Husband and wife team Koji Nakashima MD, a BWH hospitalist and Erin George, RN, MSN, CNM, a member of the BWH Nurse Midwifery Service, have a storied history of working in Haiti in partnership with Partners In Health (PIH). “We firmly believe that we need to level that playing field for people,” says Nakashima, specifically in the areas of access to food, clean water, and housing. Continue reading “Husband and Wife Team Committed to Global Health”
Husband and Wife Team Committed to Global Health
Husband and wife team Koji Nakashima MD, a BWH hospitalist and Erin George, RN, MSN, CNM, a member of the BWH Nurse Midwifery Service, have a storied history of working in Haiti in partnership with Partners In Health (PIH). “We firmly believe that we need to level that playing field for people,” says Nakashima, specifically in the areas of access to food, clean water, and housing. Continue reading “Husband and Wife Team Committed to Global Health”
The Role of Bias in the Unfolding Ebola Epidemic
As the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia continues to claim lives, the unfolding crisis derives less from the virus and more from inaccurate biases that led to an inadequate response. BWH Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity Paul Farmer and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim present this argument in a Washington Post op-ed entitled “What’s missing in the Ebola fight in West Africa,” published on Aug. 31. Continue reading “The Role of Bias in the Unfolding Ebola Epidemic”
The Role of Bias in the Unfolding Ebola Epidemic
As the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia continues to claim lives, the unfolding crisis derives less from the virus and more from inaccurate biases that led to an inadequate response. BWH Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity Paul Farmer and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim present this argument in a Washington Post op-ed entitled “What’s missing in the Ebola fight in West Africa,” published on Aug. 31. Continue reading “The Role of Bias in the Unfolding Ebola Epidemic”
BWFH Palliative Care Consultant teaches foundational course to nurses in the Middle East
In the United States, palliative care is recognized as an essential component of healthcare. By managing the symptoms of patients with chronic diseases and serious illnesses, palliative care providers help improve quality of life by managing pain or other severe impairments. Palliative care providers assist patients and families in the coordination of care and in the process of making difficult care decisions. They also help foster collaboration within an interdisciplinary medical team. In much of the Middle East, however, the term palliative care is not yet widely recognized in academic literature or integrated in the plan of care for patients with chronic disease or at the end of life.
Recently, a group of five nurse practitioners from the Oncology Nursing Society, supported by a grant from the Nation Cancer Institute, were asked by the Oncology Nursing Society and Middle Eastern Cancer Consortium to travel to Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey to conduct a foundational course in palliative care for nurses from various countries in the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Among those nurse practitioners was Julie Vosit-Steller, DNP FNP-BC AOCN, from Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital’s Palliative Care Consult Service. Continue reading “BWFH Palliative Care Consultant teaches foundational course to nurses in the Middle East”
Supporting Premature Infants in Bangladesh
Anne Lee, MD, of BWH’s Department of Pediatrics, has spent the past 5 years working in rural Bangladesh helping train local non-medical community health workers to recognize signs of prematurity in babies born at home, and to strengthen the referral process of these high-risk babies for hospital-based care. Now, she is seeking the support of the BWH community in a funding competition through the “Saving Lives at Birth” program in an effort to continue to build upon their work as her and her team was selected as finalists to compete in Washington DC at the end of July.
Continue reading “Supporting Premature Infants in Bangladesh”
Maternal Health Beyond Hospital Walls
One would think the process of delivering a baby would be a universal procedure, with physicians and nurses following the same steps for each patient. However, after traveling to Senegal, BWH’s Rebecca Luckett, MD, MPH, PGY3 resident in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, had the chance to experience firsthand the challenges associated with providing clinical care outside of the United States. In an effort to step outside of her American resident self, Luckett entered a place where she did not have every amenity and test at her fingertips, shifting her outlook and gaining a new perspective on the system in which she would be working.
Health Care where there are no Roads
Raj Panjabi, of BWH’s Division of Global Health Equity, has set out to make health care more accessible to those living in the world’s most remote villages by reconstructing the model of the Community Health Worker (CHW). Over 1 billion people worldwide go their entire lives without receiving any degree of medical care, and Panjabi recognized the need for an improved health care system that reaches rural communities.
In 2007, Panjabi founded Last Mile Health, an organization dedicated to closing the health care access gap through a redesigned and improved CHW program. By professionalizing CHWs through a stringent 5 step process that involves lengthy training, testing and incentivized salary, Last Mile Health is able to serve remote villages through a knowledgeable and fully equipped workforce that is more efficient and effective than the traditional model. The goal is to achieve universal access to care by 2030, a project that seems daunting but is quite possible if health systems focus on and invest in community health worker performance.
Read more about Last Mile Health in this piece by the Huffington Post.
Social Worker from Guatemala Visits BWH
Social Worker from Guatemala Visits BWH