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Women’s Health Status Linked To Empowerment

March 9, 2012 Morning Briefing

“The health status of women is linked to their fundamental freedoms and empowerment,” Susan Blumenthal, public health editor at the Huffington Post and former U.S. assistant surgeon general, and Jean Guo, a health policy intern at the Center for the Study of Presidency and Congress, write in the website’s “Healthy Living” blog in a post marking International Women’s Day, which was celebrated on Thursday. “With 3.4 billion women worldwide, women’s health is a global issue today. Yet, societal and environmental factors including poverty, discrimination, and violence are undermining the advancement of women’s health,” they write.

Former Model, Advocate Christy Turlington Burns Discusses ‘No Mother’s Day’ Advocacy Campaign

May 8, 2012 Morning Briefing

In his column, “The Common Good,” Forbes contributor Rahim Kanani interviews “former model, author and advocate for maternal and child health Christy Turlington Burns” regarding “the founding of her organization Every Mother Counts (EMC), lessons she’s learned around advocating for global change, her new campaign, titled ‘No Mother’s Day,’ advice to the class of 2012, and much more.” In the interview, Turlington Burns discusses the motivation behind EMC and her “advocacy and mobilization campaign to increase education and support for maternal mortality reduction globally”; highlights her 2010 documentary “No Woman, No Cry”; and encourages others to visit the campaign’s website to find ways to get involved.

CSIS Report Examines HIV Prevention, Care Among People Who Inject Drugs In Ukraine

March 19, 2012 Morning Briefing

A new report, titled “Injection Drug Use in Ukraine” and published by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), examines the challenges of providing HIV prevention and care services in the country, particularly to people who inject drugs (PWID), who accounted for “nearly 50 percent of new HIV infections registered in 2010,” according to the CSIS website. Authors Phillip Nieburg, senior associate and co-chair of the Prevention Committee of the CSIS HIV/AIDS Task Force, and Lisa Carty, senior adviser in the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, also examine how the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and PEPFAR could help Ukraine “in advancing HIV prevention and other services for PWID,” the website notes (3/16).

CSIS Publishes Report On Advancing Health In Ethiopia

June 7, 2012 Morning Briefing

The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) on Wednesday released a report called “Advancing Health in Ethiopia.” The report examines what the U.S. can “realistically expect to achieve in its ongoing engagement in health in Ethiopia” and what the core considerations to guide future U.S. efforts should be, CSIS writes on its website (6/6). In a post in the center’s “Smart Global Health” blog, report authors J. Stephen Morrison and Suzanne Brundage, director and assistant director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, respectively, reflect on the report findings. They write, “It focuses on the complexity of the U.S.-Ethiopian bilateral relationship just prior to the June 14-15 Call to Action on Child Survival, to be held in Washington, D.C.,” adding, “[I]t examines the Global Health Initiative (GHI) experience in Ethiopia at a moment when the Obama administration is critically engaging with Congress over what modifications in the GHI approach make sense for the future” (6/6).

IOM Releases Summary Of Workshop On Country-Level Decision Making For Controlling Chronic Diseases

April 3, 2012 Morning Briefing

The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (IOM) on Monday released a summary of a workshop, titled “Country-Level Decision Making for Control of Chronic Diseases.” As part of a series of follow-up activities to the IOM’s 2010 report, “Promoting Cardiovascular Health in the Developing World,” the workshop “aimed to identify what is needed to create tools for country-led planning of effective, efficient, and equitable provision of programs to prevent and reduce the burden of chronic diseases,” according to its website (4/2).

TEDxChange To Host Live, 90-Minute Webcast Featuring Melinda Gates On Thursday

April 5, 2012 Morning Briefing

TEDxChange on Thursday will host a live, 90-minute webcast, convened by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and hosted by TED curator Chris Anderson. According to the TED website, the webcast, scheduled to begin at 11:30am EDT, will examine the questions, “Why should we, as a society, continue to invest in global health and development? How can we work across borders and political boundaries to make positive change? And what returns can we expect on our investments?” (4/5).

Obama Announces $3B Food Initiative For Africa

May 21, 2012 Morning Briefing

In a Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security on Friday, President Barack Obama “announced a plan to accelerate investments in developing world agriculture to meet rising food demands and improve nutrition, calling the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition a moral, economic and security imperative,” IIP Digital reports (Porter, 5/18). The new program, unveiled “in conjunction with African leaders from Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania, will parlay more than $3 billion in private assistance into a public-private partnership with an ambitious goal: lifting 50 million people from poverty over 10 years,” according to USA Today’s “The Oval” (Wolf, 5/18). The initiative “will constitute the next phase of a groundbreaking program begun during the 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy,” Inter Press Service writes (Brion, 5/18). More than 45 companies have pledged to invest in the initiative, Devex notes (Ravelo, 5/10). A fact sheet on the New Alliance is available on the White House website (5/18).

Joint Fact Sheet On U.S.-U.K. Partnership For Global Development

March 15, 2012 Morning Briefing

A joint fact sheet on the U.S.-U.K. Partnership for Global Development is available on the White House website. “Through the Partnership, we are working together to achieve better results by advancing economic growth; preventing conflict in fragile states; improving global health, particularly for girls and women; strengthening mutual accountability, transparency, and measurement of results; and mitigating the effects of climate change,” the fact sheet states, elaborating on joint efforts in each of these areas (3/14).

Tracking News On Universal Health Coverage Worldwide

January 24, 2012 Morning Briefing

The Results for Development Institute has launched a new website on universal health coverage, UHC Forward, “that features news, events, and publications related to the global UHC movement,” an institute press release states (1/17). Visitors to the site can “stay informed of health coverage efforts in countries around the world, better understand how to translate available research into pragmatic action, apply an analytic eye to reform experiences, exchange ideas with others, and find links to additional resources,” according to the website (1/24).

Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves Executive Director Responds To Washington Post Article On Clean Cookstove Research

April 20, 2012 Morning Briefing

In a statement published on the website of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Executive Director Radha Muthiah responds to an article published in the Washington Post on Monday, which highlighted the results of a recent MIT/Harvard study on the public health benefits of clean cookstoves. “[T]he Post article correctly identifies the scourge of cooking on open fires and rudimentary cookstoves as a global health problem that demands urgent attention, highlighting World Health Organization data that shows indoor air pollution kills two million people every year,” she says. “Regrettably, the article seems to indicate that clean cookstoves do not deliver measurable health impacts and therefore concludes that ‘we are not yet ready to distribute clean cookstoves worldwide.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, the timing for clean cookstoves is right, and the time is now,” she says in the statement (Gearity, 4/19).

WHO Releases Global Report On Mortality Attributable To Tobacco

March 16, 2012 Morning Briefing

A global report (.pdf) published by the WHO, titled “Mortality Attributable to Tobacco,” “provides information by country on the proportion of adult (age 30 years and above) deaths attributable to tobacco by major communicable and non-communicable causes by age and sex,” the agency’s website states (March 2012). According to the U.N. News Centre, the report “shows that five percent of all deaths from communicable diseases worldwide and 14 percent of deaths resulting from non-communicable illnesses among adults aged 30 and above were attributable to tobacco use” (3/15).