners to begin to reduce the cancer burden for current and future generations. Stemming the growth of cigarette smoking tops the list to prevent cancer and all the other major chronic diseases. Other priorities include infant vaccination against the hepatitis B virus to prevent liver cancers and vaccination to prevent cervical cancer. Developing and increasing capacity for cancer screening and treatment of highly curable cancers (including most childhood malignancies) can be accomplished using “resource-level appropriateness” as a guide. And there are ways to make inexpensive oral morphine available to ease the pain of the many who will still die from cancer.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are increasing in epidemic proportions in developing countries. CVD already accounts for almost 10 percent of the developing world’s burden of disease and is likely to become the developing world’s leading cause of death. There is reason for hope, however, given that huge potential exists for applying R&D to control this emerging epidemic–both in creating powerful new interventions such as vaccines and dietary supplements and in guiding behavior. In addition, a considerable body of evidence suggests that current risk-factor prevention programs and low-cost case management of CVD offer feasible, cost-effective ways to reduce CVD mortality and disability in developing country populations. Large-scale CVD control efforts are lacking, however, and thus governments and individuals are left to make choices about health and health care services without the benefit of appropriate knowledge. This report was designed to promote a policy dialogue on CVD based on informed knowledge of R&D opportunities that offer effective, affordable, and widely applicable responses in developing countries. The report examines (a) the emerging burden of CVD in developing countries, (b) the future worldwide burden of CVD, (c) current prevention and treatment of CVD in developing countries, (d) R&D to support CVD control, (e) opportunities and priorities for R&D, and the need for institutional arrangements for collaboration in facing the epidemic.
Today I met with David Flynn, one of the knowledgeable and very helpful librarians, at Boston University Medical Library.
I told David for conducting a review of literature, I usually use Google to see the magnitude of the literature in the field, and then I search in Cochran Systematic Review, PubMed, Medline and Lexis Nexis.
I told him I also use the advanced search option in Google by choosing language and file type. I asked him if he can help me to learn more about advanced search in Google.
He taught me a very powerful trick in advanced search. It is very useful specially for conducting search on Public Health stuff.
As you know Medline searches among peer reviewed papers and articles. When you want to learn about WHO guidelines, lesson learned by NGOs and those materials as non peer reviewed web published you need to take advantage on 1 billion $ Google search engine.
So the trick is, go to advanced search, put your keywords, language as well as file type. Then in the Search within a site or domain box input the .org if you want Google search your words among NGOs, put .who.int/en (if you want Google does search for you among WHO materials in English), put .edu ( if you want Google conducts the search among universities), and put .gov (if you are looking for materials in Governments websites such as CDC).
Today I enjoyed this trick with finding priceless stuff in Best Practices in International Health. I hope you enjoy it as well.
Preventing chronic diseases: a vital investment, is a Book wrote by WHO. You can see the book below. I found it very useful for understanding the current challenges in global health.
This report shows that the impact of chronic diseases in many low and middle income countries is steadily growing. It is vital that the increasing importance of chronic disease is anticipated, understood and acted upon urgently. This requires a new approach by national leaders who are in a position to strengthen chronic disease prevention and control efforts, and by the international public health community. It is essential to communicate the latest and most accurate knowledge and information to front-line health professionals and the public at large.
The problem
80% of chronic disease deaths occur in low and middle income countries and these deaths occur in equal numbers among men and women
The threat is growing – the number of people, families and communities afflicted is increasing
This growing threat is an under-appreciated cause of poverty and hinders the economic development of many countries
The solution
The chronic disease threat can be overcome using existing knowledge
The solutions are effective – and highly cost-effective
Comprehensive and integrated action at country level, led by governments, is the means to achieve success
The goal
How will we ensure a healthy future for children like Luciano dos Santos, who suffers from hearing loss, and others facing chronic diseases?
An additional 2% reduction in chronic disease death rates worldwide, per year, over the next 10 years
This will prevent 36 million premature deaths by 2015
The scientific knowledge to achieve this goal already exists
10 widespread misunderstandings about chronic disease – and the reality
Ten of the most common misunderstandings and two principal half-truths that have contributed to the neglect of chronic disease are presented in this report. Notions that chronic diseases are a distant threat and are less important and serious than some infectious diseases can be dispelled by the strongest evidence.
Face to face with chronic disease
This chapter presents stories of people from different countries living with chronic diseases and common underlying risks. In a world where more and more people are dying as a result of chronic diseases, and many more millions are disabled, these stories aim to demonstrate the strong and personal impact of chronic diseases on individuals and their families.
25 April is a day of unified commemoration of the global effort to provide effective control of malaria around the world.
World Malaria Day is an opportunity for malaria-free countries to learn about the devastating consequences of the disease and for new donors to join a global partnership against malaria. It is an occasion for research and academia institutions to flag their scientific advances to both experts and the general public. It is chance for countries in affected regions to learn from each other’s experiences and back each other efforts. It is an opportunity for international partners, companies and foundations to showcase their results and reflect together on how to scale up what has been proven to work.
Health students and professionals make posters all the time, but it happens sometimes, you have been asked to make a poster and you do have no idea how you can do that. I started to right a step by step guideline for this purpose, and during my search I found a guideline written by University of Washington.
1. Start PowerPoint: Make a New presentation – a blank one. When asked for a Layout, choose a blank one – one without anything – even a title.
2. Choose the size of your poster: For example 48-60″ wide (across) and exactly 36″ in height (top to bottom). This applies for your individual poster even though you will print it out much smaller than this for grading purposes; doing this will allow you to have the flexibility to print your file as a large poster if your group chooses it.
3. Adding text: In order to add text, the text needs a “container” – a Text Box. Make a text box by
a.Click on the Text Box tool or selecting Text Box under the Insert menu.
b.Click or click-and-drag where you want the text to be. After this second step, you should see the rectangular shape of the Text Box. You can re-size it at any time by dragging one of the little square “handles”. The box will also grow automatically as you type (if it needs to).
As in many programs, you can change the font and size by highlighting the text to be changed and then making the changes. A 100-point font is about an inch high. If you don’t see the size you want in the selection list, you can enter it in by hand.
To move a Text Box, position your pointer over a part of the edge of the box that is not a handle. The pointer should become shaped like a plus sign with arrows. Click and drag the Text Box to the wanted position.
You can change the color of the text, the edge, and the fill as well as other things under the Format menu/Text Box.
Make a separate Text Box for each separate piece of text. “Separate text” means a portion of text that you want to be able to move independently from the others.
4. Adding images: The two ways to add images are with Insert/Picture and with Copy and Paste:
Insert/Picture: This is the most common way of adding graphics to a PowerPoint document. If you have a file that is in one of several standard graphic formats (like JPEG, GIF, PICT, etc.), use the Insert menu/Picture/From-file and select your file. The image will appear on your document with handles. Use one of the corner handles to re-size it. (The corner handles will keep the same aspect ratio; the side handles will not.) Click and drag in the middle of the graphic to move it. You can do many other things to an image (including brightness, cropping, and resetting it to how it was originally brought in) under Format/Picture.
