Burke Fellow Seminar Series: The True Burden of Ebola in West Africa
Join former HGHI Burke Fellows Pardis Sabeti, Raj Panjabi and Margaret Bourdeaux for a new monthly seminar series to learn about their innovative research and teaching projects.
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US Investments in Global Health: Transforming Communities
Join us for an exciting conversation with local global health executives paving the way to impact. Vanessa Kerry, Marian Wentworth, Loyce Pace and Kate Dodson will discuss with you, global health advocacy efforts and priorities in DC and abroad, as was recently outlined in the 2019 Global Health Council Briefing Book.
Tech & Health/Burke Fellowship Seminar: Precision Diagnosis of TB Resistance in Resource Limited Settings
“Precision Diagnosis of TB Resistance in Resource Limited Settings“
Although technologically complex health solutions do not always lend themselves easily to implementation in resource limited settings, I will make several arguments in this talk around how technology can circumvent challenges imposed by limited resources. I will discuss how genomics and specifically pathogen genomics is revolutionizing infectious disease response and treatment drawing on our work on characterizing molecular determinants of resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis. I will discuss our efforts in building a highly accurate whole genome based statistical learning method for resistance prediction, and using it for prediction on public data as a form of surveillance. Finally I will discuss how our approach is being implemented for individual patient care and the remaining challenges facing precision antibiotic therapy of TB.
Maha Farhat is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. She holds an MD from the McGill University Faculty of Medicine and an MSc in biostatistics from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Maha is also a practicing physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.
Undergraduate Student Advisory Council Meeting
Attention All Global Health-Interested Students
Are you looking for a forum for all interested global health students to have a place to connect and network? Are you in need of a central global health resource point at Harvard for introductions, to engage in cutting-edge work, or to be better connected in the wider global health community outside of the College? Do you enjoy free dinners? If so, we offer just what you have been seeking!!
We are an institute – the nexus for global health at the University across the College, graduate schools and our hospitals – situated under the Harvard Office of the President and Provost. We generate exciting, evidence-based research, create educational materials/courses, and host A LOT of convenings to get engagement on big population-based health challenges we are facing.
You all are so important to our mission so a few years ago we developed the HGHI Student Advisory Committee, or ‘SAC’. SAC is for global health interested-undergraduates to meet once/month over dinner at the HGHI office in Harvard Square and we use the opportunity to be a resource for Harvard’s global health student organizations, as well as to hear from you about the latest conversations at the College. In addition, we are supporting the development of a massive student global health leadership conference led by VISION on April 6-7, 2019 and would love to include you.
Spring 2019 HGHI Global Health SAC Meeting Schedule
Wednesday, March 27th 5:30 – 7:00 pm; dinner will be served
Wednesday, April 24th 5:30 – 7:00 pm; dinner will be served
HIV Programming at Scale
“Research to Practice: Developing and Implementing Evidence-Based HIV Programming at Scale”
The response to HIV has been a herculean effort across researchers, governments, funders, implementers, and communities globally and has shifted the collective thinking on how to implement interventions and services on a large scale across numerous countries while tailoring to local contexts. How can researchers ensure that their work contributes to on-the-ground change at a large scale? We’ll examine the current status of several key HIV interventions and how the connections between research and implementation can be maximized for the greatest impact.
Dr. Timothy Mah currently serves as the Acting Deputy Division Chief for the Priority Populations, Integration, and Rights Division in the Office of HIV/AIDS at USAID. In this role, Tim provides strategic assistance on HIV programming to USAID field missions and PEPFAR country teams, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. Tim is responsible for synthesizing cutting edge research and best practices regarding HIV prevention, care and treatment and their application to USAID and partner programs. Tim was previously Acting Director of the USAID Health Office in South Africa, overseeing one of the largest PEPFAR HIV portfolios in the world.
Prior to joining USAID, Tim was a Research Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Town. Tim was also a Peace Corps Volunteer in The Gambia. He received his Master of Science and Doctor of Science degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health and his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.
