Exploring a new way of sharing among friends

I'm going to start by recommending several blogs that folks in public health should probably be aware of and read. The first is written by Dr. Barbara Rimer, Dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her blog is called Monday Morning, and it is a great illustration of how well this technology can be used. It is primarily a chance for Dr. Rimer to reflect on any topic that engages her curiosity or is related in some way to the UNC Gillings School and its constituencies, or public health in a broader sense. It is one that I really look forward to each week.

Another blog that I'd recommend for those interested in social marketing is authored by Craig LeFebvre and called On Social Marketing and Social Change. Dr. LeFebvre focuses his efforts on public health and social change programs - blending empirical research and consumer experience. He has several academic appointments but he's an internationally recognized expert in social marketing and communication. For those of you familiar with Dr. LeFebvre's very creative presentation style at professional meetings, you'll probably also know he's a frequent contributor to slideshare.com - which I'll talk more about in later entries to this blog.

I am going to close this post by sharing a video by Hans Rosling that Dr. Rimer has also referenced in Monday Morning. Hans Rosling is a Professor of Global Health at the Karolinska Institue and Director of Gapminder. He is one of the most creative speakers I've ever seen. He has developed an open source visualization system that illustrates data of any kind in ways most of us have never seen or thought about. If you search Youtube or Ted.com you will find some of the videos that he has produced. I'd like to share this most recent video here. I'm embedding it from it's original source on Youtube. It is called "200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats."

I hope you've enjoyed the video. Please feel free to comment, suggest, and share your own thoughts and references so that we can all benefit.

Some items on global public health and training for health professionals

What's Next for Disease Eradication?
It has been more than 30 years since the eradication of smallpox - a disease responsible for as many as 2 million deaths a year and many more disfigured. In August approximately 260 of the scientists and public health leaders responsible for this success met in Rio de Janeiro to celebrate. That success 30 years ago bolstered thoughts about eradication of other such diseases responsible for such pain and suffering. Among the targets were polio, guinea worm disease, lymphatic filariasis, measles, river blindness, and malaria. Regretfully, the success with smallpox has not been repeated. Science magazine summarizes some of the issues raised at a meeting in Frankfort, Germany. At this meeting public health experts tried “to try to chart a new path for disease eradication in the 21st century.” Read the full Science article – “What’s Next for Disease Eradication?”

An Interactive Map of U.S. Global Initiatives

The Center for Global Development’s - Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance blog has provided access to a terrific interactive tool that allows users to see where four of the current development initiatives operate. These include: Feed the Future, the Global Health Initiative, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Casey Dunning, in her blog entry “U.S. Development Initiatives: Where in the World Are They?” reports “President Obama’s recent policy directive on U.S. global development called for an increased 'focus of resources, policy tools, and engagement in support of select countries.' But the question as to where this 'enhanced engagement' might occur still remains.”

Infant and Child Feeding - How are we doing?

In 2003 the World Health Organization and UNICEF jointly developed Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding to “revitalize world attention to the impact that feeding practices have on the nutritional status, growth and development, health, and thus the very survival of infants and young children.” This strategy was the result of a two-year effort designed to alleviate the burden of disease borne by children and to contribute to a reduction in poverty and was guided by two underlying principles: 1) the strategy should be grounded on the best available evidence; and, 2) wherever possible the strategy should result from a truly participatory process. However, a report released in December suggests that 42 million infants out of 78 million born are sub-optimally fed. This report, “The State of Breastfeeding in 33 Countries: 2010, Tracking Infant and Young Child Feeding Policies and Programmes Worldwide” is based on assessments conducted by the World Breastfeeding Trands Initiative (WBTi). WBTi’s press release accompanying this report states “that policies and programmes are lagging behind in all the 10 areas of action highlighted in the W.H.O. ’s Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding, especially in relation to support to women when they need it most.”

Defining Global Public Health

In 2010 Dean Linda Fried (Mailman School of Public Health) and six colleagues published a comment in Lancet entitled “Global health is public health” partly in response to an earlier viewpoint piece by Professor Jeffrey Koplan and colleagues – Towards a common definition of global health.” I highly recommend both of these articles but I was particularly struck by the seven key tenets of global public health as outlines in Fried and colleagues (page 536). And among these seven, the one that rings clearest for me was “Dedication to better health for all, with particular attention to the needs of the most vulnerable populations, and a basic commitment to health as a human right.” This for me has always been at the core of my understanding of public health’s mission. The need to provide the best state-of-the-art practice in public health at the population level, with the two underlying principles – social justice and equity. The challenge for me has always been how to we effectively train practitioners to this end. The best definition of education I ever heard (and cannot remember its source), is “Education is what’s left over after we forget everything we’ve been taught.”