Image size: You need to plan ahead – in the package that created the graphic (or in program like PhotoShop) figure out the final print size of your graphic and scale it to about 200 dpi (dots per inch). The HP-3000 prints at 600 dpi, but the dithering it needs to do for most colors (all except the seven colors RGB and CMYK) takes up space – anything over 200 dpi is ignored for most colors. 150 dpi or even 100 dpi will look fine for most images.
Copy and Paste: Use this if you have something like an Excel graph you want to add to your document. Generally avoid this method if you can – Copy and Paste will often only give you a low-resolution copy of a graphic.
5. Background: You can select a background under the Format menu/Background. If you want a picture background, select “Background” off the Format menu, then click on the down arrow for more options. Select “fill effects” and then the tab for “picture”. Click on “select picture” and find the picture you want from your hard drive. You will probably want to fade or lighten the image prior to using it as background or you may risk the picture competing with your text.
6. Lines, Boxes, Arrows: There are many other things that PowerPoint can do. Next to the Text Box tool are tools to make ovals, boxes, lines, arrows, etc. When you have made one of these, you can change it (when it is selected) with the Format menu/Colors and Lines.
7. Zoom: You can control the zoom amount by clicking on the zoom choice box (if visible), or using the View menu/Zoom.
8. Printing.
If you are printing your individual poster for grading purposes only (not for display), then the following instructions apply to you: Chose “File” then “Print”. Select all to print (default setting), but SELECT the box that says “scale to fit”. You will end up with a small poster (8.5″ X 11″ or 8.5″ x 14″ if you use legal paper). To get maximum benefit from the use of color you should use a color printer, although a black & white printer will also show some gray variations that demonstrate where color is used in the document.
The New Your Times published a report from AP yesterday talking about the Internet search giant Google Inc. unveiled a new feature Tuesday for its popular mapping programs that shines a spotlight on the movement of refugees around the world.
The maps will aid humanitarian operations as well as help inform the public about the millions who have fled their homes because of violence or hardship, according to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with Google on the project.
”All of the things that we do for refugees in the refugee camps around the world will become more visible,” U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees L. Craig Johnstone said at the launch in Geneva.
Users can download Google Earth software to see satellite images of refugee hot spots such as Darfur, Iraq and Colombia. Information provided by the U.N. refugee agency explains where the refugees have come from and what problems they face.
Iranian Journal of Public Health has been continuously published since 1971, as the only Journal in all health domains with wide distribution (including WHO in Geneva and Cairo) in two languages (English and Persian). From 2001 issue, the Journal is published only in English language. During the last 35 years more than 1000 scientific research papers, results of health activities, surveys and services, have been published in this Journal. You can have access to the articles of this journal for free, by clicking here.
Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, starts in the first day of spring. The Persian Parade is an annual event in New York City each year in the last week of March. This year it was on March 30th. Iranians start the parade in Madison Ave from 41st street to 27th street. Please find below the slides that I made during 2008 event.
In the era of information age, as a student, sometimes we need to create on-line surveys to learn about a particular aspect. SurveyMonkey.com has created very interesting intelligent survey software and you can use the basic version of the software for free. The basic version allows you to create a survey with maximum 10 questions with a limitation of 100 respondents.
SurveyMonkeyhas a single purpose: to enable anyone to create professional on-line surveys quickly and easily. Pick a topic and create your survey right now, it is cool and quick. For more info click here.
Happily married people have lower blood pressure than unhappy married people or singles, a Brigham Young University study says.
On the other hand, even having a supportive social network did not translate into a blood pressure benefit for singles or unhappy married people, according to the study.
“There seem to be some unique health benefits from marriage. It’s not just being married that benefits health — what’s really the most protective of health is having a happy marriage,” study author Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychologist who specializes in relationships and health, said in a prepared statement.
The study included 204 married and 99 single adults who wore portable blood-pressure monitors for 24 hours. The monitors recorded blood pressure at random intervals and provided a total of about 72 readings.
A traditional Haft Sin table celebrating Nowruz, the Persian New Year, is seen set Wednesday, March 19, 2008, in the State Dining Room of the White House. Nowruz is, in Persian and some other cultures, including Kurdish culture, a family-oriented holiday celebrating the New Year and the coming of spring. The Haft Sin table has seven items symbolizing new life, joy, love, beauty and health, sunrise, patience and garlic to ward off evil. White House photo by Chris Greenberg
As a global issue, road traffic injuries have been largely ignored by the international community. Even in most low and middle income countries with a huge burden of problem, this problem is ignored by policy makers and societies for a variety of reasons. Corruption is one of those reasons. Poor governance and corruption can lead to road safety being ignored or neglected. In some countries in the developing world it is not rare to negotiate with road traffic police to pay a bribe rather than receiving a traffic ticket. I was traveling by bus between two countries in Middle East; surprisingly police stopped all of foreign buses and asked for money or even cigarettes.
Public respect for traffic rules and for enforcement authorities will be severely diminished, when observes corruption among road traffic police.
Corruption also impacts on the effectiveness of vehicle testing, driver licensing and insurance regimes. Suppose a corrupted road maker with some governmental links builds a road. If the company considers the width of a 200 KM road 19 m instead of 20 m, they cut the edge of 200 square KM road and obviously makes a lot of corrupted “dough”. Weak governance structures in many developing countries are at core of their road safety problems and needs to be addressed if progress is to be made.
The sixth in a series, the March 2008 poll was designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation. A nationally representative random sample of 1,770 adults who say they are registered to vote was interviewed by telephone February 7-16, 2008. This poll finds that health care plays a role in two ways: as an independent issue, and as part of the voters’ growing concerns about the economy.
Health care ranks third as the issue that they want presidential candidates to discuss during the campaign — named by 28% of voters, behind the economy (45%) and Iraq (32%). Party differences exist, with health care ranking second for Democrats, third for independents, and fourth for Republicans. Overall, the share of registered voters picking the economy as the issue they want to hear the candidates talk about doubled since December. The poll also probes deeper into how health care costs contribute to people’s economic anxieties, and finds that for at least some voters, the two issues are intertwined. For more information click here.
A finding by a team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health may account for why the flu virus is more infectious in cold winter temperatures than during the warmer months.
At winter temperatures, the virus’s outer covering, or envelope, hardens to a rubbery gel that could shield the virus as it passes from person to person, the researchers have found. At warmer temperatures, however, the protective gel melts to a liquid phase. But this liquid phase apparently isn’t tough enough to protect the virus against the elements, and so the virus loses its ability to spread from person to person.