Seminar: Achieving Food Security in a Changing Climate: The Role of Water Availability
“Achieving Food Security in a Changing Climate: The Role of Water Availability”
Understanding the response of agriculture to environmental stressors is essential to adapt food systems to climate change. Although evidence of crop yield loss with extreme temperature is abundant, quantifying the large-scale response of crop yield to water availability has proven challenging due to limited on-the-ground observations. In this work, we utilize well-resolved observations from satellites and an ecologically-based statistical model to discern the crop yield response to daily imbalances in the water cycle. We integrate these observation-based response functions with climate model output to predict future yields. Through a series of case studies, we demonstrate that the level of vulnerability to climate change is both region and crop specific. For example, we find a low sensitivity of maize yield in the U.S. Midwest to climate change due to the current, near-optimal growing conditions. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, we find that increases in temperature may have profound adverse effects on agricultural, specifically in present-day, semi-arid regions. Identifying these vulnerable regions is critical to develop effective adaptation strategies and ensure food security in future climate scenarios. Dr. Angela Rigden is a hydrologist interested in understanding connections between the water cycle, climate, and vegetation, especially pertaining to agriculture. Angela completed her Ph.D. in Earth Science at Boston University under the supervision of Dr. Guido Salvucci. Her dissertation explored the sources of variability in terrestrial water cycling, finding that vegetation plays a key role in modulating multi-decadal trends in evaporation. Angela received a B.S. in Biological Engineering from Cornell University. As Planetary Health Fellow at Harvard University, Angela is leveraging her expertise in hydrology to explore how changes in water availability affect food production in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her approach synthesizes data from a wide range of observational platforms, including satellites, weather stations, and agricultural surveys. She also plans to collaborate with local stakeholders in Africa to incorporate data that have hitherto not been accessible, and interpret the implications of her findings.
Harvard Global Health and Leadership HS Student Conference 2019
The conference provides a great opportunity for high school students to learn about global health from various speakers, conduct a community project, participate in a case study competition, and meet ambitious students. Students can have a Harvard student mentor for their community project and give a presentation at the conference.
More information here.
AI in Rural India
“How AI Can Make Precision Public Health a Reality – The Case of Saving Mothers and Babies in Rural Northern India”AI can optimize your google search, but can it optimize a public health intervention using messy real-world data at scale? It is estimated that 830 women die every day from preventable complications related to pregnancy and childbirth and more than five million children die each year before their fifth birthday. Getting women to deliver in hospital facilities instead of delivering at home and ensuring the provision of quality of care are key to address this public health crisis. Using novel data sets and integrating several machine learning approaches, we demonstrate how programs can develop a more precise approach to closing these gaps. Our case study is from India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh where 34 percent more newborns die than in India as a whole, and 55 percent more women die from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth. The talk will also outline the challenges of working with real world data and discuss innovations that are needed not only on the AI front, but also on the data side. Dr. Sema Sgaier is Co-founder and Executive Director of Surgo Foundation, a privately funded action tank whose mission is combining a customer obsessed agenda with systems thinking to solve complex global development problems. At Surgo, she leads a multi-disciplinary team of data scientists, behavioral scientists, technologists, and development experts. Previously at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Sgaier led large-scale health programs in India and Africa. She is an assistant adjunct professor of global health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was selected as a Rising Talent by the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. Sema holds a PhD in cellular and molecular biology from New York University, a MA in neuroscience from Brown, and a BSc in molecular biology and genetics from Boğaziçi University (Istanbul).
Burke Fellow Seminar Series: What Impact Do Extreme Weather Events Have on Our Health?
What do Pardis Sabeti, Raj Panjabi and Margaret Bourdeaux have in common? They are all former HGHI Burke Fellows! Join us for a new monthly seminar series to hear from this year’s Burke fellows about their innovative research and teaching projects. Renee Salas, MD, MPH, MS
“Impact of Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters on Healthcare Utilization, Outcomes, and Cost for Elderly Medicare Beneficiaries”
Globally, climate change is having the biggest health impacts on populations in developing countries, which have contributed least to the emission of the greenhouse gases stimulating this phenomenon. Specifically, climate change is causing an increased frequency and/or severity of extreme weather events. While we know extreme weather events negatively impact health and increase the utilization of healthcare, current studies are limited in scope and applicability. Understanding the health and healthcare impacts of climate change driven extreme weather within the U.S., and specifically, population displacement has significant global health implications including informing evidence-based prevention.
Renee Salas is a clinical instructor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and an emergency medicine physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She received her Doctor of Medicine from the innovative five-year medical school program to train physician-investigators at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. She concurrently obtained a Master of Science in Clinical Research from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Subsequently, she received a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health with a concentration in environmental health while completing a Fellowship in Wilderness Medicine at MGH.
Burke Global Health Fellowship Seminar Series: Multi-media Teaching in Global Health & Social Medicine
“Multi-media Teaching in Global Health & Social Medicine”
With Dr. Daniel Palazuelos, MD, MPH All medicine is social medicine, all health is global health; but not all medical trainees learn enough about either to put the best of each field into practice. Although Harvard has made a major commitment to offering these subjects across its many schools, including a mandatory social medicine course during the pre-clinical years at the medical school, there is room to reach even more trainees with new and innovative teaching techniques. Multi-media learning has gained traction as an important pedagogical tool. Harvard medical students have expressed a preference for being introduced to new concepts via such techniques. Daniel Palazuelos will be presenting on his Burke Fellowship project, which combines experiences from several initial successes, including a series of social medicine videos produced for medical students and a highly-trafficked podcast hosted on CHWcentral.org. He will explore how such materials can augment learning across the Harvard schools, and beyond.
