By Carey Howard
Boston-Based, full-time Research Fellow needed for Maternity Homes Alliance in Zambia
POSITION: Research Fellow – Maternity Homes in Zambia Project
REPORTS TO: Dr. Nancy Scott, Principal Investigator
Appointment term: Anticipated June 1, 2015 start date, one-year appointment with annual renewal for up to three years, conditional upon continued grant funding and good performance.
Salary: Commensurate with experience.
SUMMARY OF PROJECT
The Maternity Homes Alliance (MHA) – a partnership between Government of the Republic of Zambia, MSD for Mothers, implementing partners working in collaboration with academic institutions, an evaluation advisor, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and ELMA Foundation- seeks to help women overcome the “distance problem” by implementing MHs, with the hypothesis that offering women access to quality maternity homes will bring women closer to quality, facility-based delivery and postpartum care, ultimately improving health outcomes. Through implementing and evaluating maternity homes in Zambia, the MHA will generate rigorous evidence to help decision makers
Read the full job description here: MHZ RF job posting 2015
Message from the Global Health Department regarding cleanliness of kitchen
Some in our community have rightly noted that the kitchen is more of a mess these days. Please abide by the following simple rules.
- Promptly wash and replace and dishes that you or your guests may have used.
- Properly recycle or throw away all trash left after meetings at which food is served.
- If you leave surplus food or snacks out for the community, please come back and wash or dispose of the detritus as necessary.
Good housekeeping and hygiene is part of public health. Let’s practice what we preach.
TA’s Needed for Fall 2015 Course: Global Environmental Public Health
The HS 345 course (Global Environmental Public Health) at Sargent College (BU) needs two TAs for the fall semester of 2015. The candidates need to be current graduate students at BU during fall semester. If you are interested in this job please fill out the attached form.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kx3U4wgSHTnTCDlSfRqlbzmIPwD8JKIpLm7ovls0lNI/viewform
SAVE THE DATE: BU Students Pitch the Idea that Got Them to Google!
Ebola Hackathon - Inspired Team to Pitch Live at Google Wearables Challenge
Three BU SPH students Jessica Autrey, Shauna Biggs, and Kerlyne Jean – also known at Team Proxome – will be pitching their award winning idea, at BU, next Wednesday evening. The team met at the MIT Stop Ebola Hackathon and won first prize for their proposal of a hi-tech/low-cost sensor that monitors the heart rate and temperature Ebola patients.
Since winning the hackathon, they have been working with MGH Center for Global Health, CAMTech, International Medical Corps, and Medtronic to develop our product and get it into the field. In February they entered Proxome into the Boston University Global Health and Engineering Meet-Up Competition where we won first place in the “shark tank” pitch session and third place in the poster competition. On Thursday, April 23rd they are pitching their idea at the Google Wearables Challenge, and hope for another win!
Team Proxome also includes Adrian Gropper, MD, CTO of Patient Privacy Rights; Sean Doyle, a software engineer at MGH; Jim Wright, an electrical engineer with a background in developing wearable devices for military and medical applications.
University of Washington Division of Family Planning is hiring a Research Coordinator
The new University of Washington Division of Family Planning is currently hiring a Research Coordinator, preferably an MPH with experience in research coordination at an academic medical center and in qualitative methodology. The posting is Req #119118, found here.
Midwives for Haiti is seeking a new In-Country Director
A fantastic organization called Midwives For Haiti is seeking a new In-Country Director. The organization (and position) is based in Hinche, Haiti, and the US headquarters is located in Richmond, VA. I have attached the job description and application. If you could forward this on to anyone who may be interested, I would really appreciate it.
Any questions can be emailed to Leona at info@midwivesforhaiti.org. I worked in this position (it's been modified to be more appropriate for someone with an MPH) for a year before coming to BUSPH, so I am also happy to answer any questions about the experience.
MIT Global Health and Medical Humanities Initiative guest speaker Jack Geiger; April 23rd
Please save the date for a talk that the MIT Global Health and Medical Humanities Initiative (GHMHI) is hosting next Thursday evening, 4/23/15, featuring Dr. H. Jack Geiger; the title of his talk is, "Global Health Includes US: Poverty, Race and Health in Mississippi." This event is free and open to the public (http://events.mit.edu/event.html?id=16143499&date=2015/4/23), and will be held in 4-237 (Building #4, Room #237) on the MIT Campus from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm. Appetizers and refreshments will be served. For additional information or directions to the lecture venue, please contact Brittany Peters, the GHMHI Administrative Assistant, via email at bapeters@mit.edu.