The findings were published online March 2 in Nature Chemical Biology. The study was a collaboration between researchers at two NIH institutes, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
“The study results open new avenues of research for thwarting winter flu outbreaks,” said NICHD Director Duane Alexander. “Now that we understand how the flu virus protects itself so that it can spread from person to person, we can work on ways to interfere with that protective mechanism.”
Influenza viruses are usually spread from person to person through coughs and sneezes. Infection with flu virus can cause mild to severe illness, and at times can lead to death.for more info click here.
The new site at UN Data allows anyone to access the United Nations Data Access System. This online, easy-to-use database was created by the UN in order to provide current, relevant, and reliable statistics to the whole world, for free. Using UN Data, you can access statistical information on populations, demographics, trade, commodities, agriculture, employment, the environment, industry, education, tourism, and much more. Now, students, journalists, and everyone else can access data straight from the source – the actual statistics published by the UN.
Roughly a billion people live on less than $1 a day. And 3 billion – fully half the people on Earth – survive on $2 a day or less. Among that first billion, the poorest of the poor, 70 percent are women. For them, each day is a struggle. They simply do not earn enough to meet their needs, but with your help, CARE is working for change.
CARE pioneered programs that help women create self-sufficient credit groups. These groups use loans to start income-generating activities. So instead of struggling each day to meet basic needs, women can make long-term plans for themselves and their children. Health, education and community participation improve. Families are no longer forced to accept the least harmful of several bad options – they become the architects of their own futures.
In celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8, donate to CARE and help women around the world gain economic independence, fulfill their dreams and unleash their full potential.
Two decades of warfare in Afghanistan have created thousands of widows who strive to keep their families together and make ends meet. In 2000, CARE offered training to Afghan widows in several trades, including sewing, knitting, quilt-making and broom-making. Now hundreds of women sell their products in the market. Women like these in Afghanistan have the power to change the world – and you have the power to help them do it.
CARE empowers women to escape poverty by offering skills development, “financial literacy” training and other support that helps women establish and grow their own businesses. Millions of women are already making life better for their families and communities and, with your help, millions more can do the same!
In academia, usually we love to add some new pages to the human knowledge; we are looking for increasing the current knowledge most of the time. Therefore, usually we forget that we already have a lot of existing knowledge and data and we rarely take advantage of using these data. Our goal is to make more data and do more statistics on our findings but what will happen to the data, usually nothing. We save data in the computers’ files or big hardware drawers and we start another project to generate more data.
We save our data with stupid passwords and we don’t let others to have access to our findings. We simply ignore the fact that the most of these findings are produced by public funding. In the academic world, you can see a race between data producers, but rarely people sit and think about the outputs and try to apply the findings in existing problem settings.
I love this observation by Professor Rex Fendall:
“Civilization will be judged not so much on its acquisition of new knowledge but rather on the application of existing knowledge to the betterment of living”
The first time that I wrote a paper in the school of public health I arranged all of my references by hand using index cards, it means at that time, I didn’t know that I can at least use the Insert/ References tool at Microsoft Word. So simply I marked each piece of information with a number and I spent hours to arrange all of the references and if I wanted to change the arrangement of the paper, I must change all of the references, it was a painful and hard approach.
In the second semester of my study I learned that actually I can simply use the Insert/Reference tool at Microsoft Word. So I did it by word and I enjoyed it. But the problem was that I must write the citations by myself and use a standard citation system. If the professor asked me to change the citation, or if I wanted to submit my output in a seminar with different citation protocol, I had to type and change all of the citations, and again experiencing another painful procedure.
In the third semester, finally I learned that Endnote can do all of these things quickly, precisely and accurately. Now I am a big fan of Endnote and if I see a brand new student who started to write papers in grad school or even undergrad programs I definitely suggest him/her to use this magic software.
Now millions of researchers, scholarly writers, students, and librarians use EndNote (patent pending) to search online bibliographic databases, organize their references, images and PDFs in any language, and create bibliographies and figure lists instantly. Instead of spending hours typing bibliographies, or using index cards to organize their references, they do it the easy way—by using EndNote!
One of my favorite TV productions is The Commanding Heights by PBS. In this show you can grasp a concentration of change from economic, social and political viewpoints in the world during 20th century.
The Commanding Heights Storyline provides a complete netcast of the six-hour television program as originally broadcast — in three two-hour episodes. The episodes are subdivided into chapters, captioned, and enhanced with additional interactive content not available on television.
The version now being rebroadcast on PBS television, divided into six one-hour episodes, presents some segments of the story in a different order
“Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time.” Thus forecasts Jeffrey D. Sachs, whose twenty-eight years of experience observing the world from many vantage points has helped him shed light on the most vital issues facing our planet: the causes of poverty, the role of rich-country policies, and the very real possibilities for a poverty-free future. Deemed “the most important economist in the world” by The New York Times Magazine and “the world’s best-known economist” by Time magazine, Sachs brings his considerable expertise to bear in the landmark The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, his highly anticipated blueprint for world-wide economic success — a goal, he argues, we can reach in a mere twenty years. visit End of Poverty website
If you are interested in the idea of development and you are familiar with the concept of sustainable development most likely you know Professor Sen. He is winner of Noble prize of Economy in 1998 “for his contributions to welfare economics” for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, and political liberalism. Development as Freedom is a book wrote by Dr.Sen and I think this book is one of the milestones in the development literature.
In the Google Review Book Section we learned that:
“Amartya Sen is the most respected and well-known economist of his time. This book is a synthesis of his thought, viewing economic development as a means to extending freedoms rather than an end in itself. By widening his outlook to include poverty, tyranny, lack of opportunity, individual rights, and political structures, Professor Sen gives a stimulating and enlightening overview of the development process. His compassionate yet rigorous analysis will appeal to all those interested in the fate of the developing world, from general reader to specialist.”
Dr. Saeid Shahraz a post doctorate fellow at Harvard Initiative for Global Healthcreated a blog to share with other interested people his concerns about healthcare system in Iran as an example of a developing country. Dr. Shahraz tries to comment on the major challenges of the healthcare system in Iran.
Healthcare disparity, quality and level of healthcare are among subjects he is interested to write about.
Not only in his blog, Dr. Shahraz translates health news from Farsi but also spends a lot of time to add comments and value to the news. This effort is an example of how an international health professional can start dialogue among experts to increase the knowledge of the field toward health of a developing nation. I hope Saied follow up his precious work and let us know more about what is going on in Iran.
As a health professional or health student you need to know a minimum of the health terminology and historical events as well as ongoing debates. For example you have to know the differences between reliability and validity, sensitivity and specificity, bias and confounding factors, also you must be able to explain the John Snow approach to cholera outbreak in London in 1854 and be able to talk about Great Influenza for 10 minutes. If you can explain the different approaches to fight against Malaria and why still in some countries it is necessary to back to DDT and what are the problems of using bed nets, you probably are in the game. Also you should be able to explain in an easy to understand way what is going on in the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine debate during these days.
