Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases
Ending the Neglect and Reaching 2020 Goals

Webcast now available online.

In a live webcast seen around the world this morning, a group of international partners demonstrated how innovative partnership can accelerate improvements in health and development for millions of people around the world.

Read ASTMH's response to the London Declaration here.

The event featured Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General, WHO; Bill Gates, Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the CEOs of nine leading pharmaceutical companies; senior government officials from Tanzania, Mozambique, Brazil and Zanzibar; and leaders in government, business and medicine.

View the invitation here.

Apply now for the Stanford-NBC News Fellowship in Global Health Media. The Fellowship is open to medical students, residents, fellows and faculty (MD credential required). Medical students applying should have completed their second year of medical school.

Global Health Media Fellows will, over the course of 12 months:

• Learn how to be an advocate for global health
• Learn how media plays a role in perspectives on global health
• Spend six months working with NBC News, and two months working for the Office of Communications at the WHO in Geneva
• Write compelling stories in a developing country (approx. two months)
• Take courses at the Graduate Program in Journalism at Stanford University (approx. two months)

The deadline to apply is February 17. For more information view the Fellowship flyer.

USAID is launching an exciting and ambitious program to engage universities and research institutes in novel ways to improve the Agency's--as well as the larger development community's--ability to define and solve large development challenges. Through this program, we seek to enhance evidence-based analysis and test new solutions, to champion and incubate creative approaches to accelerate solutions to traditional development challenges and to encourage universities to assist in addressing development problems through sustainable, creative multidisciplinary approaches.

We hope to bring together all components of the campus from engineering to anthropology, from global health to entrepreneurship and from agriculture to environment, to focus on the problems that impede humanity's advancement. We want to focus the nxt generation of problem-solvers on development's chalenges.

We have posted a draft RFA (www.usaid.gov/universities or www.grants.gov) on these new partnerships to create new development centers that will:

• Address USAID's need for development data and analysis: Serve as the analytical center for the Agency and address the Agency's need for development data, evidence and analysis that can feed into policy, including using geospatial technologies for problem identification, analysis, donor coordination, programming and monitoring and evaluation; and conducting futures analysis and research for better comprehension of future threats.
• Test and scale new models and technologies for development: Incentivize universities to create development labs that can design, adapt, rigorously test and scale emerging technologies, systems and approaches for development with partners in developing countries.
• Engage new solvers and incentivize new solutions and new approaches for development: Harness the excitement and energy of students and faculty interest toward global problems. Incentivize change on university campuses to take a multidisciplinary approach to development. Support a culture of entrepreneurship in developing countries as a means to address developing country problems, including in global health, food security, climate change, environment and conflict.

The partnerships between USAID and academic institutions will be sustainable, lasting beyond the term of the award, and benefit both parties as well as the larger development community. In addition, higher education institutions will be encouraged to serve as network nodes for development and work with novel partners, such as NGOs, foundations and the private sector.

USAID will fund two levels of awards:

1. Single university centers funded at $1-2 million annually for five years, and
2. Consortia centers funded at $5 million annually for five years.

Consortia would consist of 3-4 academic institutions and include developing country partners. We encourage applicants to match costs, potentially by leveraging additional resources from other federal agencies, foundations and the private sector to support sustainability and scale of proposed activities after the award period has ended. We are looking for creativity of ideas, the ability of the Centers to focus around problems rather than disciplines and novel partnership among nontraditional entities, including the private sector.

The question and comment period is open through January 31. Our first webinar is already oversubscribed; we have scheduled a second webinar for January 30. Registration for the conference/webinar can be found at www.usaid.gov/universities.

We hope you share our excitement for this opportunity.

Alex Dehgan
Science & Technology Advisor, USAID

The New York Times reports on the controversy surrounding the discovery of artemisinin--from its use in war in Vietnam in the 1960s to its current production and distribution all around the world. Donald McNeil reports the debate about who actually deserves the credit, though, for discovering the malaria-fighting drug has not abated.

At a Kaiser Family Foundation forum last week, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released the Department of Health and Human Services' first Global Health Strategy. "In a world where the flow of people and goods stretch across the globe, our only chance to keep Americans safe is if the system for preventing, detecting and containing disease [also] stretches across the globe," Secretary Sebelius said. "We can no longer separate America's health from global health."

This blueprint outlines HHS' role and how it can achieve its global health vision--a healthier and safer world--and in turn, protect and improve the health of Americans. The strategy names three goals:

1. Using global health activities to advance and protect Americans' health;

2. Sharing America's scientific and technical expertise with other nations and international organizations; and

3. Working with other government agencies and non-governmental organizations to improve diplomacy efforts, national security and international development.

Ten objectives are listed that support these goals:

• Strengthen global efforts to monitor, identify and control diseases
• Prevent the spread of infectious diseases and other health threats across borders
• Develop and implement responses to international outbreaks and emergencies
• Improve the safety of international food and medical device manufacturing
• Strengthen international health standards
• Spur international research and development of new health products
• Share best practices
• Address new patterns of death and illness
• Support President Obama's Global Health Initiative
• Improve health diplomacy

Take advantage of an early registration discount: Register by Jan. 17 to attend the International Congress on Tropical Medicine and Malaria and the Congress of the Brazilian Society of Tropical Medicine, Sept. 23-27, 2012, in Rio de Janeiro. Get details at the official meeting website.

ASTMH is saddened to learn of the passing of two longtime members and honors the legacies of Victor Lee Kovner, MD, FACP, and Jerome Jay Greenbaum, MD.

Alan Spira, MD, DTM&H, FRSTM, FAAEM, FAAMA, was a colleague of both men and writes of their commitment to the medical community, their families and the mission of ASTMH.

Dr. Victor Kovner passed away in December 2011. He practiced medicine for nearly 50 years and was a pillar of the Los Angeles medical community. We worked together when we both served the Hollywood film industry in the 1990s and 2000s, sharing patients and covering practices on opposite sides of  the Hollywood Hills.

Vic worked for the Peace Corps Public Health Service in Venezuela after finishing medical school. It was an assignment which sparked a passion for--and a love of--clinical tropical medicine. He had a travel clinic as part of his private practice and was happiest when evaluating and treating post-travel tropical medicine quandaries. Vic's medical interests were broad; in addition to tropical medicine and internal medicine, he was dedicated to the care of the dying and created the hospice at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Calif. His empathy for those suffering knew no bounds: He gave free medical care to those who endured torture from many countries. He was an active member of an advocacy group helping cancer patients cope with the pain of their disease. Even after he retired to his ranch in San Diego County, he still provided care for those in need, helping the disabled through an organization that used horses and horseback riding as a form of therapy.

His wife, Donna, was as energetic and caring as he was. Vic was dignified and dynamic, and had an infectious sense of humor. Above all, he was compassion defined.

Dr. Jerome Jay Greenbaum, known to all of us as "Jerry," passed away in September 2011 after a long series of health problems. He was a feisty and energetic physician who was easily recognized at ASTMH and ISTM conferences, and even though he suffered from Guillain-Barre and was eventually confined to a wheelchair, he had a spirit his body could not contain.

Jerry moved to San Francisco from Yonkers, N.Y.,  at the age of 12. He was a Bay Area institution, having graduated from UCSF and later practiced at the original Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco for over four decades. He founded the travel clinic at Kaiser and was truly one of the pioneers of travel medicine, practicing pre- and post-travel medical care decades before it came into fashion.

Jerry was a raconteur, a lover of the good life and a connoisseur of fine food and wine. He had a wry sense of humor and loved San Francisco. He took great delight in Janet, his wife of more than 30 years, as well as in his children and grandchildren. He loved people and it showed. His home was always open to me and to others. The dinners I shared with them in the chateau and over two decades of conferences are some of my finest memories, rich with wit, charm and intelligence. I had the honor to work with him professionally and counted him as a friend. He could be counted on. He was a mentor. He was indomitable.

These two men laid the path that many of us follow today. Let us honor that path with the same passion that they showed. I count myself lucky to have had these giants among men in my life. We all owe them a debt of gratitude for their pioneering efforts.