Johns Hopkins University celebrates Global Health Day 2011

The Student Experience was the focus of Gobal Health Day 2011, held Thursday, February 24 at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The featured event of the day was a poster session where students who had traveled and worked overseas in the past 12 months had the opportunity to exhibit their work. Forty-six posters were exhibited by students and student groups who had been funded by the Center for Global Health's Established Field Placement program or Field Research Award, by the Master of Public Health program's Field Experience Award, by the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design, or by independent sources. The posters detailed both the scientific work the students had completed in a developing country, but also discussed the more personal aspects of their global health experience. Posters that excelled in presenting both sides of their trips won blue ribbons:

Poster Competition Winners

Grand Prize Winner:
Rachel Steckelberg: Evaluation of a Continuing Medical Education Program for Nurses and Midwives in Uganda

Blue Ribbon Winners:
Mohammed Khair ElZarrad: Social and Cultural Factors Contributing to Delayed Breast Cancer Presentation among Women in Jordan from the Perspective of Physicians

Nakiya Showell & Lorraine Beraho: JHSPH TSEHAI Project -  Development of the Master Pediatric Protocol

Alice Hu: Local concepts and behavior towards tuberculosis in Payatas, a slum community in the Philippines

Paul Maurizio: Detection and characterization of Culex flaviviruses in Zambian Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes for cloning and paratransgenesis studies on Wuchereria bancrofti transmission and lymphatic filariasis elimination in Africa

Sarah Meyer: Labor Trafficking and Health: A Qualitative Study

May Sudhinaraset: Processes of Internal Migration in China and the Impact on Adolescents and Young Adults Sexual Risk Behaviors

Hilina Kassa: Addressing Healthcare Issues through ACCESS-Uzima in Kenya

Sean Monagle, Shishira Nagesh, Mary O’Grady, Matthew Means, James Waring, Sherri Hall, Maxim Budyansky, and Peter Truskey: Antenatal Screening Kit

Megan Rybarczyk: Documenting Critical Need in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Shegufta Sikder: Beyond maternal mortality: burden and care seeking patterns for non-communicable diseases in rural Bangladeshi women of reproductive age

Excellence in Faculty Advising Award Winners

The day also included an opening ceremony where President Ronald Daniels spoke about the importance of global health to the overall mission of Johns Hopkins University. He also helped the Center for Global Health and the Master of Public Health program recognize five faculty award winners for Excellence in Global Health Advising. These faculty members had been nominated by their advisee students and selected by a committee for this honor.

Timothy Baker, MD, MPH, Professor, JHSPH

Joanne Katz, BSc, MS, ScD, Professor, JHSPH

Caitlin Kennedy, MPH, PhD, Assistant Professor, JHSPH

Alain Labrique, PhD, MHS, MSc, Assistant Professor, JHSPH

Andrea Ruff, MD, Associate Professor, JHSPH

Photography Competition Winners

Accompanying Global Health Day was a photography competition and an exhibit of the winning photos during the week of February 21-25. Over 125 photographs were submitted for the competition, and the following students won the grand prizes in their division:

Child Health: “Mayan Infant Receiving Vitamin A” by Florella Castillo, Huehuetenango, Guatemala

Community Health: “Doctor’s House Call” by Kalia Nimisha, Kampala, Uganda

Environmental Health: “Highway” by Sanjay Jumani, Mumbai, India

Human Rights: “The Girls Being Cut” by Sarah Giezl, Bukwo District, Uganda

Infectious Disease: “Malaria Surveillance Visit by ICDDR,B Staff at a Home in a High Incidence Area” by Heather Scobie, Bandarban, Bangladesh

Maternal Health: “7 Months” by Rachel Steckelberg, Santiago, Dominican Republic

The Photography Competition was organized and sponsored by the JB Grant International Society at JHSPH.

Other Events

Global Health Day festivities also included speaker Stephen Lewis, the co-founder and co-director of AIDS-Free World delivering a dynamic address on "A Subversive View of Global Health" on Wednesday, February 23, and a global health intersession class that featured a live feed between Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Ethiopia in order to discuss a clinical case related to maternal health. After the case presentations, there was a discussion comparing maternal health issues in Baltimore and Addis Ababa.

Global Health Day is an annual event, and the date for 2012 will be announced soon.