global health

UW conference explores the intersection of justice and health

Kavita Ramdas, Executive Director of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford, will set the tone.

By Claudia Rowe, special correspondent

The relationship between social justice and human health is at the heart of an upcoming conference at the University of Washington expected to draw hundreds of students and policy experts to Seattle at the end of this month.

Co-sponsored by more than two dozen colleges and universities, The 9th Annual Western Regional International Health Conference highlights global perspectives on mental health; marginalized populations; clinical issues; funding; communications; and the environment. It runs April 27-29.

“You’ll have people with PhDs and MDs sitting on panels with graduate students, all of them talking about the research they’re doing,” said Lisa Lester, an organizer and UW senior majoring in Spanish and international studies.

“It’s just very exciting and we’ve gotten just huge amounts of support. I definitely get the sense that in Seattle global health is a field that’s on the rise.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Justice, global health, Kavita Ramdas, University of Washington

December 16, 2011 | 9:57 AM | By Tom Paulson

Gates Foundation’s latest global health gizmo grant

Sorry, I know alliteration indicates some kind of mental pathology (as does the love of puns) but I couldn’t resist that headline.

Flickr, MikeBlogs

Star Trek tricorder

At least I didn’t report this news like my former employer, the Seattle PI, as Canadians, Gates Foundation want a real tricorder. For the six people in the world who don’t know what a ‘tricorder’ is, it’s a futuristic medical device used by the cranky medical officer Bones in the TV show Star Trek to diagnose maladies on the final frontier.

Oh, and the actual news? The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, working in partnership with a Canadian version of the foundation’s Grand Challenges program, has awarded $32 million to 22 research teams to develop new, inexpensive “point-of-care” diagnostic devices.

It’s fairly easy for the media to do stories about fighting disease in poor countries (though we don’t do it enough, as compared to celebrity news or politics). What’s often neglected is the lack of an ability to even know what disease it is you are fighting in the developing world. Is the fever due to malaria or flu? Does this person with HIV also have TB or not?

The need for inexpensive and more reliable disease diagnosis in poor countries is massive.

“New and improved diagnostics to use at the point-of-care can help health workers around the world save countless lives,” said Chris Wilson, Director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “Our hope is that these bold ideas lead to affordable, easy-to-use tools that can rapidly diagnose diseases, trigger timelier treatment and thereby reduce death, disability and transmission of infections in resource-poor communities.”

The Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges program was launched to fund high-risk innovative scientific and engineering research aimed at solving problems of disease and poverty in poor countries. Grand Challenges Canada is an independent organization, inspired by the Gates program but funded by the Canadian government to do pretty much the same kind of thing.

Of the 22 research projects awarded by the two organizations, only 10 of the 12 groups funded by the Gates Foundation website appeared to be listed as of this writing. The Canadians also only appear to list a portion of their grantees rather than all of them. I’ve asked for one link listing all 22 but haven’t seen it yet.

Here are three grant recipients highlighted by the Gates Foundation:

Seventh Sense Biosystems, a company located in Cambridge MA, is developing TAP—a painless, low-cost blood collection device which aims to allow easy, push-button sampling of blood. This simple collection process would reduce training requirements and enable diagnostics closer to the point-of-need.
David Beebe and researchers at the University of Wisconsin are developing a sample purification system that seeks to better filter and concentrate biomarkers from patient samples. This system will be designed for use in impoverished settings.
Axel Scherer of the California Institute of Technology, along with collaborators at Dartmouth College, will develop a prototype quantitative PCR (qPCR) amplification/detection component module—a low cost, easy-to-use technology that can rapidly detect a wide range of diseases.

Other news stories based on this announcement:

Boston Globe Gates Foundation awards grant to (beantown biotech)

AFP Gates, Canadians offer $32 million for research

FILED UNDER: Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, diagnostics, global health, Grand Challenges

December 15, 2011 | 9:35 AM | By Tom Paulson

Global health funding still growing, but slowing

Despite the global economic downturn, funding for projects aimed at fighting the diseases of poverty around the world continued to increase — but at a slower pace — throughout 2011, according to a report from Seattle researchers.

IHME

Chris Murray

“Even though we continue to see growth in global health funding through 2011, it is troubling to see so many funders pulling back,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and one of the report’s authors. “We are just now beginning to see the impact from the extraordinary growth in global health funding over the past decade. If we give up now, we may lose that momentum.”

The massive increase in global health spending over the past decade has produced significant improvements in maternal and child mortality, reductions in malaria incidence as well as preventing and treating HIV infections worldwide, Murray noted. The IHME report is published online in Health Affairs.

But now, say the Seattle number crunchers, major international health initiatives like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria are seeing donations decline (to the Global Fund, a 16 percent decline last year).

On the upside, given everything else going on, it is good news that global health funding has continued to increase overall. On the downside, the increase in 2011 was about 4 percent — the slowest rate of growth for this sector over the past decade. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Chris Murray, funding, global health, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

September 13, 2011 | 1:04 PM | By Tom Paulson

Gates Foundation again hires top drug company exec for global health mission

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has again hired a leading pharmaceutical executive to run its biggest philanthropic mission, global health.