Educating Health Professionals In The 21st Century

In that light, I am impressed with a Lancet Commissions Report released a couple of months ago. Just as Flexner, Welch-Rose, and Goldmark prepared reports a century ago that transformed education for physicians, public health practitioners, and nurses, this new report re-examines the training of health professionals for the 21^st century. This Lancet Commission report is authored by Professor Julio Frenk, Dean of Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Lincoln Chen, China Medical Board, and colleagues. A press release, dated Nov. 29, 2010 summarizes the ten suggested reforms found in this landmark report. The full report is available from Lancet. In their executive summary Frenk, Chen and colleagues introduce us to the notion of third-generation reforms in health professions education with this challenge:

“All health professionals in all countries should be educated to mobilise knowledge and to engage in critical reasoning and ethical conduct so that they are competent to participate in patient and population-centered health systems as members of locally responsive and globally connected teams. The ultimate purpose is to assure universal coverage of the high- quality comprehensive services that are essential to advance opportunity for health equity within and between countries” (page 6).

The authors go on to identify the principle barriers and recommendations to help overcome those barriers. I highly recommend this report.

Looking back and ahead: Thoughts at the beginning of 2011

As I look back on 2010, one of the things I’ve seen has been the remarkable increased use of social media in public health settings. Whether Twitter, Facebook, FLICKR, blogging, or some other application the innovative application of these technologies has been quite exciting.

Every morning I spend time on my iPAD reviewing materials from a variety of sources. I do this on an RSS aggregator called Early Edition by Glasshouse Apps. As I review each source and its contents I am able to forward links to colleagues in a variety of settings who I think might enjoy the content or may find it useful in some way. With each passing day I am sending more of these links to more people and thought there must be a new and more efficient way to do this.
My first effort to modify how I did this was to forward the links to Twitter @rsgold so they would be available to anyone. But it seemed even more realistic to share if I took advantage of blogging technology. So, here we are. This is my first post to "Looking at Public Health Today" and I'm excited. I hope I'll be able to share with you some interesting finds. I'm not sure I'll do this every day or even every week, but I do want to share as much as I can - and hope that anyone who follows this blog will contribute other sources of information, data, papers, technology, and other resources that we should all see.

To that end, I regularly read Blog 4 Global Health sponsored by the Global Health Council’s Policy, Research and Advocacy team. Recently, their blog entry included their view of the “Top 10 in 2010 Global Health Communication.” I highly recommend your taking a look at this blog entry if you have an interest in global health.

Also related to global health – the Kaiser Family Foundation released a policy brief analysis on key issues related to the Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative. This is an excellent primer in short form that identifies the principal components of this initiative. The full policy brief is available from the Kaiser Family Foundation here – U.S. Global Health Policy.

There are several important new publications that I’d like to highlight today that I think offer public health and other related practitioners a critical new set of ideas to add to our thinking. The first was a report released by CDC’s Leading Edge Forum entitled The Future of Healthcare: It's Health, Then Care. CSC is on of the largest providers of information services in the world, but this report identifies five key trends that will influence the future of healthcare – and each is enabled by newly emerging technologies. The five include:

1. E-Power to the patient, driven largely by Smartphone technology and powered by internet accessible applications;
2. Earlier detection made possible by inexpensive supporting technologies that allow for faster, less costly diagnosis;
3. High-tech healing driven by advances in bioengineering allowing for implantable and wearable treatment systems;
4. New resource mixes produced by remote sensing, social networking, and other technologies that influence patient behavior and remote monitoring;
5. The emergence of a global healthcare ecosystem based on sound data.

I’d like to close today’s entry with information about a meeting held on January 10, 2011 by the Center for Strategic & International Studies. The meeting was entitled: “Is the Era of Big Funding for Global Health Over?” Christian Baeza, World Bank Director for Health, Nutrition, and Population lead the discussion on future global health efforts likely over the next decade with particular attention to major challenges, the economic case for investment, and how to build sustainability into our thinking related to global health.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all a Happy New Year. All the best.

Bob