Do you like to play games? Who doesn’t? Everybody enjoys playing games. What about playing a game to advance your language skills? You can advance your knowledge in English, Italian, Spanish, French and Korean by FreeRice.com website. And guess what? for each correct answer, the program donate 10 grains of rice to people in need in developing world.

FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program.  Basically this site has two goals:

• Provide education to everyone for free.
• Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

The source of income is the advertisement on the site. I played on the site, it was fun. The fun part is the amount of rice that you donate by playing the game. You advance your language, you donate rice, you feel good and proud to be a part of such efforts for reducing the pain of hunger.

As a member of the Global Health Council, I was shocked when I saw the following announcement today.  It’s so sad to see a powerful player of the International health is going to end its operation after 4 decades of hard work and success.

GLOBAL HEALTH COUNCIL TO CLOSE OPERATIONS;

Board Thanks Leadership, Staff and Members for Unwavering Commitment to

 Global Health Mission

With deep regret, the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council (GHC) announces that the Council will close operations within the coming months. This decision about the Council’s future comes after serious deliberations about the state of global health issues, the role of the Council as a convenor and the Council’s current operating model.

GHC, formerly the National Council of International Health, is a U.S.-based, nonprofit membership organization that was created in 1972 to identify priority world health problems and to report on them to the U.S. public, legislators, international and domestic government agencies, academic institutions and the global health community. GHC is the world’s largest membership alliance dedicated to saving lives by improving health throughout the world, and worked to ensure that all who strive for improvement and equity in global health have the information and resources they need to succeed.

The Global Health Council has championed issues of importance to the global health community and can point with pride to significant advances on the five key issues critical to improving health and promoting equity: women’s health; child’s health; HIV and AIDS; infectious diseases and health systems.

For the past four decades, the Council has been the neutral convening place for a diverse community of organizations, all advocating for improvement and equity in global health. The Council’s members have been its strength, working together to form broad-based coalitions to address challenges that affected us– whether advocating for increased U.S. government funding on global health or developing common positions on major health policy issues.

However, times have changed. The compelling needs that gave rise to the Global Health Council’s mission have shifted. Funding that once existed to promote a broad-based health agenda is now focused on specific health issues. The fundamental shifts in the health landscape have led the Board to revisit the relevance of the organization and determine that the Council’s current operating model is no longer sustainable.

We wish to thank our staff, leadership past and present and our members of the international community who have supported the Global Health Council for the last 40 years.

We have accomplished much together, but despite the progress we have made, millions of people, many of them children, remain without access to basic health care. Our commitment to them must not waver. Although The Global Health Council will no longer play the same role, we will continue to fight for the goals that first inspired us to action.

A Web-based interactive anthology will provide psychologists, economists, anthropologists, sociologists and other scientists with the latest research methods and tools to address emerging challenges in public health, such as the obesity epidemic and the rise of chronic diseases such as heart disease. The Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the National Institutes of Health collaborated with New England Research Institutes to create the free resource, called e-Source.

To access the resources click here.

Istanbul, March 23—Delegates to the first Global Human Development Forum today unanimously adopted an “Istanbul Declaration” calling on the world community to take bold action against global social inequities and environmental deterioration at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio this June.

“It is time to reset the global development agenda,” the Istanbul Declaration states. “The world needs a renewed commitment to sustainable development and strong political leadership to implement it.”

The Istanbul Declaration was adopted by consensus at the conclusion of the two-day Global Human Development Forum, a gathering of more than 200 leading development experts, civil society activists, government ministers, private sector representatives and UN officials from all regions of the world.

The Forum was organized by UNDP’s Human Development Report Office and Bureau of Development Policy in partnership with the Government of Turkey’s Ministry of Development.

Today’s Istanbul Declaration was supported by the Government of Turkey as a key contribution to the UN debates and discussions leading up to the Rio + 20 conference in June. Negotiations on the conference agenda and proposed resolutions resumed this week at UN headquarters in New York.

The Declaration stresses the need for global and national development strategies to put “strong emphasis on social inclusion, social protection, and equity, in recognition of the fact that economic development has too often gone hand in hand with environmental degradation and increased inequality.”

Achieving those goals will require better-coordinated “mobilization of global capital and local resources,” good governance on the local and global level, and full empowerment of women “through access to education, health care, basic services and their participation in the labour force,” the Declaration says.

“I hope that this Forum will help establish new partnerships across sectors, and that you will take these discussions and this Declaration home to capture the imagination and interest of a much broader audience,” UNDP Associate Administrator Rebeca Grynspan told Forum participants.