One of the historical events that every public health student should know about is Tuskegee study. Wikipedia explains the story of Tuskegee in the following words:
“Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the Negro male became notorious because it was conducted without due care to its subjects, and led to major changes in how patients are protected in clinical studies. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had “bad blood” and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating.
In 1932, when the study started, standard treatments for syphilis were toxic, dangerous, and of questionable effectiveness. Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, cited as “arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history”
Presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, gave a speech on Saturday in Milwaukee. The similarities of his speech to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick made him in trouble by critics and the term “Plagiarism” came on the spot in the public.
What is Plagiarism? And why is it important?
Wikipedia defines plagiarism as ” Plagiarism is the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else’s written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one’s own without adequate acknowledgement”.
In my home country unfortunately copyright doesn’t practice seriously. I bet in most countries in the developing world we can see the lack of respect to original authorship and weak copyright enforcement. You may enjoy the cheap softwares, movies and offset books, but the problem is when you come to the states you need to keep telling yourself the importance of respect to others work and sensitivity of plagiarism in this world. You may loose your student position, because of a mistake in practicing plagiarism or breaking the copyright rules. Plagiarism .org informs us about the penalties of plagiarism: “The penalties for plagiarism can be surprisingly severe, ranging from failure of classes and expulsion from academic institutions to heavy fines and jail time!”
We as international students need to learn more about it and make sure we do not practice plagiarism in our work. Nobody in this country gives us credit for plagiarism.
GINI index is a measure of income inequality in a society. A society that scores 0.0 on the Gini scale has perfect equality in income distribution. Higher the number over zero means higher inequality. The Gini coefficient was developed by an Italian statisticianCorrado Gini and published in his 1912 paper “Variabilità e mutabilità” (”Variability and Mutability”).
Gini index in most developed European nations is between 24% and 36%, the United States Gini index is above 40%, indicating that the US has greater inequality in income distribution. By looking at the map prepared by Prof. Russ Lopez in 1999, you can see the differences between Gini index in different metropolitans in the US.
Now look at the Gini world map, as you can see most of developing countries have large gini scale indicating not only the nation face poverty, but also the wealth is distributed unequally.
From Alma Ata to the Global Fund: The history of International health policy is a report prepared by the Italian Global Health Watch, published in the Social Medicine (Volume 3, Number 1, January, 2008). This paper traces the evolution of international health policies and international health institutions, starting from the birth of the World Health Organization, the setting up of the Health for All targets at the Alma Ata conference 1978 and the rise of neo-liberal policies promoted by international financial institution from 1980 to the present. The paper looks at different issues surrounding public-private partnerships and the setting up of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the influence of these institutions on the health system in poor countries. For having access to a copy of this report click here.
In this program, two human rights advocates discuss the ethics of access to care and protection from secret experiments. Dr. Jonathan Moreno, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia and author of Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans, is a commentator and columnist for ABCNews.com. He is also an advisor to several federal agencies and president-elect of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. Dr. Paul Farmer, founding director of Partners in Health, an international health-care charity organization, is a Harvard physician and professor and an activist for poverty and health-care inequity issues. – ResearchChannel is a nonprofit media and technology organization that connects a global audience with the research and academic institutions whose developments, insights and discoveries affect our lives and futures.
The Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) represents the 40 Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH)-accredited schools of public health (SPH) in North America.
The ASPH Public Health Policy Fellow will be placed in either a congressional or committee office, to be determined, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Selected fellows are required to relocate to the fellowship location.
What does the ASPH Fellowship offer you?
This Fellowship will provide a unique opportunity for a motivated and experienced individual to play a role in helping to shape United States health policy. Specific anticipated benefits include:
* Development of a thorough understanding of the public health policy and the legislative process;
* Access and networking with experienced policymakers, public health professionals, and experts in the field of public health; and,
* Obtain hands-on real world health policy experience in the fast-paced environment of Capitol Hill.
In addition to the above benefits, the position includes the following allowances:
* One Year Stipend: $40,500
* Local Travel: $ 500
* Health Insurance: $ 3,600
* Moving Expenses: $ 1,000
When and where are the Fellowships offered?
Fellowship positions are full-time opportunities whose duration is for a one year period (July 2008 – July 2009).
The current presidential race in the United States is one of the exciting episodes of the history of the American nation. This nation as a generous and patriot nation is an example of change for making a difference. If you look at the history of this country you will be impressed with the amount of change and the size of evolution that took place in a short period of time. For example lynching of African Americans that had occurred mainly in the South took place in 19th and 20th centuries. Today only 40 years after Dr. Martin Luther king movement, you can see a Black candidate who runs for presidency of the United States is still in the race and has high chance for being a party nominates for November election.
Can you see the magnitude of change, I am from Middle East and I can tell you in some societies of our region if you are from minorities, despite the fact that lynching is not a case, but it is almost impossible for you to be in the office race (if there is any). In this country it is possible and does not need centuries to see it happened.
It is strange, and reminds me the Strange Fruit, a song by Billie Holiday, a song among the list of Songs of the Century. This song was an objection to lynching of African Americans.
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Last week in a Medical Care Class at the BU school of public health, we discussed about the health market, professor said that the health market is an imperfect market, because it doesn’t have the characteristics and assumptions adhered to a perfect market. A perfect market has some assumptions like rationality of the market actors, no transaction cost (no information cost and taxes), no price taking behavior and there is sufficiently large number of participants such that no individual can affect the market and freedom of decision. Professor told us that the health market is imperfect because the following assumption is not a case in this market(1):
Power Equal
Real competition and choice
Full information
No price fixing
Transparent to buyer and seller
Patient and doctors don’t have an equal power, in most areas competition is not a case since there is no different health providers. For example in some countries only one neurosurgeon works, or because of the insurance policy patients are not allowed to visit any doctor that they wish.
But my question is what about we look at the health care as a fundamental human right, if so; we can not simply analyze the health system from a market perspective. In this case health is not only a commodity with all of characteristics related to goods, it is a right, and we need to take into the account the costs of providing a right to citizens and in some cases it can be an imperfect market.
Placing global health in the spot light of public attention is a critical first step toward improving the lives of billions of people around the world. Some preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, and injuries like Road Traffic Injuries are responsible for death of millions of people each year. In searching some valuable articles targeting general population, I found a collection of Time’s coverage on Global health. Time has done a great job so far in information dissemination of global health challenges. For having access to Time’s archive on this topic you can click here.
