Faculty Collaborate to Piece Together Global Health Puzzles: Part II

       The faculty panel session ended with faculty sharing their expertise on two additional global health research puzzles followed by a facilitated discussion, lead by Elizabeth Bradley, Director of the Yale Global Health Initiative.

Maria Diuk-Wasser, assistant professor of epidemiology, presented the global health puzzle on climate change and health. Her research centered around the question, “How do we assess vulnerability to the health effects of global climate change on the multi-scale ecological and social processes that contribute to disease?” Examples of climate change effects from environmental stressors included extreme temperatures, air pollution, vector borne disease and water borne disease. These new climate changes could increase incidence of heat and cold stress, cardio and respiratory response, malaria, dengue, cholera, food security, malnutrition, forced migration and even human conflict at the global level. One of her examples of this puzzle illustrated vulnerability at the community level. A map of the United States highlighted regions with higher incidents of heat mortality.  The regions with greater mortality clustered in the North, where temperatures are cooler on average than in the South, where temperatures are higher.  This lead to an interesting discovery by proving not everyone is equally vulnerable and mortality rates coincide with adaptability to heat.

The next panel, lead by Elizabeth Bradley, discussed examples of relatively inexpensive and cost-effective technologies and behaviors that are not widely adopted, called innovation and scale up. Innovative technologies directly impacting health included contraceptives and medications. Unique products also included cooking stoves that help improve respiratory health issues. Barriers for new technology adoption include both demand and supply side incentives, such as lack of information, taste and tradition, credit and savings constraints and inappropriate design.  One new design being tried to overcome men’s relative lack of interest in cooking stoves included manufacturing a cooking stove that could also charge a cell phone. 

With the completion of the panel, Elizabeth Bradley facilitated a discussion to connect global health research puzzle topics. Although the discussion was relatively brief, faculty addressed about an array of global health topics that included: how government can enact policies impacting global health, visions for global health now and for the future, how vulnerable populations can be protected and the role genetics plays in global health research.

Faculty showed their commitment to collaboration across multidisciplinary platforms during the symposium. One comment during the facilitated discussion expressed the common sentiment for global health meetings to continue to help build relationships between departments.

Amanda Sorrentino, GHLI Intern

Faculty Collaborate to Piece Together Global Health Puzzles: Part I

The Global Health Leadership Institute (GHLI) held the first ever Global Health Faculty Symposium at Yale last Friday. More than 75 faculty members, across multiple disciplines, gathered together and to share their expertise on five global health research puzzles during a faculty panel of which I cover three here.  

The topics began with food insecurity and obesity, lead by Dr. Tian Xu. This puzzle explained how scarcity of food could lead to both malnutrition and obesity. Dr. Catherine Panter-Brick’s panel on conflict, resilience and health immediately followed. Using Liberia and Sierra Leone as examples, she discussed her research findings. By comparing risk-conflict and resilience, Dr. Panter-Brick established why risk-conflict is bad for health at the global level. On the contrary, resilience, defined as enduring adversity, can help maintain relatively stable, health, functioning over time. This puzzle presented a resilience paradigm, because studies investigating resilience had a high incidence of risk and violent conflicts.   

Dr. Albert Ko shared his research on global infectious diseases. Dr. Ko explained how Yale had a long history of research in global infectious diseases and had established research partnerships with other countries, but could not identify one single key global health puzzle. Instead, the research focused on understanding syndemics, or how two or more diseases interact with one another. The global impact of issues such as HIV and drug addiction as research on syringe exchange programs was addressed.

Dr. Ko stressed the role of social equity as a essential component of multidisciplinary approaches in developing effective interventions for vulnerable populations. His research has already been used for global health interventions. For example, health care service research has strengthened Tuberculosis infrastructure and integrated its services with HIV. This has allowed for an increased availability of drug development for TB.    

Although these three panels were informative, additional global health puzzles were uncovered by faculty throughout the day. Look out for a new blog about additional global health research puzzle panels from the faculty symposium and global health discussion groups.

Amanda Sorrentino, GHLI Intern

Global Health Fellowships at Yale: Apply Now

In order to train the next generation of global health leaders, the Global Health Initiative at Yale is putting their money where their mouth is. On Wednesday evening, Kaveh Khoshnood, Director of Global Health Fellowships, led an informational session on the three major funding opportunities for global health internships and research under the Initiative. The Yale College Health Studies Award targets students interested in field research while the Global Health Initiative Field Experience Award and Yale - Collaborative Action Project (Y-CAP) Award are more flexible in nature, supporting research, practice, advocacy, or policy and management. You’ll find a full listing of fellowships here.

The most unique of the three fellowships is the Y-CAP Award, which supports a team of three to four undergraduate and graduate students from multiple disciplines with up to $15,000. The grant actually originates from past demonstrated student interest in collaborative projects. Given that "no one works alone in the field," Professor Khoshnood lauded the prize as "finally a mechanism to fund what we preach." As a donor driven fellowship, the fund will most likely support one team, with a preference for projects in Africa. It is surprising to think that there is not more support for synergistic studies not only in health, but other fields as well.

One of the key features of the GHI seems to be its ability to bring together a multidisciplinary force, evident in the thirty plus undergraduate and graduate students circulating at last night’s funding session, pitching proposals and creating Y-CAP teams. Hopefully, the Y-CAP is only the beginning of encouraging collaborative scholarship in global health at Yale.

Connie Cho, GHLI Intern