I posted on the rumor yesterday, but today the Seattle philanthropy confirmed that it has hired Trevor Mundel, head of global development for Novartis based in Basel, Switzerland. Novartis is the third-largest drug maker in the world and does a lot of work on vaccines.

“We are very pleased that Dr. Mundel has agreed to lead our global health program,” said Bill Gates, co-chair of the foundation. “He brings tremendous scientific and medical credentials, in the lab and in the clinic. We look forward to working with him to help improve the health of people in the world’s poorest countries.”

“Dr. Mundel is an outstanding choice for our global health work,” said Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the foundation. “He has a passion for science, and has worked for many years with an array of partners to improve health outcomes for people around the world.”

Novartis

Trevor Mundel

Mundel succeeds Tachi Yamada, who came from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to run the Gates Foundation global health program. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, global health, Richard Klausner, Tachi Yamada, Trevor Mundel

June 27, 2011 | 10:03 AM | By Tom Paulson

Gates’ former global health director becomes venture capitalist, again

Gates Foundation

Tachi Yamada

Tachi Yamada, who recently retired from his position as director of global health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has taken a new job with a Seattle venture capital firm, Frazier Healthcare Ventures.

I’m not sure if this a trend, but that makes two out of three former Gates Foundation global health czars so far moving from philanthropy to venture capital. Yamada’s predecessor at the Gates Foundation, Richard Klausner, is a partner in a San Francisco-based venture capitalist focused on pharmaceuticals and biotech.

Here’s an article on Yamada’s move by Luke Timmerman at Xconomy and another from the Wall Street Journal.

As I wrote in mid-February, when Yamada announced he would be stepping down, the big question many have is if his replacement will signify some kind of mission shift for the Gates Foundation. I doubt it.

Klausner did represent a major shift in emphasis toward basic science and, some would say, against dealing with the immediate needs of the poor. Gordon Perkin, the first global health director for Gates and co-founder of PATH, helped launch the Seattle philanthropy as well as its primary (and continued) emphasis on promoting expansion of childhood vaccinations.

Yamada was brought in to the Gates Foundation primarily to mend fences and re-establish order. Klausner, who accomplished a lot to build up the philanthropy’s investment in and rapport with the scientific establishment, left his position under a bit of a cloud due to a combination of factors. Before Rick left, I’d long heard (off-record) complaints about his management and “mission drift” within the Gates Foundation global health program.

Yamada didn’t really launch any big initiative that you can point to as his legacy. But from all accounts, the Gates global health program is back on the rails. The philanthropy has yet to announce Yamada’s replacement.

FILED UNDER: Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, global health, Gordon Perkin, Richard Klausner, Tachi Yamada, venture capital

June 24, 2011 | 7:30 AM | By Tom Paulson

CDC’s list of top 10 global health achievements in past decade

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has compiled a list of the top 10 achievements in global health over the past 10 years.

The report notes, however, that “major disparities persist” and much remains to be done even in these areas that have shown most improvement.

Go to the link for more statistics, greater detail and the public health agency’s criteria for selection.

Reductions in child mortality
Expanded vaccination, protection against infectious diseases
Access to safe water and sanitation
Malaria prevention and control
HIV/AIDS prevention and control
Tuberculosis control
Control of neglected tropical diseases
Tobacco control
Improved road safety and awareness
Improved preparedness for pandemic flu, other global health threats

FILED UNDER: Basics, CDC, global health

June 7, 2011 | 12:09 PM | By Tom Paulson

Is cancer care too expensive for poor countries?

Tom Paulson

No doctor, no medicine at clinic in rural Nigeria

There’s a big push going on right now to expand the scope of the global health agenda, to include many non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like cancer.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (cancer docs) this week called upon President Barack Obama to push the United Nations to add cancer to the list of priority diseases in global health. The UN, which is holding a special high-level meeting on NCDs in September, seems likely to do so. The UN’s World Health Organization already resolved to do this last year.

Preventing cancer should definitely be on the agenda, as much of that is a matter of behavior change. But should cancer treatment be on the agenda? Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, cancer, global health, non-communicable diseases, smart global health

May 3, 2011 | 9:50 AM | By Tom Paulson

With Bin Laden’s death, foreign aid to Pakistan under the microscope

Flickr, k-ideas

Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, many are taking a hard look at the massive U.S. program of foreign aid to Pakistan – about $3 billion a year, half of that to pay them for helping us fight terrorism.

I hope they’ll take a hard look not just at what we’re getting for the money but why we give it.

What exactly are we trying do with what we call foreign aid?

We actually give very little, per capita and compared to most wealthy nations. And we seem to be giving it mostly for political reasons.

When Egypt erupted in popular protest against dictatorship, many Americans (including, apparently some members of Congress!) were surprised to learn that Egypt was the second or third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid — and that most of that “aid” went to buy military supplies. Continue reading →

global health

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