Have you ever heard that Sweden argue that Road Traffic Injuries can be eradicated as Smallpox was in 1980. Smallpox was eradicated because we wanted to do that, we spent a lot of thoughts and funds, we developed different vaccination strategies, we worked with communities, we learned from failures and likely only human was involved in the process of the disease. RTIs are also a human based problem; you can not find any mosquito or worm that contributes in the process of the problem. Yes this is a field that you can count on it, if you think you have responsibility to reduce suffers especially among people who live in the developing countries.
In 1997, Sweden’s parliament adopted Vision Zero, a bold new road safety policy based on four principles:
1. ethics: human life and health are paramount and take priority over mobility and other objectives of the road traffic system;
2. responsibility: providers and regulators of the road traffic system share responsibility with users;
3. safety: road traffic systems should take account of human fallibility and minimize both the opportunities for errors and the harm done when they occur; and
4. mechanisms for change: providers and regulators must do their utmost to guarantee the safety of all citizens; they must cooperate with road users; and all three must be ready to change to achieve safety.
Sweden did it; they reduced the child mortality rate significantly and dramatically in Road Traffic injuries. Now we need brave public health practitioners to lead the Global Eradication of the Road Traffic Injuries
Last year when I took Policy Analysis Course with Professor Foster, I never thought that one day I will meet the architecture of Policymaker Software. This tool is a Window-based software program for analyzing the political dimensions of public policy. This tool provides a computer-assisted guide for strategic thinking about policy reform. The software leads the user through a step-by-step analysis of the policy content, positions and power of major players, opportunities and obstacles to policy change, and strategies for change. The method can be used for health policy reform as well as other areas of public policy. A free version of the software is available on the internet (www.polimap.com ).
Yes I met Professor Michael Riech at his office at Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. It seems I have this chance to conduct my practicum under his supervision. A major area of Dr. Reich’s research examines access to medicines in developing countries. In 2002, he edited a book on public-private partnerships for public health (distributed by Harvard University Press). Dr. Reich and collaborators have applied the method for analyzing health reform issues in more than ten countries, in collaboration with national governments and international agencies. The method is used in policy courses around the world, including the World Bank Flagship Course on Health Sector Reform and Sustainable Financing. He recently coauthored a book, using the materials from this course, on how to improve the performance of health systems, entitled Getting Health Reform Right (by M.J. Roberts, W. Hsiao, P. Berman, and M.R. Reich, Oxford, 2004).
CDC describes Ebola as a hemorrhagic fever (Ebola HF) that is a severe, often-fatal disease in humans and nonhuman primates (monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees) that has appeared sporadically since its initial recognition in 1976.The disease is caused by infection with Ebola virus, named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) in Africa, where it was first recognized. The virus is one of two members of a family of RNA viruses called the Filoviridae.
Diagnosing Ebola HF in an individual who has been infected only a few days is difficult because early symptoms, such as red eyes and a skin rash, are nonspecific to the virus and are seen in other patients with diseases that occur much more frequently. Antigen-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) testing, IgM ELISA, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and virus isolation can be used to diagnose a case of Ebola HF within a few days of the onset of symptoms. Persons tested later in the course of the disease or after recovery can be tested for IgM and IgG antibodies; the disease can also be diagnosed retrospectively in deceased patients by using immunohistochemistry testing, virus isolation, or PCR. There is no standard treatment for Ebola HF. Patients receive supportive therapy. This consists of balancing the patient’s fluids and electrolytes, maintaining their oxygen status and blood pressure, and treating them for any complicating infections.
Ebola Bands
Some band groups named themselves Ebola. In the website of one of these Bands in UK we learned how Ebola is popular among Band groups around the world and they try to take advantage of the fatality rate of the disease to show how powerful and hot they are.
“We are five people who live hundreds of miles apart from each other trying to keep together the idea of a band friendship in the face of adversity. We all work full time, and we all have other time consuming commitments in addition to that.
Ebola came into being some time in the summer of 1995 and played two gigs in Belgium under the name of Spite after which we decided to change our name to avoid confusion with the other band of the same name!
As were sure most of you are aware there is an Ebola in Berlin, and apparently one in Australia and the USA. Also there is supposedly an Oi band in France called Ebola! Never mind!!!
We chose the name for no other reason than it sounded apocalyptic and we wanted to have a name which would reflect the type of music we were trying to play”.
Ebola Band in Thailand
Wikipedia describes one of the most successful rock/metal bands in Thailand as below:
Ebola (อีโบล่า) is a rock/metal band from Warner Music Thailand. The band’s unique characteristic is the combination of meaningful lyrics and hard rock tunes. Most of Ebola’s lyrics focus on encouragement and soul-searching. The band’s hit singles include “Saeng Sawang” (แสงสว่าง – Enlighten),”Klab Su Jud Reum Ton” (กลับสู่จุดเริ่มต้น – Back to Beginning) and “Sing Tee Chan Pen” (สิ่งที่ฉันเป็น – As I Am). In 2005, Ebola’s fourth studio album – Enlighten won Best Rock Album from Hamburger Magazine and Best Producer from Seed Awards.
KaiserEDU.org invites undergraduate and graduate-level students in all disciplines to submit an original essay for the website’s annual competition. Students are asked to submit entries by March 17, 2008 in response to the following topic: Topic:
The date is November 24th, 2008. You have just started a job as an analyst working on the President-elect’s health care transition team. The director of the transition team has asked you to draft a memo to flesh out the health priorities for the new Administration on a major health policy issue. Select an issue area and a candidate (from the list below) and identify the major policies or strategies that the Administration could develop to advance this issue. Make sure to include evidence and analysis to support your recommendations. Your priorities and strategies should be consistent with the proposals forwarded by the candidates in the campaign. You should also address the challenges in implementing your recommendations, such as budgetary and political considerations, delivery system issues, and how different stakeholders and constituencies would perceive the proposals. Your memo should not exceed 800 words.
Issue Areas:
• Controlling Healthcare Costs
• Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
• Expanding Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Efforts
• Improving Women’s Health
• Improving the Quality of Health Care
Deadline: March 17, 2008, 5pm EST
PRIZES:
Awarded to the top undergraduate and graduate student entries.
• First Prize: $1,000
• Second Prize: $500
Prof. Bicknell believes the public health for the next 50 years is “The art and science of deciding who lives a longer, less miserable and happier life”. It means public health mission is to increase lives of people (quantity) with less misery (quality). Avicenna an Iranian physician and philosopher (980-1037 C.E.), believed that the quality of life is more important than quantity of life. How do you think if you have only two choices, which one is more important for you, quality or quantity?
BBC world services broad-casted a report yesterday (Jan 19, 2008) titled Bladder surgery ‘not necessary‘. BBC reported from UK: Radiotherapy can be a better option than surgery for people with bladder cancer, being effective while preserving continence, say experts. Doctors typically opt to remove the whole bladder when the cancer is advanced. But work by Cancer Research UK shows this should not necessarily be recommended as “gold standard” care.
