News
August 11, 2015
WACh Research Racks Up Awards at IAS Conference
Categories: Awards, Research, Talks and Events
Tags: AIDS Conference
In late July, Global WACh sent several team members to Vancouver for the 8th Annual IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis Treatment and Prevention. Our researchers presented posters highlighting woman, adolescent, and child health and Kristjana Asbjornstottir, Irene Njuguna, and Keshet Ronen took home awards recognizing their excellent work!
Kristjana received the The IAS/ANRS Lange-Van Tongeren Prize for Young Investigators for her project Immune Activation ped HIV.
Kristjana shared her thoughts about winning this prestigious award saying:
Giving a talk at IAS was an incredible opportunity in itself, and having our work recognized through the Young Investigator award on top of that is an enormous honor. I think it highlights the particular attention that was paid to pediatric research at the conference this year. Lots of UW research was featured in various tracks and sessions.
Irene Njuguna was the recipient of the CIPHER Award (Collaborative Initiative for Paediatric HIV Education and Research) which is granted to provide funding for research that addresses priority gaps in pediatric HIV. Without treatment, 50% of HIV infected children will die by the age of two so early diagnosis and treatment is crucial.
The Financial Incentives to increase HIV testing in children (FIT) study that Irene and the team have been working with wants to test to see if small financial incentives will increase HIV testing for children of HIV infected adults who are already in care.
This award is a result of hard work from the team, and I feel honored to be part of this team. This would not be possible without the excellent mentorship from Grace John-Stewart, Jennifer Slyker and Anjuli Wagner.
All of our Global WACh members gave poster presentations for the conference, and Keshet Ronen won an award for Best Poster for her research on Lower ANC Attendance and PMTCT Uptake in Adolescent versus Adult Pregnant Women in Kenya.
Let’s hear it for our award winning Global WACh team!
July 27, 2015
Announcing the Global WACh Small Change Awards
Categories: Awards
Tags: Small Change
The University of Washington Center for Integrated Health of Women, Children and Adolescents (Global WACh) aims to contribute to scientific discoveries, develop and nurture future leaders in science and foster collaborative approaches to improving the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents.
As part of these commitments, Global WACh offers a Resource Awards to support efforts to improve the patient experience in LMIC by improving clinical care, patient satisfaction, workforce empowerment, and health service delivery for programs benefiting the health of women, adolescents and children.
For more information, and to download the current RFA, please visit our Small Change Awards page.
We’re looking forward to receiving your proposals!
July 17, 2015
Global WACh at IAS 2015
Categories: Research, Talks and Events
Tags: AIDS Conference
UW Global Health and Global WACh will be attending the 8th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis Treatment & Prevention July 19th – 22nd, and we’re there in full force. Below are the oral presentations you don’t want to miss!
Monday at 11:00am Kristjana Asbjornsdottir will present Immune activation and pediatric HIV during the Growing up on ART session (Ballroom B)
Wednesday at 11:00am Anjuli Wagner will present Pediatric HIV testing during the Children and Adolescents Living with HIV session (Room 211-214)
Wednesday at 11:00am Keshet Ronen will present Adolescent PMTCT engagement during the Children and Adolescents Living with HIV session (Room 211-214)
Global Health and Global WACh team members will also be at the poster presentations, and we even have a few award winners in the bunch! Kristjana Asbjornsdottir will be honored with the IAS Young Investigator Award, Irene Njuguna will receive a CIPHER Award, Keshet Ronen will be getting a Best Poster award for her Pediatric IAS Meeting poster. Congratulations to all of them!
Click here here for more information about IAS 2015.
July 10, 2015
2015 Global WACh – Coulter Foundation Seed Grant Awarded
Tags: bioengineering, coulter seed grant
The Coulter Project and Global WACh teamed up again to offer a seed grant award. The Bioengineering Solutions Seed Grant supports collaborative translational research in biomedical engineering addressing the clinical needs of women, adolescents, and children.
This year we received a fantastic pool of innovative applications and ultimately awarded funds to Drs. Wendy Thomas (UW Bioengineering) and Anthony Roche (Anesthesiology). Their project titled An Affordable, Portable Drawover Vaporizer was selected for funding by a team of expert reviewers and we couldn’t be more excited!
