Born Too Small

Every year, 20 million babies around the world are born with a low birth weight of less than 2500g (5.5 pounds). BWH’s Anne Lee, MD, of Newborn Medicine worked with colleagues in the  Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group to create the first-ever national estimates of small-for-gestational-age (SGA) and its co-occurrence with preterm birth in low- and middle-income countries, which was published in the inaugural issue of Lancet Global Health last month. Growth restricted infants in low- and middle-income countries are 1.8 times more likely to die in the first month of life, compared to non-growth restricted infants. If you’d like to learn more, the full article is available here.

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BWFH Physician Provides Urologic Care in Haiti

On recent trips to Jacmel, Haiti, to provide urologic care, Dr. Robert Eyre faced obstacles, like loss of electricity, that made performing surgery quite challenging.

“We had to carry in every piece of equipment–IV bag, suture, drape, gown, etc,” said Eyre, a Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital urologist. “The power frequently went off, and we had only one OR light that occasionally worked, so I wore a battery-powered headlamp to do all the surgeries.”

Read more about Eyre's work in Haiti on the Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital website.Eyre

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Virtual Communities Link Health Care Professionals


Thousands of health care professionals across the country have a new opportunity to share resources, ideas and information thanks to an innovative concept in medicine – the virtual community.  The first virtual community that is part of a federal grant awarded to Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Global Health Delivery Project (GHD) went public in June.

“The US Communities Initiative will enrich GHD’s online platform through a continued exchange of ideas between new and seasoned professionals across geographies,” said Rebecca Weintraub, MD, an associate physician in the Division of Global Health Equity and faculty director of the GHD.  “The virtual communities will facilitate an important cross-pollination of ideas, as well as the dissemination of new, translatable knowledge, for health care professionals working in the United States and around the world.”

The grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will enable GHD to host six professional virtual communities and 36 virtual expert panels on www.GHDonline.org over the next three years.  Topics will range from the Affordable Care Act to mental health integration with a goal of sharing innovative ways to deliver evidence-based health care to underserved communities in the United States. Interested health care professionals are invited to join GHDonline and shape the US Communities Initiative by suggesting future discussions.

A Day in the Life of a Global Health Physician

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Rajesh Panjabi, MD, has a secret to balancing his work as a global health physician with his personal life as husband and father to a young son: the support and love of his wife, Amisha, a psychologist at the VA in Bedford, MA.

Dr. Panjabi, a native of Liberia, was profoundly impacted by his family’s experience fleeing the country during its civil war.  As a 9 year old boy, he and his family escaped in a cargo plane to resettle in North Carolina. The memory of all those left behind on the tarmac is what he calls the “clarifying moment” that inspired him to make the commitment to return one day.  He honored that commitment in 2005 when he returned as a medical student working with other survivors of Liberia’s civil war and American colleagues to form Tiyatien Health, now known in the United States as Last Mile Health.

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Transforming Global Women’s Health, Fellow by Fellow

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From Botswana to Haiti to the Middle East, Global Women’s Health Fellows are making vital contributions in this newly emerging field.

Neha Pagidipati, MD, MPH is the most recent fellow to graduate from the program, receiving her certificate before an enthusiastic and supportive group of colleagues, family, and leadership from the Division of Women’s Health on June 3.

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“The Upstream Doctors” – An Accompanying Essay

The following is an excerpt from an accompanying essay I wrote for the TED book, “The Upstream Doctors,” by Dr. Rishi Manchanda. 

At the end of almost a decade spent in teaching hospitals and clinics, most (we hope all) physicians have honed their clinical acumen by focusing on the care of the patient who is right in front of them. Perhaps this is as it should be: as patients, we don’t want our doctors (or nurses or social workers) distracted by “outside” considerations such as the suffering or concerns of other patients not there in the exam room or, heaven forfend, by abstractions such as the extra-personal social forces that place people in harm’s way. We want the doctor focused on us, by bringing expertise and attention to our specific “illness episode” and even to our minor aches and pains. That’s what we want: laser-like focus, to use another term from the medical profession, on our own “chief complaint.”

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New Global Health Certificates from the MGH Institute of Health Professions

Nurses worldwide provide 80–90 percent of care to individuals in many under-served areas, yet it remains extremely difficult for nurses to get the broad-based experience and education that allows them to provide care for vulnerable populations in various cultural backgrounds around the globe.

To address this issue, the MGH Institute of Health Professions School of Nursing, in conjunction with clinicians at the world-renowned Partners In Health, has created two certificates in Global Health Nursing that will begin in fall 2013. A 9-credit fully online Certificate of Completion is available for RNs with a baccalaureate degree or higher, and a 15-credit Certificate of Advanced Study is available for master’s-prepared students. Both programs have flexible schedules to accommodate working professionals.

Contact Dr. Lynda Tyer-Viola for more information.

Following the Footsteps of Operation Walk

Operation Walk Boston began in 2007 with a simple goal: to help patients with arthritis and joint disease in the Dominican Republic get back on their feet through knee and hip replacement surgeries.

Six years later, Operation Walk has performed surgeries on more than 200 patients—enabling them to walk, run and even dance in this island nation—thanks to the team of BWHers who volunteer to travel there each year to perform joint replacement surgeries.

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Redefining Health Care Delivery

“If delivery systems can be transformed around the principle of value, the promise of health and productivity for those now facing both poverty and disease will not be squandered.” This is the core take-away message of a new paper out  in the Lancet by Global Health Delivery Project advisors Drs. Paul Farmer and Jim Kim, and Prof. Michael Porter at the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard.

The paper represents six years of teamwork across institutions and geographies with the generosity of investors and implementers. Read more on the Global Health Delivery Project blog.