Removing the bladder can treat the disease (increasing quantity of life), but it may result in continence problems that the person has to live with for the rest of their life (reducing quality of life). Fred Walker, 67, was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1983. He had his bladder removed. He said: “I know from my own experience that losing your bladder has a daily impact on your life which for some people could be more devastating than the cancer itself. Body disfigurement and embarrassment caused by having your bladder removed can be quite hard to accept.”
It seems medical care system tries to find the alternative ways to not only increase the lives but also reduce the misery. Living long with low quality or living less with high quality always should be a choice for patients to select. This is the right of patients to answer the question of which side do you like better, the side of quality of life or the option of quantity of life.
Road Traffic Injuries are responsible for a global health burden similar to malaria and tuberculosis. Tuberculosis and Malaria are in the international global agenda and receive enough attention in media and political community, but Road Traffic Injuries are ignored by most of health policy makers and it doesn’t receive enough attention even from academia.
During my study at the school of public health, rarely I heard anything about this important problem that most likely beats the developing countries. One of the reasons may related to the lack of research funding and attention, while you can sell your idea about fighting malaria, Tuberculosis or HIV/AIDS easily to donor agencies, why you spend your time and efforts to work on something that suffers from lack of attention and of course funding.
The other reason for ignoring this problem is related to the nature of the problem, the road traffic injuries as a problem, is difficult to address or even understand the roots in any given geo-political context. It is not a kind of “101 problem” it needs a multi stakeholder and multi dimensional approach, which is not common in most health settings in most countries. Talking about the RTIs, also draw attention to the car industries, it means car industries have to spend a lot of money to deal with safety that is not a case in most countries with lack of resources, also related governmental authorities involved in industries can influence safety ignorance for making more profits.
I think this is the responsibility of new generation of practice based public health policy makers to force global community, governments, car industries and other stakeholders to pay attention on this major and growing public health problem.
The first time that I was impressed with an organization who shares information easily and openly with interested people, was when I visited WWF-Pakistan in Oct 2000. After I came to the US, I found a lot of open doors who let you in easily and they share their findings generously.
Today I learned about OPENCOURSEWARE (OCW) project at Johns Hopkins. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s OPENCOURSEWARE (OCW) project provides access to content of the School’s most popular courses. As challenges to the world’s health escalate daily, the School feels a moral imperative to provide equal and open access to information and knowledge about the obstacles to the public’s health and their potential solutions.
Some authorities treat the sick as potential enemies in the pandemic preparations for example in Flu Pandemic. Experts call this approach as a misguided approach to pandemic preparation that relies on a law enforcement/national security approach, rather than a public health approach to the problem, and which exposes nations to unnecessary risk.
Professor Annas as one of the pioneers in Public health and human rights subject from Boston University School of public health and his colleagues published a report on their findings on this issue today. They proposed changing in policy from a security approach to public health paradigm. You can download the report by clicking here
The Excellence in Media Award for Global Health is given each year to a journalist (print, electronic, and/or visual) who has in the prior year most effectively captured the essence of a major issue in global health and conveyed it to a broad audience.The Global Health Council recognizes the vital role played by the media in informing the public, as well as decision-makers, and seeks through this award to highlight the important contributions to understanding and action made by the winner of the award.
Selection of the awardee is based on the quality of the reporting as well as its wide reach among readers and viewers. Nominations will be considered by an independent panel of noted journalists. The award will be presented in Washington, D.C. at a special awards ceremony during the Global Health Council’s annual international conference.
Geographical Information System (GIS) is a powerful computer-aided database management and mapping technology that uses for organizing and storing large amount of multi-purpose information. GIS provides an interface between the data and a map. For example by using GIS maps we can show visually the trends of disease or injuries in a particular geographical region, GIS gives us the power for modeling trends in the future.
WHO suggests the following options as examples of using GIS in Public Health:
• Determining geographic distribution of diseases
• Analyzing spatial and temporal trends
• Mapping populations at risk
• Stratifying risk factors
• Assessing resource allocation
• Planning and targeting interventions
• Monitoring diseases and interventions over time
If you wish to learn GIS and you do have no access to the software, you can buy the book: Getting to know ArcGIS (today the online price is around $ 35), the book includes a trial copy of ArcGIS desktop software (Arc GIS 9.2) for 6 months using for free, so you have enough time to get familiar and learn the software.If you go online you can find a tremendous amount of resources for learning GIS, one of the online resources that I like is Yale University Map Collection. Yale provides a lot of tutorials and data for practice (for free).If you take a GIS course and your teacher asks you to do a project and you need an easy to use data in different subjects you can go to Michigan Geographical Data Library, for conducting any kind of projects in GIS course including Raster data, Michigan site is a fabulus place to look. Good Luck
Sometimes investigators and research institutes spend a lot of time and efforts to conduct a study for examining a hypothesis, but it is possible that they reach to a non statistically significant conclusion, in this case, it is most likely to see unpublished the results of these studies. Studies that reach a statistically significant conclusion are more likely to be published than those fail to reach significance and studies that reach significance conclusions are published more quickly than studies that do not reach significance. So why this is a case and this problem happen?
Study investigators may self-censor non-significant results, it takes time and energy to write up and publish study results, investigators may not wish to invest their time and energy in publishing studies that they feel are not exciting and instead put their efforts into more promising research. Rosenthal calls publication bias the file drawer problem as busy researchers may have file drawers full of results of no significant and unpublished studies.
In medicine most of the time pharmaceutical companies are sponsor for many clinical trials for evaluating the effects of a treatment, if they reach to non significant results, they are not interested to publish the results since they are the owner of the data and study. Journal editors and reviewer are less likely to accept the studies with non significant results. Publication bias affects the Meta analysis studies as well as any review of literature.
So what is wrong with publication bias?
The problem is that because of a fraction of studies on a subject that is available, it makes the field optimistic toward a treatment or a medicine.
Note: for writing this post, I used the slides of Meta Analysis course by Prof. Michael
Lavalley
I like this term “Policy Window”. It feels smart; you can see the framework that is not always visible to most of people. As a Health Policy Maker, you have to be able to see this window in your journey for increasing the public value, addressing public health problems and making a difference. So what does really mean the policy window?
Buse et al in their book “making health policy” describe the policy window based on John Kingdon’s (1984) approach. The model emphasis on the role of policy entrepreneurs inside and outside government who take advantage of agenda-setting opportunities known as policy windows to move items onto the government’s formal agenda. The model talks about three streams of policy process, the problem stream, policy stream, and politics stream. The problem stream refers to the perceptions of problems as public matter, for example uninsured citizens in the US, is an ongoing problem. Officials learn about socio economic condition of this problem using indicators, feedbacks, debates, and pressure group perceptions and etc. The policy stream refers to ongoing analysis of the problem and their proposed solutions. The politics stream operates quite separately and independent of the other two streams and is comprised of events such as swings of national mood, changes of government and campaigns by interested groups.
