Measuring for Success: Evaluating Leadership Training Programs for Sustainable Impact.

Background: In an era of global health security challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, there is greater need for strong leadership. Over the past decades, significant investments have been made in global health leadership development programs by governments and philanthropic organizations to address this need. Evaluating the societal impact of these programs remains challenging, despite consensus on the importance of public health leadership.

Strengthening Public Health Leadership in Africa: An Innovative Fellowship Program.

Problem: The Ebola virus disease crisis in West Africa revealed critical weaknesses in health policy and systems in the region, including the poor development and retention of policy leaders able to set sound policy to improve health. Innovative models for enhancing the capabilities of emerging leaders while retaining their talent in their countries are vital.

Approach: Chatham House (London, United Kingdom) established the West African Global Health Leaders Fellowship to help develop the next generation of West African public health leaders.

Prioritising Infectious Disease Mapping.

Background: Increasing volumes of data and computational capacity afford unprecedented opportunities to scale up infectious disease (ID) mapping for public health uses. Whilst a large number of IDs show global spatial variation, comprehensive knowledge of these geographic patterns is poor. Here we use an objective method to prioritise mapping efforts to begin to address the large deficit in global disease maps currently available.

Creating a global dialogue on infectious disease surveillance: connecting organizations for regional disease surveillance (CORDS).

Connecting Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS) is an international non-governmental organization focused on information exchange between disease surveillance networks in different areas of the world. By linking regional disease surveillance networks, CORDS builds a trust-based social fabric of experts who share best practices, surveillance tools and strategies, training courses, and innovations. CORDS exemplifies the shifting patterns of international collaboration needed to prevent, detect, and counter all types of biological dangers - not just naturally occurring infectious diseases, but also terrorist threats.

Priorities for research on meningococcal disease and the impact of serogroup A vaccination in the African meningitis belt.

For over 100 years, large epidemics of meningococcal meningitis have occurred every few years in areas of the African Sahel and sub-Sahel known as the African meningitis belt. Until recently, the main approach to the control of these epidemics has been reactive vaccination with a polysaccharide vaccine after an outbreak has reached a defined threshold and provision of easy access to effective treatment but this approach has not prevented the occurrence of new epidemics. Meningococcal conjugate vaccines, which can prevent meningococcal carriage and thus interrupt transmission, may be more effective than polysaccharide vaccines at preventing epidemics.

Ten years of international collaboration in biomedical informatics and beyond: the AMAUTA program in Peru.

Well-trained people are urgently needed to tackle global health challenges through information and communication technologies. In this report, AMAUTA, a joint international collaborative training program between the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia and the University of Washington, which has been training Peruvian health professionals in biomedical and health informatics since 1999, is described. Four short-term courses have been organized in Lima, offering training to more than 200 graduate-level students.

Effect of an online video-based intervention to increase HIV testing in men who have sex with men in Peru.

Background: Although many men who have sex with men (MSM) in Peru are unaware of their HIV status, they are frequent users of the Internet, and can be approached by that medium for promotion of HIV testing.

Methods: We conducted an online randomized controlled trial to compare the effect of HIV-testing motivational videos versus standard public health text, both offered through a gay website. The videos were customized for two audiences based on self-identification: either gay or non-gay men.

Developing capacity in health informatics in a resource poor setting: lessons from Peru.

The public sectors of developing countries require strengthened capacity in health informatics. In Peru, where formal university graduate degrees in biomedical and health informatics were lacking until recently, the AMAUTA Global Informatics Research and Training Program has provided research and training for health professionals in the region since 1999. The Fogarty International Center supports the program as a collaborative partnership between Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru and the University of Washington in the United States of America.

Pandemic influenza planning by videoconference.

Collaboration between nations and sectors is crucial to improve regional preparedness against pandemic influenza. In 2008, a Virtual Symposium was organized in the Asia-Pacific region by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Emerging Infections Network (APEC EINet) to discuss pandemic preparedness. The multipoint videoconference lasted approximately 4.

Regional infectious disease surveillance networks and their potential to facilitate the implementation of the international health regulations.

The International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005 present a challenge and opportunity for global surveillance and control of infectious diseases. This article examines the opportunity for regional networks to address this challenge. Two regional infectious disease surveillance networks, established in the Mekong Basin and the Middle East, are presented as case studies.

Training biomedical and health informatics professionals in Peru: towards the development of the first graduate diploma program in the country.

In Peru, there are no formal university graduate programs in biomedical and health informatics, and there is a lack of other health informatics programs. AMAUTA, a joint program between the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH) in Lima and the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle has been training Peruvian health professionals since 1999 regarding biomedical and health informatics. In 2007, UPCH is offering the first Graduate Diploma Program in Biomedical Informatics in the country.

Evaluation of a joint Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics international course in Peru.

Background: New technologies that emerge at the interface of computational and biomedical science could drive new advances in global health, therefore more training in technology is needed among health care workers. To assess the potential for informatics training using an approach designed to foster interaction at this interface, the University of Washington and the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia developed and assessed a one-week course that included a new Bioinformatics (BIO) track along with an established Medical/Public Health Informatics track (MI) for participants in Peru.

Methods: We assessed the background of the participants, and measured the knowledge gained by track-specific (MI or BIO) 30-minute pre- and post-tests.

Design and implementation of Cell-PREVEN: a real-time surveillance system for adverse events using cell phones in Peru.

With more clinical trials involving evaluations of new drugs or vaccines, monitoring for early detection of adverse events is essential. The overall goal of this study was to develop an interactive-computer system using cell phones for real-time collection and transmission of adverse events related to metronidazole administration among female sex workers (FSW) in Peru. We developed an application for cell phones in Spanish, called Cell-PREVEN, based on a system from Voxiva Inc.

The global diet: trade and novel infections.

Practices designed to meet the demands of global trade can amplify food safety problems. Ever-increasing pressure to churn out more product and better sides of beef has generated processes that compromise existing safety measures. Among the concerns are intensified food production, use of antimicrobials and hormones as growth promoters, and poor sanitary infrastructure in some food producing countries.

Trade related infections: farther, faster, quieter.

Modern global trading traffics large volumes of diverse products rapidly to a broad geographic area of the world. When emergent infections enter this system in traded products their transmission is amplified. With truly novel emergent infections with long incubation periods, such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) or variant Creutzfeld Jacob Disease (vCJD), this transmission may silently disseminate infection to far distant populations prior to detection.

Diagnoses, syndromes, and diseases: a knowledge representation problem.

Despite their widespread use, the terms "syndrome", "disease" and "diagnosis" are sometimes utilized improperly and ambiguously, compounding the complexities of medical knowledge representation. The definitions and illustrative examples provided here will be useful for developers of diagnostic expert systems. Description of the Problem Representing medical knowledge is a highly complex endeavor.

Comparison of hepatitis B vaccine coverage and effectiveness among urban and rural Mongolian 2-year-olds.

Background: The prevalence of hepatitis B (HBV) carriage in Mongolia is reported to be 14%. Universal HBV immunization of newborns has been shown to decrease carriage in Asian populations. Mongolia began universal newborn vaccination in 1991.