Posts tagged health
MEDIA Schiff
Global Health & Other International Stuff.
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Harvard’s Nieman Foundation Dims its Global Health Light
When Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism released the names of the 24 fellows for the 2012-2013 academic year with nary a mention of its Global Health Reporting Fellowship, one was left to wonder whether the program had been cut all together.
Thankfully — for those who appreciate thorough reporting on global health issues — this is not the case. 
Stefanie Friedhoff, special projects manager at the Nieman Foundation, says Harvard has no plans to end the fellowship.
But this will be the first time since the Global Health Reporting Fellowship started in 2007 that Nieman will not host a single fellow in global health.
In 2010, the global health program — which traditionally selects at least one U.S.-based journalist and one non-U.S. journalist — did not include a U.S. participant.
“This happens every once in awhile with some of the specialized fellowships. It has to do with the applicant pool in any given year, and how it all shakes out,” according to Friedhoff.
Although there is no global health fellow this coming year, Friedhoff points out that health and science journalist Jeneen Interlandi was selected to study the history of pharmaceuticals. Another fellowship winner, Jane Spencer, international editor at large for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, will examine how to improve news coverage of global women’s issues — but the focus will be on using new technologies for digital storytelling rather than field reporting.
The current class has two global health fellows: Samuel Loewenberg, a freelance journalist who specializes in global health, and Rema Nagarajan, an assistant editor at The Times of India.
It’s also worth noting that this is the first class of fellows to be selected under the oversight of Ann Marie Lipinski, a former Chicago Tribune editor, who became the foundation’s curator in April 2011.
Is this the start of a shift in priorities at Nieman under Lipinski’s leadership? Only time will tell of course, but the selection committee did interview Global Health Reporting Fellowship candidates and had adequate funding for the year.
It just decided not to award any fellowships this year.
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NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins was on The Colbert Report last night.
“You were super fat,” Colbert says to Collins when he revealed that he used to be about 30 pounds heavier. That’s at around 2:15.
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It’s World Malaria Day. On World Malaria Day five years ago, President Bush got jiggy with it. Just watch.
From my post for PSI.
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The ‘CNN of Virology’
“ViroXchange” — a new bilingual French and English media service, which receives funding from major pharmaceutical companies — “will provide ‘independent’ reporting on the latest medical breakthroughs for healthcare professionals.”
From the New York Daily News:
The digital service, unveiled at an annual HIV/AIDS conference held here in Montreal, will mainly produce online videos, said Guy-Charles Pelletier, CEO of the Neuhauz company and architect of the project. A team of reporters will cover the 10 major scientific conferences each year, interviewing specialists on camera about the latest studies and advances in HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C research, he said.
(Source: New York Daily News)
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Wednesday, 25 April, is World Malaria Day, which this year marks a decisive juncture in the history of malaria control. Whether the malaria map will keep shrinking, as it has in the past decade, or be reclaimed by the malaria parasites, depends, to a great extent, on the resources that will be invested in control efforts over the next years.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon video message:
Last year we mourned the fact that one child died every 45 seconds from this disease. This year, we have managed to slow the clock. It remains a monumental tragedy that one child dies every minute from malaria, but we can draw some hope from the many lives saved through international interventions.
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Multitasking #fail.
Melinda Beck writes in the Wall Street Journal:
These findings, published in the journal Nature last week, underscore why people aren’t very good at multitasking—our brains are wired for “selective attention” and can focus on only one thing at a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren’t.
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From my UN Dispatch piece:
If you caught the latest episode of “Mad Men” on Sunday night, you saw a feverish Don coughing and spluttering around Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce before leaving the office early to take to bed.So what’s ailing Don?
Viewers aren’t given any definite answers in this episode, but Michael Ginsburg, the agency’s new copywriter, has a theory: “Maybe you have TB.”
Not necessarily a bad guess.
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Lancet Editor: ‘Global Health is on Life Support’
An evening spent with a former senior Global Fund leader. Conclusions. The entire Geneva-based system of global health is utterly corrupt.
— richard horton (@richardhorton1) March 20, 2012
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Bird Flu Flap: A Timeline of the Controversy Over H5N1 Research
In advance of the tomorrow’s closed-door World Health Organization meeting, I created a timeline of the bird flu research controversy: The timeline is also hosted on Humanosphere.
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Facebook’s Worth > 6 Years of Breast Cancer Treatment
Based on Facebook’s IPO filing, market analysts put the company’s total value at a high of $100 billion. Assuming it is worth that much, Mashable compiled a list of “giant” things that are less valuable than Facebook. The third spot on the list puts it into perspective for the health wonks out there:
The Cost of Breast Cancer Treatment for 6 Years
Breast cancer costs the U.S. $16.5 billion per year. Multiply that number by six years and you reach $99 billion.
(Source: Mashable)
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The Health Effects of 9/11
The Atlantic Wire notes a recent study, which has the “first substantive findings that show working at Ground Zero increased cancer risks.”
Rebecca Greenfield highlights findings from other studies on health-related impacts:
- Stress response to the attacks has been associated with a 53 percent increased incidence of cardiovascular issues, a study three years after 9/11 found.
- Caring for those emotionally affected by the terrorist attacks led to compassion fatigue according to research out of the International Journal of Emergent Mental Health.
- Following the event, a study concluded an upward trend in post-traumatic stress disorder, even for those who did not directly experience the event, another found.
- Those who were exposed to World Trade Center aftermath report constant headaches.
- About 8.4% of office workers and 8.6% of passersby developed asthma 5 to 6 years after the attacks.