According to Kingdon’s model, the three streams work along different, largely, independent channels until at particular time, which become policy window, they flow together or intersect. This is the policy window or window of opportunity for delivering a change and move items onto the government’s formal agenda.
We can use this model for understanding what is going on in Health Care debate in the US presidential Campaigns, do you think policy stream, the stream of solutions, is ready enough with identical force to intersect with other streams? I don’t know the answer, since I don’t know the details of candidates’ solutions for increasing health care coverage for American people.
“The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.” -Stephen R. Covey
Have you ever thought to write down your personal mission statement? Do you know how important could be having a clear personal statement to show your meaning of life?
The sense of purpose to your daily decisions can reflect on your own mission statement. Suppose you want to find a new job and interviewer asks you about the reason of selecting this job, you can show him/her in a well defined statement that actually the job is related to your personal mission and your definition of your role in the society that has been stated in your personal mission. You want to start your project or dissertation, if you know who you are and what is your personal mission, so you can decide in which direction you should go.
In the era of information age it is not difficult to create your mission statement. One of the tools that I know is Franklin Covey planner, you can go online to Covey website and the wizard will take you step by step through the process of creating a unique, personalized Mission Statement to guide your life. As other tools that I introduce in this blog the Covey planner is free of charge. So hurry up, it is time to write your personal destiny. Go to Mission Statement Builder click here
Some people work full time, they have spouse and kids, at the same time they are students and also do a lot of volunteer activities like helping their kids to sell cookies for the Girl Scouts, planting trees, go to walk for breast cancer or heart disease, serve communities in the events, or blogging daily in different languages, how these people can do these different time consuming activities?
In the program developing and management course we learned a concept from “First things First”a book by Roger and Rebecca Merrill. In the class we called this concept Quadrants. Look at the below matrix, there is 4 Quadrants, Quadrant 1 represents things that are both urgent and important, most professional people live in this Quadrant, they have to meet their deadlines for projects, meetings etc.Quadrant 2 includes activities that are important, but not urgent; this is the Quadrant of Quality. Here is the area of long term planning, empower others, increase skills, do community services etc.Quadrant 3 includes the things that are urgent but not important. The noise of urgent creates the illusion of importance. Doing others priorities, answering phone calls, chatting on-line and talking about the calories of the black tea or biscuit that we want to eat. Quadrant 4 is talking about things thoes are neither urgent nor important, this is the quadrant of waste: like excessive watching TV, some phone calls, doing nothing for survival since we are tired of swinging between Quadrant 1 and 3.Quadrant 4 is not survival, it is just like thinking we are recreated ourselves, but we don’t, living in this Quadrant helps to increase the incidence of obesity dramatically.
So what should we do?
with refusing living in Quadrant 4, and reducing the time of Quadrant 3 and add it to Quadrant 2 can reduce the pressure of Quadrant 1 and have a more creative and effective life. So let’s work on Quadrant 2, the Quadrant of Quality.
Note:Matrix image: the Matrix is in the book page 37, but I didn’t type it again I copid it from here
Surprisingly Health and Human Rights as a unique field (one concept) is a young, but rapidly growing and dynamic field. When we think about public health, unconsciously we consider it as a human right, these two words had evolved parallel but it took a long time until finally this field was introduced as a unique concept. The first time that human rights were explicitly named in a public health strategy was only in the late 1980s, when people looked at rights of HIV/AIDS patients seriously. Prof. Jonathan Mann’s observations were one of the early efforts to highlight the field.
Jonathan Mann’s 3 basic observations:
Human rights abuses can dramatically affect health
Health can be dramatically worsened when human rights are ignored
Health and human rights can act synergistically
Today I learned about Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health & Human Rights, the deadline for nominees is January 15th, 2008. I believe this award and the announcement around it, can help to internalize this field among health policy makers and practitioners. For more info click here.
The Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health & Human Rights was established in 1999 to honor Dr. Jonathan Mann and highlight the vital link between health and human rights. The award is bestowed annually to a leading practitioner in health and human rights and comes with a substantial financial reward.
The Global Health Council welcomes nominations of people whose work epitomizes Jonathan Mann’s life. Nomination Deadline: Jan. 15, 2008 Questions?Contact Dawn Carey at dcarey@globalhealth.org or(802)649-1340, ext. 2144
Statistical Analysis Software or SAS is a popular tool which is used extensively in public health academia and business. When I decided to refresh my knowledge about this software I found myself alone, since people usually don’t have enough time to sit with you and let you digest step by step this useful tool. I asked one of my statistics teachers to introduce me a teaching assistant (TA) for polishing my memory; he said “for an extensive review of SAS you need to hire a tutor “or “you have to take a complete SAS course”. So I started searching for available online resources with an important condition, a free tutor.
Finally I found it; it was a complete and comprehensive useful material at UCLA. Yes you can use their online tutor anytime you want for free. Step by step well defined courses from beginner to advance level are at UCLA website. If you want to check their nice job please click here.
The Best Practices in Global Health Award is given annually to celebrate and highlight the efforts of a public health practitioner or organization dedicated to improving the health of disadvantaged and disenfranchised populations, and to recognize the programs that effectively demonstrate the link between health, poverty and development. The person or organization selected for this award must be able to demonstrate the success of the program(s), measurable results in the field, as well as possess the ability and expertise share, inspire and extend best practices for improving health.
The deadline for submitting nominations is Friday, Feb. 15, 2008.
Questions?Please e-mail Dawn Carey, Awards Program Coordinator at dcarey@globalhealth.org or (802) 649-1340, ext. 2144
I wrote this note last week before knowing about Iowa caucus’s result. Today is the day of New Hampshire primary vote. We are looking forward to learn about the results of “Super Tuesday” and so on. It is too soon to even predict who actually will be the parties’ candidates. But I like to write down my thought here and see what will happen.
I am not a political analyst or even activist. But for some reason that back to my personal experiences I can see somehow the Nov 5th 2008 headlines (Election Day will be Nov 4th 2008).
Republican candidate John McCain now holds only a slight lead, down from an advantage of almost 5000 votes. Democratic candidate Barack Obama in a statement congratulated the winner of the race. Democratic National Committee Chairman in a separate statement asked all of stakeholders including Supreme Court to think about some modifications in the Electoral College System and asked for a change in this regime. Last night Hynes Convention Center in Boston was full of thousands of democratic supporters who shouted and sometimes crying in supporting Senator Obama, the candidate of change.
One of the concepts that a health policy maker should be aware about it, is the measurement of opportunity cost in a policy or program. For example, if a city decides to build a hospital on vacant land it owns, the opportunity cost is the value of the benefits forgone of some other thing which might have been done with the land and construction funds instead.