The Declaration endorses the recommendations of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability and UNDP’s 2011 Human Development Report on Sustainability and Equity, and stresses “the need to maintain progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals in 2015, while building a consensus for a new post-2015 global framework that:

• Is universal in character, with relevance for all nations;
• Reflects the entirety of the sustainable development agenda, including the continuing importance of reducing poverty and inequalityparticularly for the least developed countries;
• Addresses all three dimensions of sustainable development (social, economic and environmental), and their interconnections; and
• Is based on measurable indicators that can promote effective monitoring of progress and response to challenges.”

In a personal message to Forum participants, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “Sustainable development recognizes that our economic, social and environmental objectives are not competing goals that must be traded off against each other, but are interconnected objectives that are most effectively pursued together in a holistic manner. We need an outcome from Rio+20 that reflect this understanding and that relates to the concerns of all.”

More than 120 heads of state and government have confirmed their participation in the Rio conference, making it one of the largest such gatherings of world leaders in recent times.

“The most important question that needs to be decided is, are we going to advance and develop economically for now, or are we going to focus on sustainable development while considering future generations?” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, a member of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel of Global Sustainability, said at the Forum. “As long as development and the economy do not progress at the same pace, it is difficult to achieve prosperity.”

Government and civil society leaders from developing countries have strongly urged that the Rio conference address not only ecological threats such as climate change and pollution, but place equal emphasis on such critical social concerns as hunger, preventable disease and endemic poverty. The 2011 Human Development Report, cited in the Declaration and analyzed in depth at this week’s Forum, argued that simultaneous progress on both fronts is essential. The 2011 Report showed that reducing social and economic inequalities within and among nations should help reduce environmental risks, while a failure to slow environmental deterioration will further widen social and economic inequalities around the world.

“This is also a matter of intergenerational equity,” said Khalid Malik, director of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office. “What we do today as a world community will determine what kind of societies and environment will be inherited by those who come after us, and their opportunities for further human development should not be restricted by our failure to make the right policy choices now.”

The Human Development Report has pioneered new approaches to measuring development since its introduction of the Human Development Index more than two decades ago, and participants at the Global Human Development Forum stressed the importance of continuing innovation in this area, at the Rio + 20 conference and beyond.

“We manage what we measureand, in turn, what we measure affects what we do,” the Istanbul Declaration stated. “It is therefore vital that we measure progress towards sustainable development in a more comprehensive manner. Measures are required that go beyond GDP to capture a fuller picture of human development, and emphasize sustainable and equitable outcomes. We urge greater support for the work underway around the world, in the United Nations and elsewhere, to design and use more appropriate measures of progress, and for countries and communities to collect data accordingly.”

Commented Thakur Singh Powdyel, Bhutan’s Education Minister, who introduced the Declaration for adoption at the Forum today: “What we measure is what we value. We can’t steer a course without a reliable compass.”
Among other featured speakers at the Global Human Development Forum were Tarja Halonen, the former President of Finland; Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director-General, United Nations Industrial Development Organization; Brian Atwood, Chair, OECD Development Assistance Committee; Gunilla Carlsson, Minister for Development Cooperation, Sweden; Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya, Minister of Planning, Kenya; Muhammed Asghar, President of the National University of Science and Technology of Pakistan; and Senator Cristovam Buarque of Brazil.

“In 2011 and so far in 2012, we have heard clear warnings from Nature that humanity is arrogantly pushing her boundaries, just as we have heard societies demanding human rights and justice, opportunities and decent jobs, affordable health care and energy access,” said Olav Kjorven, director of UNDP’s Bureau of Development Policy. “Responding successfully will require decision-makers from across the environmental, social and economic divides coming together to create the future we all want.”

The just-published March 2012 issue of the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement (JHEOE) is a thematic issue dedicated to:

*Seven articles about Faculty for the Engaged Campus, a national initiative of Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) in partnership with the University of Minnesota and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

*Three articles resulting from the conference Community-Engaged Scholarship: Critical Junctures in Research, Practice and Policy, held November 4-5, 2010 in Guelph, Ontario Canada.

*Three book reviews on topics related to community-engaged scholarship.

The paper titles are listed below to give you an idea of the range of topics covered in the issue.  The complete table of contents and the full text of every article can be accessed at http://bit.ly/aAZuc1

Section One: Faculty for the Engaged Campus National Initiative

Faculty for the Engaged Campus: Advancing Community-Engaged Careers in the Academy

Building Capacity for Community-Engaged Scholarship: Evaluation of the Faculty Development Component of the Faculty for the Engaged Campus Initiative

CES4Health.info: A Web-Based Mechanism for Dissminating Peer-Reviewed Products of Community-Engaged Scholarship: Reflections on Year One

Section Two: Faculty for the Engaged Campus Funded Sites

Competency-Based Faculty Development in Community-Engaged Scholarship: A Diffusion of Innovation Approach

Engaged Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Campus Integration and Faculty Development

Reflections on Community-Engaged Scholarship Faculty Development and Institutional Identity

