Author: WashU

Global Health & Infectious Disease 2016 event award winners

The 4th Annual Global Health and Infectious Disease Conference was again a great success. Thank you to everyone who joined us to present, listen, learn, and connect. Prizes were awarded for the best talk at the Trainee Oral Symposium on April 14th and best posters at the Conference on April 15. Oral Award Kristin Griffiths, PhD, Postdoctoral […]

Healthy People 2020 and the Sustainable Development Goals

For public health experts and practitioners, creating large-scale goals and objectives can be one way to help inspire and motivate large-scale change. Initiatives such as Healthy People 2020, created by the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the Sustainable Development Goals from the United Nations, represent two attempts to set some big targets […]

Project New Boundaries for Youth

Last year Nidhi Bhaskar, a junior at Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School, contacted Jacaranda van Rheenen, PhD, manager of the Global Health Center, to discuss her new organization, Project New Boundaries for Youth (ProjectNBYOUTH). Nidhi created her non-profit organization to spread awareness and inspire youth about local health, education, and environmental issues […]

PEPFAR: A policy response to the global HIV/AIDS pandemic

Written by April Houston, MSW/MPH, graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis Progress on HIV/AIDS has been substantial in the last 15 years, thanks to increased attention and funding to combat its spread. It is important to review the past to determine best practices for our present and future. The first cases of HIV […]

Reflections from Global Health Week

Written by María Ruiz, a junior at Washington University and the President of the Steering Committee for Global Health Week After many months of planning, the first student-organized Global Health Week culminated at the end of September. We think it was a great success. As I stated in a previous piece about Global Health Week, global health is a […]

New book examines shifting health-care landscapes in Maya Guatemala

Written by Anita Chary, MD/PhD, student at Washington University School of Medicine Privatization and the New Medical Pluralism: Shifting Healthcare Landscapes in Maya Guatemala is based on experiences in health care delivery in rural Guatemala over the last decade. I worked with Peter Rohloff, an internist and pediatrician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and faculty […]

An adult choice? Corporate responsibility and the global face of tobacco

Tobacco has been a global industry for more than a century. But in the era of corporate social responsibility, how do tobacco companies justify their push to sell even more cigarettes around the world? Trade agreements like the currently proposed Trans Pacific Partnership make it easier for tobacco corporations to flood markets in low- and […]

Global health fellowship opportunities and experiences

Written by Austin Wesevich, MD/MPH, student at Washington University in St. Louis I am an MD/MPH student at Washington University interested in global health, so I applied for several fellowships this past year to fund time abroad. I was fortunate enough to receive a few offers, so I was able to spend four weeks in […]

Redefining the standard of care in cancer treatment

Eduardo Gharzouzi , MD, surgical oncologist at the Instituto de Cancerología, Guatemala City and one of the 2015 Global Health Week speakers In 2012, there were an estimated 14.2 million cases of cancer worldwide. More than half of this cancer burden comes from developing countries. By 2030, 60% of new cancer cases and 70% of cancer […]

Global health – The next generation

Written by Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine; and keynote speaker for 2015 Global Health Week We are coming to the end of an incredible 15-year period of expansion in promoting global health. Beginning with the launch of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in […]

Global Health Week: A student perspective

The leader of the Global Health Week planning committee offers a preview of the events and activities and muses on the larger significance of global health.

Documentary features Congolese hospital successes

Written by April Houston, MSW/MPH, graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis The women of Congo have had it rough. Their country has been at war for decades, many of them have seen their families and even their bodies badly damaged and torn apart. There’s no shortage of sad stories coming out of the […]

Microfinancing Partners in Africa

Microfinancing Partners in Africa is a Saint Louis-based organization whose mission is to provide grants and direct funding to strengthen and expand microfinancing programs in Africa, and to empower those living in extreme poverty by providing access to financial services and education. The organization was founded by Sister Toni Temporiti in 2006 and has grown […]

Bringing a superfood down to earth

Genetically modified (GM) crops are mostly planted on large industrialized farms (mainly in the US, Brazil, and Argentina), but there continues to be keen interest in—and debate on—their utility for small farmers and poor consumers in the Global South. In this regard, “Golden Rice” has received the most attention. Golden Rice is a medical food, engineered […]

Project Peanut Butter

Project Peanut Butter works in Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Ghana to bring Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food to malnourished children.

Contagion! Back to the past

Words carry the past. – I was reminded of this recently as I watched Contagion, a 2011 movie that follows a team of medical experts as they battle to stop a lethal airborne virus before it wipes out all of humanity. Who will win: the experts or the virus? We never find out, nor should […]

Language resource: Canopy medical translator app

The Global Health Center at the Institute for Public Health has received free access to the NIH-funded Canopy Medical Translator premium app. Providers across the globe can communicate with patients/communities in 15 languages. The app includes translation help for phrases medical personnel use the most, and a live medical interpreter is available when you need […]

All about I-CARES

I-CARES, or the International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability, is Washington University’s hub for research, innovation, and activity related to energy, sustainability, and climate change. According to their materials, “The primary objective of I-CARES is to encourage and coordinate collaborative research work that contributes to rapid progress in some of the great challenges […]