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student engagement
student engagement

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).  
fellowship
fellowship

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.

fellowship
fellowship

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 and health
tech and health

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.
tech and health
tech and health

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.

tech and health
tech and health

Tech & Health Seminar Series

“Governing the Rise of AI: A Unique Global Governance Challenge”  The rise of Artificial Intelligence as a general purpose technology exhibits characteristics of velocity and magnitude probably not seen in earlier major techno-industrial revolutions. The great upsides and severe downsides it generates are inextricably connected, requiring a complex governance effort to capture opportunities while minimizing risks and spreading the gains widely. The case of healthcare lies at the center of this conundrum with an abundance of use-cases ranging from diagnostic, prevention, to therapy. Because the AI revolution is a global phenomenon nested in the wider digital socio-economic paradigm, the governance effort will have to mobilize public and private actors as well as citizens internationally and transnationally in new and innovative ways. We will discuss possible pathways, solutions, strategies and challenges. Nicolas Miailhe co-founded The Future Society in 2014 and incubated it at the Harvard  Kennedy School of Government. An independent think-and-do-tank, The Future Society specializes in questions of impact and governance of emerging technologies, starting with Artificial Intelligence through its “AI Initiative” launched in 2015. A recognized strategist, thought-leader, and implementer, Nicolas has lectured around the world, and advises multinationals, governments and international organizations. He is the co-Convener of the Global Governance of AI Roundtable (GGAR) organized yearly during the World Government Summit in Dubai, as well as a member of the AI Group of experts at OECD (AIGO), of the World Bank’s Digital Economy for All Initiative (DE4ALL), and of the Global Council on Extended Intelligence (CXI). Nicolas teaches at the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po), at the IE School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid, and at the Mohamed bin Rashid School of Government in Dubai. He is also a member of three committees of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethically Aligned Design of AI and Autonomous Systems, a Senior Visiting Research Fellow with the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard, and a Fellow with the Center for the Governance of Change at IE Business School in Madrid.

pandemics
pandemics

Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World Exhibition Launch in Mumbai

Please join us in celebrating the launch of the Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World exhibition at the Nehru Science Centre in Mumbai.  Featured speakers include: Dean Michelle Williams, Dean of the Faculty, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Angelopoulos Professor in Public Health and International Development, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Kennedy Schoo Dr. Ashish K. Jha, Dean for Global Strategy & K.T. Li Professor of Global Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Director, Harvard Global Health Institute Dr. Zarir Udwadia, chest physician, Hinduja and Breach Candy Hospitals

tech and health
tech and health

Seminar: Is Medical Artificial Intelligence Possible in Low-Resource Settings?

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have been around for decades. Yet a lack of access to large amounts of high quality data has historically limited applications of AI in healthcare. However, a more recent increase in the availability of data has created an opportunity to apply AI algorithms to improve patient outcomes globally. In low and middle-income countries, such data could be used to track disease outbreaks, assess drivers of infectious disease transmission and track drug adherence. While there is immense potential for the use of data, it needs to be integrated across different systems, harmonized and curated. Liberating data from proprietary information systems and breaking down the silos between clinicians and the data scientists remain enormous barriers in the utilization of AI to address global health challenges. Dr. Leo Anthony Celi has practiced medicine in three continents, giving him broad perspectives in healthcare delivery. He holds a faculty position at Harvard Medical School as an intensive care specialist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. As clinical research director and principal research scientist at the MIT Laboratory of Computational Physiology (LCP), he brings together clinicians and data scientists to support research using data routinely collected in the intensive care unit (ICU). Leo founded and co-directs Sana, a cross-disciplinary organization based at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT, whose objective is to leverage information technology to improve health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. At its core is an open-source mobile tele-health platform that allows for capture, transmission and archiving of complex medical data, in addition to patient demographic and clinical information. Sana is the inaugural recipient of both the mHealth (Mobile Health) Alliance Award from the United Nations Foundation and the Wireless Innovation Award from the Vodafone Foundation in 2010. The software has since been implemented around the globe including India, Kenya, Lebanon, Haiti, Mongolia, Uganda, Brazil, Ethiopia, Argentina, and South Africa.
special projects
special projects

50 Years of ORT: Cashing in on the Poor Mans’ Gatorade

Join us in celebrating Dr. Richard Cash!   Dr. Cash is a Senior Lecturer in Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.  2018 marks the 50th anniversary of Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT), a simple solution that continues to save millions of lives worldwide. To celebrate this milestone in public health, and to honor the scientific contributions of Dr. Richard Cash, a pioneer in ORT, we are hosting a special event on Monday, November 19th at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Speakers will reflect on the impact of ORT, what we can learn from it’s success, and on how Richard’s leadership is making a difference.   Confirmed speakers include: Dr. Edward Ryan, Massachusetts General Hospital Dr. David Nalin, Albany Medical College Dr. Lincoln Chen, China Medical Board Professor Marcia Castro, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Dean Ashish Jha, Harvard Global Health Institute Professor Wafaie Fawzi, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Dr. Richard Cash, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Professor Barry Bloom, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Professor Megan Murray, Harvard Medical School Dr. Christopher Duggan, Boston Children’s Hospital Dr. Jon Rohde, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health A reception will follow at 6:00pm.
tech and health
tech and health

Seminar: Mapping and Repairing the Brain: Implications for Global Health

Technology & Health Seminar Series 2018-19  “Mapping and Repairing the Brain: Implications for Global Health” with Dr. Ed Boyden Synthetic Neurobiology Group, MIT Brain disorders affect more than a billion people worldwide. Yet cures are few and treatment options inadequate. Traditional ways of examining the brain, such as using an fMRI, have poor resolution and are unable to pinpoint the exact molecular changes causing disease. However, novel technologies are being developed that let scientist peer inside the brain like never before. This includes tools that allow cells and molecules to be imaged with nanoscale precision, as well technologies to enable the activation and silencing of brain activity with light. These technologies, while designed for the brain, also are starting to have impact on the fields of cancer, immunity, and infectious disease, and thus may generally help with the understanding and confrontation of global health challenges. Dr. Boyden is the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT, associate professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT’s Media Lab and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and was recently selected to be an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2018). He leads the Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which develops tools for analyzing and repairing complex biological systems such as the brain, and applies them systematically to reveal ground truth principles of biological function as well as to repair these systems.

Global Mental Health
Global Mental Health

GMH@Harvard Showcase & Film Screening Event

The GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard Initiative is excited to invite students, faculty, organizations, programs, and departments to share their work on global mental health in Boston, the US or abroad at our showcase event during Harvard Worldwide Week! Our goal is to encourage new collaborations across the university; introduce students and trainees to the diverse global mental health work at Harvard; and showcase the incredible interdisciplinary work being done throughout our community. We have a range of participants presenting from non-profit organizations and artists, to research labs across Harvard schools. Join us for a night of networking and celebrating each other’s work!  Participating groups include: Global Initiative for Neuropsychiatric Genetics Education in Research (GINGER) MannMukti Partners in Health Laboratory for Youth Mental Health Harvard Students in Mental Health Research Refugee trauma and resilience center MGH Chester Pierce MD Division of Global Psychiatry Sangath Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness Rachel Tine Photography  Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee Professor Byron Good – Medical Anthropology in Asian Societies Film Screening: 6:00-8:00pm G1, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Following the showcase networking event we will be screening parts of the documentaries and hosting the filmmakers for a panel discussion: “Still We Rise” by Molly Knight Raskin “Sadness in Comedy: Unfounded Stereotype, or Something More?” by John Ball