Institutionalization of Community-Engaged Scholarship at Institutions that are both Land-Grant and Research Universities

Section Three: 2010 Community-Engaged Scholarship Conference: Critical Junctures in Research, Practice, and Policy

Community-Engaged Scholarship: Critical Junctures in Research, Practice, and Policy

A Needs Assessment Informs Development of a Participatory Research Faculty Development Workshop

Reflection on 10 Years of Community-Engaged Scholarship in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia-Vancouver

Book Reviews

The Obesity Culture: Strategies for Change— Public Health and University-Community Partnerships

Participatory Partnerships for Social Action and Research

Handbook of Engaged Scholarship: Contemporary Landscapes, Future Directions: Volume 1: Institutional Change, and Volume 2: Community-Campus Partnerships

This book provides the theory and the practice of risk assessment and management in the context of hazardous substances in the workplace based on a rational conceptual framework. Exposure to chemicals in industry and commerce is particularly important given the volume of chemicals used, the different forms in which they may exist and their range of health effects. This book will address the historical perspectives; discuss the various models available, propose a more comprehensive model and discuss the various elements of risk assessment and the management process. Furthermore applications of risk assessment and management in various industrial sectors will be discussed based either on substance or the process involved.

This book will link the theory with the practice of risk assessment and management. It will provide the individual responsible, as well as those involved in providing input into the process of risk assessment and management in the workplace a clear understanding of the issues and the activities involved. It will also provide examples of assessment and management in a range of selected industries and processes.

Traditional candles are made with paraffin wax which is a by-product of the petroleum industry and should be considered a non-renewable energy source. When burned they release carcinogenic toxins such as benzene, toluene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acrolein and soot into the air. The emissions from paraffin candles contain many of the same toxins produced by burning diesel fuel.

In January 2012 a tragic accidental candle fire occurred in Monrovia, Liberia. 150 homes were destroyed and 2,500 people were left homeless. This tragedy could have been prevented. Please watch the video:

An interesting post wrote by Natt Garun on Digital Trends explains the likelihood of predicting signs of depression through Facebook status.

There’s always that one friend on Facebook who keeps posting confessional statuses, emo pictures, or links of alarming mental states. We might see them as attention seeking or even get annoyed enough to hide the person’s updates from our news feed, but according to a recent New York Times report, such melodramatic posts can offer signs of an actual depression.

For many people, young adolescents and older individuals alike, social media sites are their only sources to vent. Last year, a research study conducted by the University of Washington stated that 30 percent of 200 students posted updates that reported “feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness, insomnia or sleeping too much, and difficulty concentrating,” all of which met the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria as symptoms of depression. Internet spaces allow for a certain wall of security that help people admit to things they would ordinarily hide in real life. Only 10 percent of these depression victims seek counseling to get them through their mental issues.  Read the rest here/

Media Matters reviewed all daytime, afternoon, and evening programming on MSNBC, CNN, and FOX between February 6, 2012, and February 10, 2012, for media reports that focused on the contraception debate controversy. Given that Rep. Ron Paul, Sen. John Barrasso, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius all currently hold a primary occupation as politicians or government officials, and not as physicians or public health experts, they were not considered as such for the purposes of this study.

Cable news channels hosted only one expert from the public health community during a week of coverage over the controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s decision to require most employers to provide health insurance coverage for contraception. By contrast, they hosted 300 guest appearances from the political or religious communities.

On January 20, the Obama administration announced that nonprofit employers — including those connected to religious organizations — would be required to provide health insurance coverage for contraception. After the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops registered their opposition to the rule, conservative media figures accused the administration of engaging in a “war on the Catholic church.”

On February 10, President Obama announced an accommodation that would allow insurance companies to directly offer contraception coverage to employees whose employers have religious objections to such coverage. Read the rest here.

This community and academic partner co-authored article appears in the current (Nov 2011) issue of the journal Society and Mental Health: http://bit.ly/wBVbz4

An Exploration of the Effect of Community Engagement in Research on Perceived Outcomes of Partnered Mental Health Services Projects

Dmitry Khodyakov, Susan Stockdale, Felica Jones, Elizabeth Ohito, Andrea Jones, Elizabeth Lizaola and Joseph Mango

Abstract

Mental health research projects address sensitive issues for vulnerable populations and are implemented in complex environments. Community-based participatory research approaches are recommended for health research on vulnerable populations, but little is known about how variation in participation affects outcomes of partnered research projects. We developed a conceptual model demonstrating the impact of community engagement in research on outcomes of partnered projects. We collected data on key constructs from community and academic leaders of 21 sampled partnered research projects in two cycles of a research center funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. We conducted empirical analyses to test the model. Our findings suggest that community engagement in research is positively associated with perceived professional development as well as political and community impact.