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Mar 9, 2010
Lessons from Aspen Institute Discussion on Women’s Health
"It was invigorating to be a part of this celebration of International Women’s Day, and of the release of WHO’s new report, Women and Health: Today’s Evidence, Tomorrow’s Agenda... It’s not the time to pat ourselves on the back and cross our arms."
-Laura Hoemeke, director of strategic communications at IntraHealth, following a discussion on women’s health at the Aspen Institute. Hoemeke summmarizes the day in a guest blog on Science Speaks, sharing the three points she considered most important among "countless others" raised by distinguished panelists from WHO, USAID, PEPFAR, and Harvard’s School of Public Health.Read Science Speaks | Read WHO's Report, Women and Health: Today’s Evidence, Tomorrow’s Agenda
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Feb 12, 2010
Read a Reporter's Farewell to Africa
“Yet as I packed up the office and said my farewells, I couldn't help but think that we were turning our backs on a continent that's always needed more media attention, not less… I also thought that this was the kind of story we'd miss now, the ability to put a face on something as big as AIDS in Africa, which must seem to most Americans like an inexorable tsunami swallowing up millions of far-off strangers.” -Goodbye, Africa: Reflections on a continent
Shashank Bengali, McClatchy News correspondent, writes his last blog from Africa. McClatchy, which owns more than 30 papers across the US, closed its only sub-Saharan bureau last month.
Bengali’s honesty is heartbreaking. He tells about his housekeeper silently dying of AIDS, untreated, fearing stigma, and her sons’ diagnosis after her death. He mourns for her and countless others whose stories won’t be told. As of 2010, neither he nor other major reporters will be there to write them (the Washington Post and Tribune Co. have all but shut down in Africa). And so he hands the torch to tweeters, bloggers, freelancers, and relief workers to keep Africa’s issues current.
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Jan 13, 2010
When Training Works, and Why (Half the Time) It Doesn't
Ever wonder why some training makes a difference in performance on the job, while other times people just report having learned a few interesting concepts? How often does new knowledge translate into applied skills? The World Bank conducted an evaluation of project-based training to see what they’re getting for the $720 million they spend annually on training for development. Among their findings:
- Most training participants learned something, but only about half of training efforts resulted in actual change.
- Where training failed, it was because of poor design or insufficient attention to building institutional context.
- Adequate training design involves three characteristics—opportunities to practice what you learn, on-the-job reinforcement, and training material that’s actually based on organizational needs.
publication available online: Using Training to Build Capacity for Development
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Jan 7, 2010
Policy: Major Speech Will Restore US Support for Family Planning
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton will deliver a major speech on Friday, January 8 to restore America’s commitment to universal family planning and reproductive health services. Her address marks the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, when 179 nations reached historic agreement on a new plan to reduce infant, child, and maternal mortality around the world—by working toward global access to education, especially for girls, and voluntary family planning services for women.
The “Cairo Consensus” precipitated other key international commitments, including the Millennium Development Goals, and formed a new basis for population and development policies going forward. A premium has since been placed on meeting individual women and children’s needs, instead of demographic targets, through universal access to health and education services.
And it’s working: effective and affordable reproductive health programs have improved millions of lives, prevented maternal and child deaths, and reduced the spread of HIV/AIDS. But much work remains to make family planning universally available. Let’s see what Secretary Clinton has to say.
Watch the event live beginning at 2:30 pm EST. A transcript and video will follow.
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Jan 4, 2010
'I Delivered All These Children Because I Didn't Know There Was Another Way.'
Beatrice Adongo, 45-year-old Ugandan mother of 13, receiving an injection of Depro-Provera. Reported by Shashank Bengali (“Unplanned Births Swamp Africa”).
In December, we applauded the Raleigh News & Observer (our hometown paper) for syndicating a three-part series by Shashank Bengali, of McClatchy Newspapers, on issues at the crux of IntraHealth’s day-to-day work: family planning and girls’ education for maternal and child health. It’s worth restating our position:
We are fundamentally committed to all women, everywhere, having access to modern contraception—at the very least, accurate knowledge of family planning services—to protect their lives and their families’ well-being. And training health workers to integrate family planning into routine services is an essential way to extend vital, voluntary options to women and communities in need.
So if you didn’t catch Bengali’s coverage, the stories are still worth checking out:
Unplanned births swamp Africa
SIRAKANO, Uganda —At age 45, after giving birth to 13 children in her village of thatch roofs and bare feet, Beatrice Adongo made a discovery that startled her: birth control."I delivered all these children because I didn't know there was another way," said Adongo, who started on a free quarterly contraceptive injection last year. Surrounded by her weary-faced brood, her 21-month-old boy clutching at her faded blue dress, she added glumly: "I fear we are already too many in this family." On a continent where fewer than one in five married women use modern contraception, an explosion of unplanned pregnancies is threatening to bury Adongo's family and a generation of Africans under a mountain of poverty.
Read the rest of this article. Watch a companion video (03:39).