Suppose you have a full time job with some years of experiences and you decide to come to school and study Dr PH program, the opportunity cost for pursuing this degree is the full time job, your job promotion and the other valuable things that you will leave behind for participation in the degree program. Opportunity cost is the center of microeconomics and was developed by Friedrich Freiherr von Wieser (July 10, 1851–July 22, 1926) as an early member of the Austrian school of economics.
Are you happy? When do people feel happiness? If they don’t have anything to eat make them happy, or if their babies are dying from pneumonia is a happy situation. If they live under Bomb and there is no hope in their country makes them feel as developed and happy nation. Of course, normal human in the mainstream is not happy in any above conditions and circumstances. If you feel free, just, fare, hopeful, sound, safe, with access to food, clean water, education, health care, medicine, shelter, job and security, then you feel fine and it sounds well being and make you happy.
Country of Bhutan came with the idea of happiness index as an indicator for sustainable development. Based on the Global Projection of Subjective Well-being Study, Denmark is the happiest nation in the world, and Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, Bahamas are 2nd to 5th happiest nations. United States is 23rd and United Kingdom 41st. Iran 96th and Sudan, Ukraine, Moldova, Congo, Zimbabwe and Burundi with 173rd to 178th are among less happy nations in the world.
By using GIS 9.2 software and with using data of Human development report, 2007, I compared GDP/capita and happiness index of Eastern Mediterranean countries (EM Regional Office of WHO), unfortunately because of war there is no data about Iraq and Afghanistan. Look at Yemen, in this poor country it seems people are happier than some countries with much higher GDP/capita.
A landmark study conducted by BUSPH International Health Professor Donald Thea and colleagues from Pakistan and WHO, showing that children with severe pneumonia can be treated as effectively at home as they can be in hospitals, could change the way the illness is managed in developing countries, saving lives and taking pressure off health systems. The research, conducted in Pakistan by researchers from the Center for International Health and Development at BUSPH and supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) and USAID, is published in the January 4, 2008, edition of The Lancet medical journal. The study involved 2,037 children with severe pneumonia randomly assigned to get either injectable antibiotics in a hospital or antibiotic syrup at home.
The trial was the first to compare the outcomes of hospital treatment of severe pneumonia with treatment at home. The results demonstrate the safety and efficacy of treating pneumonia with oral antibiotics outside of a hospital setting.”This study is especially important for the millions of poor children who, because of distance, cost, or transportation barriers, are unable to receive care in a hospital each year,” said Donald Thea, professor of international health at BUSPH, and corresponding author of the study. “Treating children at home with oral amoxicillin is as safe a treatment as standard intravenous therapy care delivered in-hospital. By treating children at home, we can also prevent exposing them to illnesses associated with hospitalization while simultaneously reducing the burden on overcrowded hospitals.” Source
Needs assessments play a vital role in strategic planning and in program and policy development process. In the needs assessment process, we try to learn about current needs for services and an assessment of effectiveness of past programs to meet those needs.
When we talk about needs assessment we can look at it in an individual or population based frameworks. In an individual framework, finding the basic needs of an individual is not so difficult, everybody needs shelter, clean water, education, food and so on. But when we talk about population needs assessment, it would be complicated in some degrees. In fact in a population level, measurement of health outcomes and needs related to health outcome makes it challengeable.
We have to define the health outcome, we have to define needs, we have to find appropriate and validated measures to be able to understand the current health situation. Using some traditional measures like mortality and morbidity, not only just give us the negative sides of health outcomes but also just give us the extreme and absolute sides of the health outcomes and there is no news about the spectrum of health outcomes and a level of change.
Who is the target population?
What are the target population’s needs?
Which groups within the target population have these needs?
Geographically, where are those in need?
What is currently being done to aid those in need, by whom and where?
What and where are the unmet needs?
How well did we do in addressing those needs in the past?
What has changed since we started?
An articulate and well designed needs assessment project is a powerful tool for informing policy makers for supporting and financing the programs for addressing the unmet needs in a population.
When I was a medical student in 80s a friend of mine who studied Philosophy at that time, always quoted a message from one of the Greek ancient philosophers about “Physicians”, the quote was something like: The “mean Docs” want people sick to make more money. This quote always leads me to avoid being a “mean Doc” so for making more money wish to see more sick people around. Of course, I know a meaningful number of physicians, who dedicate their lives and scarify their family time to help people around the world, with all respect to these colleagues and this important job, I chose to be more active in the field of public health rather than medicine, so why I did that.
Medicine targets individuals to diagnose disease and offer medical treatments to relieve symptoms and if it is possible, to cure. Physicians see individuals who have access to medical care, so what about the rest who don’t have access, how we can reach to these people, how we can make sure those people who suffer actually have any access, dealing with this kind of problems in a population framework comes as a matter of public health mission. Under public health umbrella you have this chance to address these issues in a population based paradigm.
Public health seeks to understand the conditions necessary for well being. Public health not only tries to understand these conditions but also tries to deliver interventions to address the issues. Public health is practice based knowledge, it is complicated, it is difficult to address, it is a multidimensional knowledge, and it is really a multi disciplinary field. Public health professionals believe that the population’s health condition deeply affected by social, economic, cultural and political context in which people live. Public health is a matter of human right, justice, and equity and it is all about change. Public health scholars or activists have a common desire and it is change. Changing from current status to a better condition with less suffer and pain.
I love to be in this field, the field of challenge and change. It is difficult and innovative field. I remember when I visited Lahore in Pakistan; I went to visit the Alameh Iqbal Lahoori’s tomb, a politician and a poet who wrote poems in Persian. There was a meaningful poem on the wall of his tomb.He says “The meaning of human is innovation, since moon and sun do their job as they did for years”. I am in this field to make a difference and serve marginalize and vulnerable folks, I hope I can.
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I am a Dr PH student in Boston. I am here to share my learning with other Public Health students and professionals in this field. Having the opportunity to study in a graduate school is not always possible for interested people, so I decided to share and disseminate my knowledge with people who are interested. I try to summarize the pieces that I found interesting during my journey in the school of public health.
I was out of school for almost 10 years after I graduated from Medical School in 1995, so I know how difficult could be adjustment with the new applications in the era of information age. My plan is to summarize most of my lesson learned by June 2008 and then I will keep this blog updated with the public health challenges and practice based interventions. I try to write about the controversial aspects in public health, practice based approaches, new findings, and the sources of grants for students and professionals, events, practicum and job opportunities, and everything we need to learn for conducting a professional mission on the ground.
I am from Middle East and I am interested in working on countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, so you may find most of my examples from this region. Also since we are heading to the presidential election in the States in Nov 2008 and one of the most important parts of debates among the candidates is about Health Care in this country I would like to spend time and learn about candidates and parties viewpoints in this aspect.
I am looking forward to hear and learn from your viewpoints and your comments, your critics are the priceless gifts to my journey and add a lot to the value of this Blog. Thank you