The project aims to develop an affordable and easily portable anesthetic delivery device to help in low resource settings, particularly in Uganda. Most anesthetic delivery devices are bulky, difficult to transport, not sufficiently durable, expensive, or can’t function without reliable power sources making them an unrealistic solution in low resource settings.
PI Wendy Thomas says she volunteered to help with Bioengineers Without Borders (BWB) when they asked her to suggest a bioengineering co-advisor for the project. “They are hard-working, passionate about learning and helping people, and very capable. I want to particularly compliment David Peeler and Eric Swanson, the graduate BWB team members who put the most work into writing this proposal.”
This project is hoping to use a simplified design that requires no additional power source other than the patient’s breathing to draw anesthetic from the device.PI Anthony Roche also expressed his thanks to Global WACh and The Coulter Foundation for the support of the project. “I am constantly inspired by the vision and passion of our team, as well as their dedication and tireless effort to improve healthcare in low resource settings.”
The funding process served as a great catalyst for their team. They have been working hard for months solidifying design constraints, identifying key engineering questions, and collaborating with experts at PATH. “All of this was done before the award was even made!” Dr. Roche says.
Eric Swanson, a 3rd year Bioengineering PhD student and team leader for BWB’s Anesthesia Device Team says the team is comprised entirely of undergraduate and graduate students. “My hope is that this funding will not only enable us to take steps towards developing a device that could have a significant impact on an important global health problem, but that it will also increase awareness of the Bioengineers Without Borders student group and promote future funding and collaboration opportunities for our other projects.”
Congratulations are in order for this dynamic team! Global WACh is proud to support such innovative work and can’t wait to share the results with you.
May 20, 2015
Global WACh In Focus: Patricia Pavlinac
Tags: WACh faculty
Patricia Pavlinac, PhD, was trained in epidemiology and began working within the Department of Global Health on tuberculosis-related research projects in January 2010. Through coordinating a diarrheal and febrile illness surveillance study for Judd Walson, she developed a dissertation to determine the potential etiologies of acute diarrhea among Kenyan children, to determine how these etiologies associate with HIV-infection and HIV-exposure, and to evaluate the appropriateness of current international diarrhea management guidelines in correctly indicating antibiotics. She found that specific enteric pathogens, namely enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) and Cryptosporidium are associated with HIV-infection and HIV-exposure, respectively, a finding that builds upon recent evidence that these two pathogens are independently associated with mortality in children with diarrhea. Additionally, she found that the indications for antibiotic use in current World Health Organization management guidelines miss most treatable bacteria. To give a bit of context to her research, over 3% of children under 5 years of age who present to a Western Kenya health facility with a moderate to severe form of diarrhea will die within the subsequent 60-days, despite receiving oral rehydration solution and zinc, a risk of death 5-times higher than a healthy similarly aged child living in the same community. This knowledge, combined with her research in understanding the role of host and management factors in diarrheal disease consequences, have inspired her to focus her career on pediatric diarrheal disease in sub-Saharan Africa. (more…)
May 7, 2015
The Next Big Thing
Categories: Talks and Events
Tags: Certificate Program, students
It’s that time of year again for our 3rd annual “Next Big Thing” end-of-year event. The evening will be dedicated to highlighting the achievements of our scholars, and certificate students. We will start off in Foege auditorium with Dr. Judith Wasserheit speaking, followed by brief highlights from our Scholars and their various projects around the world. We will then move upstairs to Vista Café to enjoy some refreshments while looking at the Global WACh certificate student posters.
Here are the details!
Date: Wednesday, May 27th 2015
Place: UW Campus | William H. Foege Building | Foege Auditorium
Time:
5:30-6:30 p.m.
Presentations from:
Annie Hoopes, MD (WHO Scholar)
Emily Robinson and Kate Fizenmaier (SCOPE Scholars)
Our recent Seed Grant Awardees
Dr. Judith Wasserheit, Chair, Department of Global Health
6:30-7:30 p.m. – Light Reception & Student Posters in the Vista Cafe.
March 23, 2015
Dr. Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli of WHO Presents at Global WACh
Categories: Research, Talks and Events
Tags: adolescent health
This week we were pleased to have Dr. Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli here at Global WACh for an amazing presentation on adolescent and sexual reproductive health.
Since the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 there have been tremendous changes made throughout the world in which adolescents live. Lowered infant mortality, a decrease in poverty, and better access to clean drinking water are just a few examples of things that have improved. Progress where it comes to adolescent sexual health however hasn’t been quite as successful, and often inadequate commitment, discomfort, or limited funding and resources stand in the way of such changes.
“When you have huge fires burning like childhood or maternal mortality, or HIV, adolescent sexual and reproductive health is talked about as one of the many priorities but is not given the attention it needs.”
Dr. Chandra-Mouli works in the World Health Organization’s Department of Reproductive Health and Research and seeks to create evidence based policy changes and programs. Watch the recorded talk on our YouTube channel.
February 10, 2015
The CATCH Study Focuses on the Children Who Miss Diagnosis
Categories: Research
Tags: CATCH, HIV, Pediatrics, PMTCT
The Kenya Pediatric Studies (KPS) team has been working hard on an important study called CATCH (Counseling and Testing for Children at Home). The CATCH study does just what the name says by “catching” children ages 12 and under who have fallen through the cracks in HIV diagnosis systems.
There are 3.3 million children in the world living with HIV. Half of HIV-infected children that go untreated will die by the age of two. There are some great programs in place to help prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) during pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding; but going through all the steps in these systems can be challenging, and medication is not always successful at preventing infection in babies. (more…)
January 5, 2015
Global WACh WHO Scholar Focus – Annie Hoopes
Categories: students
Have we mentioned we have amazing students?
Annie Hoopes, MD, is one of our Global WACh Certificate Program students and a World Health Organization (WHO) Scholar. She is also a pediatrician and is currently completing a fellowship in adolescent medicine at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital. Through her collaboration on a systematic review of adolescent sexual and reproductive health services with Dr. Donna Denno, Annie met co-author Dr. Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli, an international expert in adolescent health services with the WHO.
Dr. Chandra-Mouli subsequently invited Annie to the WHO in Geneva to work as an intern in the Division of Reproductive Health and Research during summer 2014. This provided a great opportunity for mentorship for her, as she is interested in promoting adolescent sexual and reproductive health in resource-limited settings.
At WHO, Annie worked with the Adolescents and At-Risk Populations Team where she gained an understanding of how agencies like WHO, World Bank, UNICEF, and UN work in partnership to promote sexual and reproductive health.
We want to ensure that ever-shrinking resources for adolescent health are being directed toward programs with proven adolescent health and psychosocial benefits.”
Annie’s passion to ensure adolescents get the resources they need was central to her task at WHO of reviewing the effectiveness of programs in countries implementing adolescent-friendly services. She began with systematic review of adolescent health initiatives in India. She also studied how adolescents are addressed in national reproductive health policies, using South Africa as a case study.
Annie is back in Seattle now for her final year of fellowship and public health training and is looking forward to applying these experiences for the next steps in her career.
When we know 2.1 million adolescents age 10-19 are living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries and one in five women worldwide has a child before age 18, it is undeniable that our health systems must ensure that age- and context-appropriate preventive and treatment interventions reach this vulnerable population”
Keep up the great work, Annie!
December 12, 2014
Global WACh’s Launch of Special Supplement of the Journal of Adolescent Health
Categories: Research, Talks and Events
Tags: adolescent health, ICPD
There are 1.8 billion adolescents in the world today. That’s a tremendous number of youth that are at a crucial point of transition in their lives. 1.4 million adolescents die each year from causes such as early pregnancy, sexual violence, unsafe abortions, and HIV and other STIs. Yet adolescence is often overlooked in policy making, particularly in low income, high risk settings, and the global health of adolescents is not improving at the rate it should.
Last night Global WACh was proud to sponsor the launch of a Special Supplement of the Journal of Adolescent Health. This marks the 20th anniversary of the the landmark Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
We had some truly amazing speakers on hand to have a conversation on ways of improving the health and well-being of adolescents globally. The speakers and a tremendous student panel shared their experiences and discussed how investing in adolescent friendly health services, comprehensive sex education, supportive environments, violence prevention, and youth participation can help adolescents transition into happy and healthy adults.
If you missed our livestream of the event, you can go to the following link and watch the recorded version. Thanks to all our speakers, students, and attendees that helped make this launch a great success!
Previous page Next page