View flyer here: Jack Geiger Poster
UAEM University Report Card Ranks Boston University #6 in Global Equity and Biomedical Research
Global Equity and Biomedical Research
This year at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health Conference, Atul Gawande, world renowned surgeon, writer and public health researcher, made the following statement during his opening remarks:
“There are more than 60,000 known ways the bodies’ 13 organ systems can go wrong with over 4000 medical procedures and 6000 medicines found in the last 100 years to treat and prevent those failures. What is Global Health? It is taking this knowledge gained and distributing it to people all over the world.”
Universities are positioned as institutions devoted to the research and discovery of innovations for the benefit of the public that supports them. Many are nonprofit, public-interest institutions heavily funded by government grants and taxpayer-funded sources. They have a duty to ensure that the research they conduct and the treatments they help discover serve the public interest and the global good. As the new generation of global health leaders, today’s students and medical researchers have the ability to support and also pressure these institutions to fulfill their commitment to the ever-growing 8 billion of this world’s inhabitants.
Far too often many medicines are made only available to those who can afford them, regardless of need or the benefit they were created to provide. The tragic result is that millions of people, mostly in the developing world, die each year simply because they don’t have access to medicines that already exist.
On Tuesday, April 21st 2015, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines launched their second University Report Card not only to hold leading global health institutions accountable to their commitments , but also to present where gaps might lie in the areas of Global Access to new innovations, Innovation and research into neglected diseases and Empowerment of the next generation of global health professionals.
In 2013, Boston University received a disappointing C- on the report card, ranking 35th out of 54 schools surveyed, just above The University of Massachusetts in 36th, but well below our neighbors across the river ranking in 5th. With a Business School and School of Public Health that were both just ranked 10th in the world according to Business Insider and US News, a UAEM ranking of 35th in global health impact reflects either a need for university improvement or better measurement indicators.
Constructive criticisms were included in a response to the 2013 findings by Boston University faculty through a Lancet article that criticised the fact that:
“...the title of the Editorial as well as the use of the UAEM reporting card are misleading.”
and
“UAEM can focus on a single component of global health but this should be made clear when reported.”
In response to these criticisms, the second version of the University Report Card introduces aspects not present in the original. Metrics for scoring have been modified based on feedback from the first iteration and are included in full on the website (due to launch April 21st). Additionally, this year there are two questions that address university policies surrounding the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a crisis that has highlighted in particular the failed pharmaceutical R&D model.
Another modification was the new name, “University Report Card: Global Health Equity and Biomedical Research,” which better reflects what it is really measuring: University commitments to ensuring that innovative biomedical research performed in university labs will be accessible to all, and the efforts of universities to educate the next generation of global health leaders.
This year’s version has already received an endorsement from Partners in Health co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer:
“The University Report Card helps illuminate the effects of academic biomedical research on the health of the world's poor, and hold universities accountable for the impact, or lack of impact, that their policies have on global health. I am grateful to the students of UAEM for creating the scorecard, and strongly encourage students, faculty, and broader university communities to call on their institutions to enact policies that increase access to lifesaving medicines and medical technologies for those who need them most.”
This year also showed an unprecedented level of collaboration from students and administrators from dozens of universities around the country. The response rate by universities to the surveys increased threefold from that of the first report card. This project is a major step towards increased dialogue between students, administrators, and researchers. It will also measure whether universities have made any direct changes as a result of their previous grades in 2013. There are rumors that university administrations are vying to reach first place!
We at Universities Allied for Essential Medicines believe that our institutions have an opportunity and a responsibility to improve global health through their research activities. If those same aspirations for a better world were applied across the board to all universities, imagine the impact we would make then. The results of this year’s report can be found [Insert Link]. We should take pride in how BU has improved, but open discussions as to where gaps can still be filled. We have the opportunity to showcase the ways other universities can follow our example as an institution that prioritizes Global Health Equity and the impact of Biomedical Research. Let’s together make this potential impact a reality.
BU Department of Global Health is recruiting Project Administrators and a Clinical Trail Director
Please note that the Department of Global Health is currently recruiting project administrators to support multiple new and continuing global health research projects. Additionally, the Department is seeking a new Clinical Trial Director. If you have the relevant experience and are seeking full-time employment at BU, we encourage you to apply. Please see the job postings on the BU Human Resources website, and please be sure to include a cover letter with your application.
