Discussion of climate change typically involves natural phenomena: raging wildfires, record flooding, ruinous drought. Less frequently examined, but equally important, is the effect of our warming planet on a child’s right to education.
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March 6, 2012
On Friday, March 9, FHI 360 is hosting Human Development: The 360-Degree Perspective, an event that aims to open the discussion on what human development means. Speakers include author Charles Kenny, Dr. Catherine Hankins of UNAIDS, Dr. Michael Bzdak of Johnson & Johnson, photographer Jessica Scranton, and more. This event is open to the public and we encourage you to attend!
To RSVP for the event, please visit the reservation page here.
Join the #HumanDevelopment Conversation
Alongside this inaugural event, we are launching the hashtag #HumanDevelopment on Twitter in order to hear your thoughts on the subject. For us at FHI 360, human development is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accord with their needs and interests. What does human development mean to you? How is human development crucial to creating lasting change around the world? Let us know! Be sure to include #HumanDevelopment in your tweets!For more information about human development, please visit UNDP’s 2011 Human Development Report.
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STDs are no party. Click on the image above to view an interactive video about them.
Talking about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) is no easy matter, especially when speaking to youth. That’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) enlisted FHI 360 to assist with a new project to educate young audiences about STDs (also called sexually transmitted infections or STIs).
The mission is to convince youth to get tested and treated. The challenge was to convey the message without sounding parental, preachy or patronizing. FHI 360 met that challenge by helping CDC and its partners MTV, Planned Parenthood of America and the Kaiser Family Foundation develop an interactive video for their joint Get Yourself Tested, or GYT, campaign.
The video lets you scroll, click and listen in on different conversations between people at a house party. After each conversation, icons pop up to link to key information ranging from where to get tested to STD basics and tips on talking about STDs. Check out the video this Valentine’s Day, and beyond.
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Yesterday morning the White House hosted an open forum on innovation in global development. The discussion panel included Raj Shah (Administrator of USAID), Gayle Smith (Special Assistant to the President & Senior Director of the National Security Council), and Tom Kalil (Deputy Director for Policy, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy & Senior Advisor for Science, Technology, and Innovation, National Economic Council). Questions were taken from the public via Twitter with the hashtag #WHChat and through Facebook.
FHI 360 submitted four questions through Twitter, and three of them were answered by the panel (though we were not directly mentioned):
In which areas of development is innovation most urgently needed?
The panel answered that innovation is urgently need in all sectors, but stressed food security, global health, and climate change as key focus areas.
How can we best involve youth in the innovation conversation?
The panel answered that it is important to engage college students in the US through university partnerships. They discussed USAID’s University Engagement program specifically, and talked about harnessing the power of the Internet to engage students in the developing world.
How can development partners support home-grown innovation in developing countries?
Similar to the above question, the panel talked about supporting students in developing countries and giving them platforms to voice their opinions. They also said that giving direct support to innovative projects and building networks of partnerships were important to foster home-grown innovation.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments, or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
For more information about the White House’s innovation initiatives, check out their fact sheet, “Harnessing Innovation for Global Development.”
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World Bank releases World Development Report 2012
Want to know where women stand worldwide? This week the World Bank released its World Development Report 2012, which focuses on gender equality and development. The report finds that development has closed some gender gaps in educational enrollment, life expectancy, and labor force participation. However, gaps persist in girls’ schooling, access to economic opportunities and household decision-making. Further, “females are also more likely to die, relative to males, in many low-and middle-income countries than their counterparts in rich countries.”What should be the priorities of policy makers interested in bringing about gender equality? What policy actions will result in the greatest benefit? Explore the report in the link above, or examine the issues by viewing a summary of the report here.
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VOA’s health correspondent Linord Moudou talks to FHI 360’s Dr. Doyin Oluwole about the cholera outbreak in Mali. Dr. Oluwole works as the Director of the Center for Health Policy and Capacity Development at FHI 360.
For more infmoration about cholera, visit the WHO Cholera Topics Page.
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Climate Change and Health
Written by
On December 4, 2011, I attended the inaugural Climate and Health Summit in Durban, South Africa. The Summit was organized by Health Care Without Harm and other organizations and occurred simultaneously with the Conference of the Parties (COP-17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The goal of the Climate and Health Summit was to bring together actors from key health sectors to discuss the impacts of climate change on public health and solutions that promote greater health and economic equity between and within nations.
Climate change has brought about severe and possibly permanent alterations to our planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now contends that “there is new and stronger evidence that most of the global warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.” These changes have led to the emergence of large-scale environmental hazards to human health mainly in the following areas:
- Poorer air quality and increased pollution leading to respiratory disease
- Increase in the spread of infectious diseases including diarrheal disease and insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever
- Reduction in the availability of land for farming due to floods, droughts and other dramatic weather changes, which leads to poverty and malnutrition
- Increase in the number of extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts and heat waves, which leads to substantial morbidity and mortality as well as economic loss
- More forced migration as families move to find food and water and end up living in crowded and under-resourced refugee camps
The impacts of climate change on health are, and will continue to be, overwhelmingly negative. To make the situation worse, the majority of the adverse effects of climate change are experienced by poor and low-income communities around the world, which have much higher levels of vulnerability to these impacts. This was a hot topic in Durban, where it was argued that the more developed countries should pay “climate debt,” that is, compensate the poor for damages suffered as a result of climate change.