Africa's population boom traps children in poverty
KANO, Nigeria—The boy stepped into the grubby street, looking both ways for traffic. He was wearing the clothes he wore yesterday and seemingly all the days before: a pair of too-big cotton pants and a black shirt so tattered that it seemed ready to fall off his body.Read the rest of this article. Watch a companion video (03:39).
Pressured to marry, African girl fights for her education
DERRE, Mozambique—Last year, after the hard rains had gone from these highlands and it was time to pull the sweet potatoes from the red earth, young men from nearby villages began coming around to ask after the slender seventh-grader with the almond eyes and the shy smile.Read the rest of this article. Watch a companion video (03:39)
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Dec 31, 2009
IntraHealth's 2009 Reading List
IntraHealth staff read or referenced the following selected list of books and papers published in 2009:
Popular Books
Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World
By Jacqueline Novogratz
(New York: Rodale, 2009)Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
By Dambisa Moyo
(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009)Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
By Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
(New York: Knopf, 2009)What Would Google do?
By Jeff Jarvis
(New York: Collins Business, 2009)Papers and Reports
Health Affairs--Delivering on Global Health (Vol. 28, No. 4, July/August 2009):
- Estimates of Health Care Professionals Shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2015
By Richard M. Scheffler, Chris Brown Mahoney, Brent Fulton, Mario R. Dal Poz, Alexander S. Preker - Job Satisfaction And Morale In The Ugandan Health Workforce
By Amy Hagopian, Anneke Zuyderduin, Naomi Kyobutungi and Fatu Yumkella
Gender Equity in Health: The shifting Frontiers of Evidence and Action
Edited by Gita Sen, Piroska Östlin
(Routledge, 2010)Home Truths: Facing the Facts on Children, AIDS, and Poverty
By Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA, 2009)mHealth for Development: The Opportunity of Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World
By the United Nations Development Foundation (UNDP, 2009)State of the world's children 2009: Maternal and Newborn health
By the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF, 2008)Telehealth in the Developing World
Edited by Richard Wootton, Nivritti G. Patil, Richard E. Scott, and Kendall Ho (Royal Society of Medicine Press Ltd; International Development Research Centre, 2009)U.S. Commitment to Global Health: Recommendations for the Public and Private Sector
By the Committee on the U.S. Commitment to Global Health; Institute of Medicine
(National Academies Press, 2009)Working in Health: Financing and Managing the Public Sector Health Workforce
By Marko Vujicic , Kelechi Ohiri , Susan Sparkes (World Bank, 2009)World Health Report 2008--Primary Health Care: Now More Than Ever
World Health Organization (WHO), 2008 - Estimates of Health Care Professionals Shortages in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2015
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Jan 4, 2010
Lecture: Julio Frenk at National Institutes of Health
Listen to Dr. Julio Frenk deliver the National Institutes of Health 2009 David E. Barmes Lecture on Global Health. Frenk is currently dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, and he previously served as Mexico’s minister of health. Frenk’s address, titled “Globalization and Health: The Role of Knowledge in an Interdependent World,” discusses the changing landscape of global health and disease. Now more than ever, he says, chronic and infectious diseases are affecting Western and developing nations at increasingly similar rates. The days of defining disease as chronic versus communicable are done with. Of course, it’s more poignant than that—you’ll just have to hear Frenk himself.
Watch the lecture online (RealMedia player required). Or (if you’re short on time) read the Harvard Gazette’s recap of his key points and supporting stats.
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Dec 15, 2010
Free eLearning Course for Project Management
Designed just for international development organizations, this online course offers a free way for program staff to learn basic project management concepts and skills. Created by PM4DEV (Project Management for Development Organizations), the course has five modules:
- Introduction to Project Management
- The Project Management Cycle
- The Project Management Processes
- Project Management Organization Structure
- Roles, Responsibilities and Skills of Project Managers
To sign up or learn more, visit http://www.pm4dev.com/english/elearn.htm.
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Dec 11, 2009
Amnesty International Features Health Worker in Annual Write for Rights Campaign
International Observances | Human Rights Day
Rita Mahato is a health worker in Nepal who helps local women recovering from violence and abuse. But now she’s a victim of violence herself, receiving threats of death, rape and kidnapping for her work at the Women's Rehabilitation Center (WOREC) in Bastipur Village. »Rita’s Story
In honor of Human Rights Day, Amnesty International USA launched a global write-a-thon to show support and solidarity for people like Rita Mahato, who are persecuted or imprisoned for defending human rights in their communities. So far visitors have pledged more than 250,000 letters on others’ behalf—write and send yours by December 13. »More -
Dec 3, 2010
Blood Money?
From the New York Times:
HIV Tests Turn Blood Into Cash in China
By Andrew Jacobs
TIANJIN, China — A young, boisterous crowd gathered in front of the Purple Tribe nightclub on a recent Friday night, but hardly anyone was interested in going inside.
Instead the men, most of them gay, waited their turn to duck into a dingy storage space next to the club. A needle prick and a wince later, they emerged with a triumphant grin, having exchanged a test tube of blood for a pocketful of cash. “This is my third time in two weeks,” Zhang Haoyun, an 18-year-old store clerk, boasted as he walked away holding a cotton swab to the bend of his arm.