Daniel Palazuelos is a global health implementer and educator who holds a variety of positions across Harvard, including, Associate physician in the Department of Medicine, Assistant Director of the Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency in the Division of Global Health Equity, Clinician-Educator Hospitalist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Cannon Society Global Health Teaching Fellow at Harvard Medical School. Daniel also serves as the Director for Community Health Systems at Partners In Health, and as the Co-founder/Chief Strategist of Compañeros En Salud -México (PIH-Mexico). In his role for the PIH project in Mexico, Compañeros en Salud-Mexico, he worked to create the strategy for, and successfully launch, the new health care system strengthening. It is envisioned not only as a service provider for local people in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Chiapas, but also as a platform for both U.S. and Mexican medical trainees to learn about global health and to conduct implementation research. In addition to an emphasis on extensive preparation and on-site mentorship, this program offers collaborators the capacity to support intensive and logistically complex research efforts. Noteworthy examples include: a stepped-wedge unidirectional crossover study of the effectiveness of community health worker accompaniment on diabetes and hypertension treatment adherence and clinical outcomes, and a user perception study of how a multifaceted educational intervention has affected local staff career choices.
Tech & Health Seminar Series
“To AI or Not to AI: Image-Based Diagnostics for Post-Cesarean Delivery Infections in Rural Rwanda”
In rural Rwanda, 11% of women who deliver via c-section develop a surgical site infection (SSI). Delays in SSI diagnosis and treatment can lead to severe morbidity and mortality among mothers. Our team is assessing ways to leverage the existing network of community health workers (CHWs) to improve post-c-section follow-up with a focus on timely identification of SSIs. We will briefly discuss an image-based diagnostic tool that uses artificial intelligence to diagnose infection based on CHW-generated photos of the c-section incision. The talk will also outline the often forgotten but extremely important questions around the utility of this AI-based diagnostic tool, namely the appropriateness, value-added, feasibility, acceptability, and scalability of this intervention in the context of health care delivery in rural Africa.
Dr. Bethany Hedt-Gauthier is a Biostatistician and an Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine (Harvard Medical School) and Biostatistics (Harvard Chan School). Her primary research interests include quantifying the health needs of and evaluating programs targeting marginalized populations, with a focus on global surgery research. Bethany was resident in Rwanda for 3.5 years and continues to support research capacity building work at Partners In Health/Rwanda, the University of Global Health Equity, and the University of Rwanda. She also leads research related to provision of cesarean sections and outcomes at rural district hospitals in Rwanda with co-PIs Fredrick Kateera and Robert Riviello. Dr. Rich Fletcher leads the Mobile Technology Lab based at D-Lab, which develops a variety of mobile sensors, analytic tools, and diagnostic algorithms to study problems in global health and behavior medicine. Rich has done field work in over a dozen developing countries and currently leads several research efforts in the area of global health, agriculture, environmental monitoring, behavior medicine, and mental health. Rich has worked for over 20 years in the field of wireless sensors and RFID, including five years with the US Air Force and 15 years at the MIT Media Lab, producing over a dozen US patents and several spin-off companies. In the field of medicine, Rich Fletcher currently leads several research studies funded by NIH, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, Vodafone and the Tata Trust. Bridging together the fields of engineering and medicine, Rich’s research utilizes a variety of mobile technologies and wearable sensors for use in behavior monitoring as well as psychological and behavioral interventions.
Biology by Design: Bioengineering & Biosecurity Approaches at Ginkgo Bioworks
Patrick Boyle is the Head of Codebase at Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston-based synthetic biology company that makes and sells engineered organisms. Patrick is responsible for Ginkgo’s Codebase, the company’s complete portfolio of reusable biological assets. Codebase includes novel strains, enzymes, genetic parts, and diverse genetic repositories, including millions of engineered DNA sequences. Codebase is being developed, maintained, and leveraged by Ginkgo’s Organism Engineers via dozens of strain engineering projects. Prior to leading Codebase, Patrick founded the Design group at Ginkgo, which now produces hundreds of millions of base pairs of DNA designs each year to support Ginkgo’s projects. At present, more than 30% of the world’s DNA synthesis is performed for work at Ginkgo.
Patrick also participates in a number of efforts related to the broader development of synthetic biology and biosecurity. This includes a fellowship in the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security Initiative, serving as a Technical Advisor to the Synthetic Biology for Military Environments program for the Department of Defense, and co-authoring the 2018 “Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology” report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Prior to Ginkgo, Patrick received his PhD from Harvard Medical School in 2012, developing synthetic biology applications in bacteria, yeast, and plants in the lab of Dr. Pamela Silver. He received an SB in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006.