Successful Models of Virtual Experiential Education Initiatives in Global Health for International Students.

Experiential learning activities help students prepare for their future careers by providing opportunities for hands‑on practice experiencing real‑world scenarios. Innovations in technology can facilitate experiential learning and cross‑cultural connections for large groups of students in multiple global settings through a virtual platform. However, designing these opportunities with diverse groups of students for a virtual environment can be challenging.

Establishing Competencies for a Global Health Workforce: Recommendations from the Association of Pacific Rim Universities.

Background: The Association of Pacific Rim Universities Global Health Program facilitates exchange of information, knowledge and experiences in global health education and research among its 50 member universities. Despite the proliferation of global health educational programs worldwide, a lack of consensus exists regarding core competencies in global health training and how these are best taught.

Methods: A workshop was convened with 30 faculty, university administrators, students, and NGO workers representing both the Global North and South to gain consensus on core competencies in masters'-level global health training.

Workplace wellness programming in low-and middle-income countries: a qualitative study of corporate key informants in Mexico and India.

Background: A qualitative study of key informant semi-structured interviews were conducted between March and July 2016 in Mexico and India to achieve the following aims: to explore corporations' and stakeholders' views, attitudes and expectations in relation to health, wellness and cancer prevention in two middle-income countries, and to determine options for health professions to advance their approach to workplace wellness programming globally, including identifying return-on-investment incentives for corporations to implement wellness programming.

Results: There is an unmet demand for workplace wellness resources that can be used by corporations in an international context. Corporations in India and Mexico are already implementing a range of health-related wellness programs, most often focused on disease prevention and management.

A novel methodology for strengthening human rights based monitoring in public health: Family planning indicators as an illustrative example.

Objective: The last few years have seen a rise in the number of global and national initiatives that seek to incorporate human rights into public health practice. Nonetheless, a lack of clarity persists regarding the most appropriate indicators to monitor rights concerns in these efforts. The objective of this work was to develop a systematic methodology for use in determining the extent to which indicators commonly used in public health capture human rights concerns, using contraceptive services and programmes as a case study.

Assessing value-for-money in maternal and newborn health.

Responding to increasing demands to demonstrate value-for-money (VfM) for maternal and newborn health interventions, and in the absence of VfM analysis in peer-reviewed literature, this paper reviews VfM components and methods, critiques their applicability, strengths and weakness and proposes how VfM assessments can be improved. VfM comprises four components: economy, efficiency, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. Both 'economy' and 'efficiency' can be assessed with detailed cost analysis utilising costs obtained from programme accounting data or generic cost databases.

Competency-Based Education in Low Resource Settings: Development of a Novel Surgical Training Program.

Background: The unmet burden of surgical disease represents a major global health concern, and a lack of trained providers is a critical component of the inadequacy of surgical care worldwide. Competency-based training has been advanced in high-income countries, improving technical skills and decreasing training time, but it is poorly understood how this model might be applied to low- and middle-income countries. We describe the development of a competency-based program to accelerate specialty training of in-country providers in cleft surgery techniques.

Social Return on Investment (SROI): An Innovative Approach to Sustainable Development Goals for Sexual and Reproductive Health Programming in sub-Saharan Africa.

Despite efforts, sub-Saharan Africa did not achieve many key Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) targets under the Millennium Development Goals. In the post 2015 era, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will frame decisions on donor priorities and resource allocations. Successfully addressing SRH challenges in sub-Saharan Africa have been blunted due to fragmentation of SRH interventions in planning and implementation, lack of coherence between policies and program implementation, resulting in poor program performance and lack of accountability.

Human rights and the sexual and reproductive health of women living with HIV--a literature review.

Introduction: Even as the number of women living with HIV around the globe continues to grow, realization of their sexual and reproductive health and human rights remains compromised. The objective of this study was to review the current state of knowledge on the sexual and reproductive health and human rights of women living with HIV to assess evidence and gaps.

Methods: Relevant databases were searched for peer-reviewed and grey literature.

Non-cholinergic drug development for Alzheimer's disease.

Background: Recent advances in the understanding of the pathobiology of Alzheimer's disease have led to a large number of non-cholinergic targets for the development of therapeutic agents. These include, for example, neurotransmitter-based, anti-amyloid, antitangle, antioxidant, anti-excitotoxic, and growth factor strategies. There are several hundred agents in, or approaching, clinical trials.