Improving global health
Gerald Keusch is an active leader in global health organizations.
Gerald Keusch, Medical Campus assistant provost for global health, associate dean of global health at the School of Public Health, and director of the Global Health Initiative at Boston University, has been appointed chairman of the steering committee of the Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research. Supported by the National Institutes of Health, the network is a collaborative effort to improve the health of women and children in developing countries and to support foreign research.
The Global Network works to achieve these objectives in two ways. First, affiliated scientists conduct research in developing countries that has the potential to significantly improve the quality of life. For instance, the organization has studied whether simple interventions by minimally trained midwives could reduce the problem of postpartum hemorrhage, a leading cause of maternal mortality in births outside of medical facilities. Second, it improves the scientific capabilities of developing countries by training local scientists to assume leadership positions in research and government.
The steering committee of the Global Network decides what issues affecting women and children to pursue, develops study designs, and follows the progress of the research. As chairman, Keusch will work to connect each scientist and the work he or she is doing on a particular problem to all the other scientists in the network.
“I guess you might characterize it as herding cats,” says Keusch. “Researchers are notoriously independent, and in this sort of a network they have to be fully interdependent. I will try as well to ensure that all members of the committee and the investigators are heard.”
He hopes to increase the autonomy of local scientists in developing countries. “I want to be certain that as time goes on and the developing country investigators gain skills and confidence,” he says, “they increasingly take on leadership roles and share equally in all of the decisions being taken.”
Keusch is also a member of the advisory council of the newly formed Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research, established with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The society’s aim is to increase awareness of, and make the case for, greater U.S. investment in research to fight diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest nations. In addition, he is involved in international health research and policy with the NIH, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization.