an innovative team of educators, researchers and healthcare professionals working in California and around the world to train global health leaders and build sustainable solutions to improve health and eliminate disease.
GHS Lecture Series
A National Cancer Plan for Mexico
Alejandro Mohar
Director General, INCAN, Mexico
Monday, January 30, 2012
1:00-2:00pm
Bakar Auditorium (HD-160)
Helen Diller Family Cancer Research Building
1450 3rd Street, UCSF Mission Bay Campus
Alejandro Mohar, MD, ScD is the current director of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico (INCAN), the leading institution and governing body for cancer control in Mexico. In this role, Dr. Mohar manages INCAN’s involvement in cancer policy, treatment, education, and research in Mexico. He brings a public health and medical perspective to the burden of cancer in Latin America and to the interventions that can prevent and treat the disease.
GHS Announces Human Rights Fellowship for Trainees
In collaboration with the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, Global Health Sciences will be sponsoring one fellow for the prestigious University of California-wide Human Rights Fellowship program. This is an annual competition for trainee fellowships in partnership with organizations working on human rights issues. For the first time, registered students at UC San Francisco and recent graduates (within one year of graduation) are eligible to apply, with priority given to current students. The amount of the fellowship stipend will be $4,500. The purpose of the fellowship is to provide trainees with an opportunity to contribute to the organizations’ work while also gaining practical experience that may influence the trainee’s areas of research or academic focus. Application deadline is February 1, 2012. More information »
UCSF Students Increasing their Work in Cuba
Thanks to recently relaxed travel restrictions between the UC and Cuba, UCSF students are increasingly able to visit the island nation to extend their education and learn from their highly regarded health system. Until President Obama changed the travel rules in January of 2011, only graduate students could visit Cuba, and they had to visit for a minimum of 10 weeks. The January 2011 revision to the Cuba travel license approved educational and research-related trips of shorter duration. The UCSF Cuba Program in Health Diplomacy was created to coordinate UCSF activities in Cuba. It is directed by GHS Faculty member Nancy Burke and supported by a grant from Atlantic Philanthropies. Read more »
GHS Prepares Students for Emergency Situations around the World
2011 CHE training exerciseIf you happened to be at Chabot Regional Park in Oakland on the first weekend of October, you might have come across (and been alarmed by) the sight of soldiers barking orders and injured, bleeding people lying along the roadside.
But have no fear—all was calm and orderly on this beautiful fall day. It was just UCSF Global Health Sciences (GHS) conducting its fifth bi-annual Complex Humanitarian Emergency (CHE) and Leadership Training exercise. The GHS CHE exercise prepares students and trainees to work in emergency response situations around the world. For a weekend, GHS staff and volunteers present an exercise that recreates refugee camps along a civil unrest area; this time the exercise simulated actual events in Libya and Tunisia. Read more »
Malaria Elimination Atlases Highlight Prospects for Elimination
Two new global Atlases chart prospects for malaria elimination by offering the first full-color, detailed depiction of a disease now declining in many parts of the globe. The Atlas of Malaria-Eliminating Countries and a companion publication, the Atlas of the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network, released on October 17, 2011, spotlight countries successfully moving toward eliminating the disease — providing a visual tool to help focus resources where they are needed most. The Malaria Elimination Initiative of the Global Health Group, in partnership with the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP) of the University of Oxford developed the Atlases using the latest data and technology to visually highlight key factors important to malaria control and elimination strategies. Press release »
Also, read the Wall Street Journal article that includes a map from the Global Health Group and information about eliminating countries.
Winners of 2011 Framework Media Contest Announced
Ayurveda baby by Laurel Berstein took first place in the Framework photo contestThis summer the UCSF/UC Berkeley Framework program sent three multidisciplinary teams of students to sites in India, Kenya, and Zanzibar to work on global health projects.
The Framework program was established in September 2008 with funding from the National Institutes of Health/Fogarty International Center, to provide a new approach to learning among health professional students. The program focused on providing selected students, early in their careers, the chance to work in multidisciplinary teams on global health projects abroad. Read more »
UCSF Global Health Sciences Featured in SF Chronicle
Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle
UCSF Global Health Sciences, and its new Executive Director, Jaime Sepulveda, were featured in the September 26, 2011 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. "I would love to harness that enormous potential of the Bay Area and translate that into improving health worldwide," Sepulveda was quoted as saying in the front-page article, which was titled Bay Area at forefront of new global health field. "There is a lot of unnecessary suffering and unnecessary deaths that we could relatively easily diminish." Read the article »
Leaders Discuss Transforming Global Health Education
Photo: Cindy Chew
Some of the biggest names in the field of global health came to UCSF on September 9th to figure out how to work together to improve the education of health professionals in the United States and around the world. UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, welcomed the gathering, titled “Transforming Health Education Globally: Four Years After” and introduced Jaime Sepulveda, who began his tenure as GHS Executive Director on September 1. “Jaime Sepulveda is just what the doctor ordered,” Desmond-Hellmann said. “He has a passion for global health sciences, he has a passion for health as a right, and he has a passion for looking at populations, not just patients.” Read the UCSF Today article; see slideshow of photos.
GHS Lecture Series
Reengineering Aid: A Bold Agenda for the 21st Century
Sir Richard Feachem
Director, UCSF Global Health Group
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
4:00-5:30pm
HSW-301 (enter through 513 Parnassus)
Sir Richard Feachem, KBE, CBE, BSc, PhD, DSc(Med), FREng, HonFFPHM, HonDEng will summarize the history of aid over the past 60 years, the evidence on aid effectiveness, and the current controversies surrounding aid. He will position this debate in the context of the global financial crisis and the strenuous deficit reduction measures ongoing in most donor countries. Finally, Sir Richard will propose some building blocks for a new aid model, more suited to the geopolitical and economic realities of the 21st century. Presentation slides »
We are now accepting applications for the 2012-13 Masters degree class. Apply Now »
GHS Graduates MS Class of 2011
The GHS Masters Degree Program graduated 29 students on August 5, 2011. Dr. Jaime Sepulveda, GHS Executive Director designee, who gave the keynote address, exhorted the class to “...have a social conscience. Defend the most vulnerable. Help reduce inequities”. Read more »
Also see UCSF Today for an article about the 2011 GHS graduation, including an audio/photo slide show.
New Website Answers What Works in Global Health
A team of researchers at UCSF and the Kaiser Family Foundation has launched a new web portal this month that aims to answer that most practical of public health questions: What works? Think of it as Cliffs Notes for global health. The new website - Global
Health Intervention Review (GHIR) - summarizes all of the interventions used to prevent and treat eight infectious diseases and other health conditions: Dengue fever, HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, waterborne diarrhea, maternal hemorrhage, maternal sepsis and unintended pregnancy. The website answers those questions and more, said UCSF professor James
G. Kahn, MD, MPH, who led the effort to compile the information behind it. Kahn is an expert in policy modeling in health care, cost-effectiveness analysis, and evidence-based medicine used to inform decision-making in public health and medicine. Read more on UCSF Today »
GHS Burke Scholar Calls Attention to Indoor Air Pollution in Guatemala
Oakland, California, is a long way from the highlands of Guatemala. Yet the connection between the respiratory ailments afflicting children in both regions helped lead the UCSF School of Nursing’s Lisa Thompson, RN, PhD, FNP, to a program of research on indoor air pollutants that, she and other researchers have found, cause more than a million premature deaths each year. Thompson is a 2010 recipient of the GHS Burke Family Global Health Faculty Scholars program, which selects junior UCSF faculty engaged in global health activities to receive funds to conduct research and play an active role in GHS education programs. More »
UCSF Appoints Jaime Sepúlveda Executive Director of GHS
UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann announced today that Jaime Sepúlveda, MD, MPH, DrSc has been appointed the new Executive Director of Global Health Sciences, starting September 1. Sepúlveda, who has broad international leadership experience in public health, is currently director of special initiatives and senior fellow for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he has played a central role in shaping the foundation’s overall global health strategy as part of its executive team. Among his greatest legacies to date is his design and leadership of Mexico’s universal vaccination program, during his tenure as Mexico’s Director General of Epidemiology (1985-1991) and Vice Minister of Health (1991-1994). Under his guidance, Mexico’s vaccination rate more than doubled to 94 percent of preschool children in just two years, effectively eliminating polio, measles and diphtheria. “Dr. Sepúlveda brings the international vision, stature and hands-on knowledge in the world of global health that will help make both UCSF and the Bay Area a world center in the field,” said Desmond-Hellmann. “His deep understanding of health issues and policy in both limited and high-resource nations will make him an invaluable part of that effort.” Read more »
UCSF Faculty Provide Health Expertise to People of Japan
UCSF has produced a series of video public service announcements (PSAs) that offer faculty expertise in coping with mental stress and other health-related issues in the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11 and continuing crises at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. The first three in the series of video PSAs, which address mental health of adults, children and those assisting in the ongoing recovery efforts, are posted on YouTube. John I. Takayama, MD, MPH, a UCSF pediatrician who worked in Tokyo from 2002 to 2007, where he established the Department of Interdisciplinary Medicine at the National Center for Child Health and Development, is leading the video PSA project. Craig Van Dyke, MD, director of the Global Mental Health Program, who responded to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, also contributed to the project. Van Dyke will host a workshop for pediatric fellows, who are returning to Japan, on Saturday, May 21, from 9 a.m. to noon in Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, room 371, on the Parnassus campus. More »
The Aga Khan Visits UCSF to Strengthen Partnership to Advance Global Health
His Highness the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader (Imam) of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, visited UCSF on April 26 to gain insight into the driving forces behind UCSF’s excellence in research and education, and to deepen the partnership between UCSF and the Aga Khan Development Network. He was also awarded the UCSF Medal, the University’s equivalent of an honorary degree. The partnership between Aga Khan University (AKU) and UCSF dates back to 2006, when AKU’s family medicine program in Tanzania and the Aga Khan Health Services program in East Africa began working with Global Health Sciences to strengthen AKU’s training and research program in family medicine based in Dar es Salaam. In 2009, a memorandum of understanding between AKU and UCSF was signed to advance their common goal of promoting equitable human advancement and social justice in the less privileged parts of the world.
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