Partners In Health Co-Founder Lectures On Global Health Topics

The Dartmouth reports on a recent talk by Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim, co-founder of Partners In Health. During his lecture, which touched on several global health-related topics, “Kim stressed the need to incorporate ‘health care delivery science’ into undergraduate education,” the publication writes (Gonzalez, 4/8).

Vilsack’s Remarks At Global Food Security Symposium

A USDA press release features Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s prepared remarks for the recent Partners in Agriculture Global Food Security Symposium, which was sponsored by the U.S. Grains Council. “In short, a critical step towards global food security will be achieving a more efficient global market that is based on established international rules that reduce barriers, reduce costs, and increase reliability of trading systems,” Vilsack said (4/7).

Blog: Good Momentum For NTDs, Maternal Health

“Maternal health and neglected tropical diseases have a number of things in common, ranging from a shared history plagued with little political will to the death tolls associated with each issue … More recently, these two global health issues share something else: a boost in funding, international attention and overall momentum,” according to an “End the Neglect” blog post. The post notes that President Barack Obama has named “neglected tropical diseases and maternal and child mortality as two of the four pillars of the Global Health Initiative.” It argues that a “comprehensive approach” could “dramatically improve the lives of the world’s most economically, socially and geographically marginalized populations –specifically those living in remote rural villages and crowded urban slums” (Mitchell, 4/7).

Blog Examines GAO Global Food Aid Report

A “Global Food For Thought” blog post examines a March 2010 Government Accountability Office report on international food aid. The report “found that the U.S. government supports a wide variety of programs and activities for global food security, but lacks readily available comprehensive data on funding.” It “also found that the administration is in the process of finalizing a governmentwide global food security strategy, but its efforts are vulnerable to data weaknesses and risks associated with the strategy’s host country-led approach.” The report also includes two recommendations for the Secretary of State (Melito, 4/6).

PLoS Medicine Explores Community-Based Approaches To Improving Neonatal Survival In Developing Countries

“The last two decades have seen a rise in advocacy – a call for attention to the newborn infant along with her mother and siblings – and an incremental growth in the evidence for potential interventions,” write the authors of a PLoS Medicine Policy Forum that reflects on the outcomes of several community-based approaches to improving neonatal survival in South Asia. “There is little doubt that community interventions for newborn survival work in principle,” the authors write. “[T]he key questions are now more about the medium than the message: how effective simplified program designs might be, whether they are relevant in African contexts, whether they will be as effective as they appear, and how they could be rolled out and sustained” (Osrin et al., 4/6).

Blog: USAID Must Show Stronger Leadership In Foreign Aid Reform Efforts

“While encouraged by the quantity of dialogue [about foreign aid reform], it is very disparate,” a Huffington Post blog post writes. “Some is taking place in think tanks; some as new government initiatives are crafted … and some on Capitol Hill. Some is being done within USAID; some as part of other government deliberations; and some by NGOs,” the blog observes. “USAID must play a much stronger leadership role in these efforts. It can and must provide a common roadmap that keeps us moving toward our destination, bringing the multiple strands together and helping us reach a new foreign assistance framework that places development at the center” (Peasley, 4/6).

PLoS Medicine Examines Laboratory Capacity Building In Asia

A PLoS Medicine Health In Action paper examines the recent efforts “to enhance the capacity and quality of both the research and clinical laboratories” that are part of the South East Asia Infectious Disease Clinical Research Network (SEAICRN). The paper describes the aims of the network – comprised of hospitals and institutions in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore, and details “the experiences of the SEAICRN in setting up and conducting the laboratory capacity building program and discuss how this benefitted the institutions, the research studies, and the region” (Wertheim et al., 4/6).

UCSF, SEEK Development Partner On Global Health Science And Policy

A University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) press release announces this week’s launch of a global health initiative between the university and SEEK Development, a global health and development consulting group. The Evidence-to-Policy Initiative, or E2Pi, aims to translate “scientific evidence into policy and action,” according to the press release. A $3.2 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will provide funding for the first three years of initiative (4/5).

Kaiser Family Foundation Fact Sheet Looks At Past PEPFAR Successes, Future Program Aims

The Kaiser Family Foundation has posted an updated PEPFAR fact sheet about the history, funding and future outlook of the United States government’s major initiative to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in developing countries (4/2).