One thing is certain: Climate change IS happening. It also impacts human health. Governments, societies and individuals need not only to adapt to the changes that have occurred but also to take steps to mitigate any further damage to our planet. There is no Planet B!
Janet Robinson is the Director of Research, Asia Pacific Region, and the Global Director of Laboratory Sciences for FHI 360 based in Bangkok, Thailand.
Watch videos and join the conversation at our LIVE coverage of the Climate and Health Summit here.
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January 5, 2012
FHI 360 wishes you a happy and promising 2012!
What is your hope for 2012?
Include #HopeFor2012 and @FHI360 in your tweets to share with us your hope for the new year.
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IYWG: Youth—My Past and Their Future
An Interview with
Ward Cates, MD, MPH, President of Research, FHI 360
To start, we’d like to know a little about you as a young person. What were you like as a teenager?
Well I’ve never stopped being a teenager…so just like I am now. My priorities then were girls, sports, and grades – and in what order depended on the time of day. Now they’re family, sports and work…ditto.
What were you told about sex when you were a young person? Who gave you this information? What else do you wish you had been told?
The first time I heard about sex was when someone told me that my father put his thing in my mother to create me. I think I was about 7. I didn’t believe them, so I asked my mother. She gave me a book that she had ready for the occasion. My father came by that night and uncomfortably asked if I had any questions; when I said I didn’t, he was relieved. But I keep reading voraciously (for a teen!) and became the age appropriate sex education source for my social network.
We have a few questions for you about the state of the world’s youth today. First, what is the biggest issue currently faced by youth?
Establishing their self-esteem and developing a sense of security in a rapidly changing, increasingly transparent world.
What is the most important thing that could be done to improve the health and well-being of today’s youth?
Providing a supportive environment in which youth feel they can control their own destiny. It’s important to avoid a sense of fatalism where they feel that their future is in the hands of others – from criminal forces to supernatural beings. Hopefully we can empower youth to feel that they can control where they will end up in life. This sense of control is a necessary foundation for all of us, not only youth, to move forward and be accountable for our actions.
Finally, please share a little about your work with youth. Why is the health and well-being of young people especially important to you?
Because youth are the future. Each generation builds upon itself, and today’s youth are tomorrow’s adults. We (the slightly older than teenage generation) need to understand and value that our future is in their hands.
What is one thing about youth that you wish you better understood?
How to better manage their normal impulses so that youth can make better decisions for their future.
How will the growing interest in treatment as prevention impact youth sexual and reproductive health?
Treatment as prevention affects all ages. It’s as important for youth as it is for older persons to be aware of their HIV status. If infected, they can obtain treatment which will not only improve their personal HIV prognosis but will also reduce their capacity to transmit the virus to others.
The Interagency Youth Working Group (IYWG) is a network of nongovernmental agencies, donors, and cooperating agencies with an interest in improving the sexual and reproductive health of young people. As the secretariat for the IYWG, FHI 360 serves as the point of contact for the global dissemination of information on youth sexual and reproductive health research, programs, and materials.
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Mobilizing Critical Family Planning Content
Written by
A version of this post originally appeared on K4 Health Blog. Reposted with permission.
She stood there, in beautiful red robes, with a small, serene baby bound firmly to her back. “This document is our bible,” the woman said as she cradled the green volume, in a way that was both matter-of-fact and full of awe. The book she was referring to is the vastly popular collaboration between WHO, USAID, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public of Health: Family Planning: a Global Handbook for Providers. “The Handbook,” as it is known around the world, was first published in 2007 and has been updated with new content this year. More than 500,000 paper copies have been distributed, with tens of thousands of electronic copies downloaded and distributed on CDs and flash drives. The Handbook has also been translated into nine languages.
Here in Dakar, at the 2011 International Conference on Family Planning, the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Project, led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs (JHU•CCP), has distributed thousands of updated Handbooks in French and English, and taken orders for tens of thousands more. But this Conference has also provided us the opportunity to broaden the reach of this critical content, by launching a portfolio of technology-based versions of the manual.
During the Conference, the K4Health Project launched the English and French versions of the Handbook in EPUB and Kindle formats, allowing the handbook to be read on a variety of platforms including iPads, iPhones, Kindles, and other eReaders. Perhaps the most exciting product release was the first version of K4Health’s Android App for Contraceptive Eligibility (ACE), based on the Contraceptive Eligibility Criteria from the Handbook. ACE allows a healthcare provider to quickly and simply identify the most appropriate contraceptive methods depending on a woman’s health conditions. Alternately, it can also be used by a provider to learn more about any of the contraceptive methods in the manual, their effectiveness, and their side effects. “This is incredible,” said a young man from Ghana who supervises a cadre of community health workers. “This means that we can carry the handbook in our pockets, even when there is no Internet or mobile connection.”
At K4Health, we strive to combine appropriate information technology with knowledge management best practices to ensure that the right information is made available to the right people at the right time in the right format. We believe that by making this seminal text available through a variety of formats, we can contribute to expanding access for service providers and health workers at all levels of the health system. This will improve knowledge and best practices about Family Planning and Reproductive Health, thereby expanding awareness about choices that women have to make informed decisions about their lives, their families, and their futures.
The Knowledge for Health (K4Health) project is a leader in health information dissemination using traditional and new media mechanisms and in facilitating information use through dynamic learning and exchange programs. K4Health is implemented by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs in partnership with FHI 360 and Management Sciences for Health. Find more information about K4Health here.