Post on 14-Mar-2016
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A new year for Globemed at NU Building a generation of global health leaders:
- Since our chapter's founding,
more than one hundred students
have become members of Globe-
Med at Northwestern. These
members, along with hundreds of
other students on the Northwest-
ern campus, have participated in
GlobeMed's high-impact program-
ming. In addition to providing
students with the knowledge and
skills to address issues of global
health, these events have mobi-
lized participants to join in the
movement for global health equi-
ty.
GlobeMed Quarterly
Northwestern University
Volume 4, Issue 1 Fall 2009 www.globemed.org/northwestern
Contributors
Jonathan Shaffer
Tiffany Wong
Lalith Polepeddi
Newsletter Staff
Editors
Carol Park
Lily Ryzhkova
Dandan Liu
Aimee Peng
Reflections on the summer, fall quarter 2009
Sponsored by the Northwestern
International Program Develop-
ment and Global Health Depart-
ment
How to Donate With support from Globe-
Med, the H.O.P.E Center in
Ho, Ghana is currently work-
ing on phase IV of their nutri-
tion project, which aims to re-
duce the amount of malnutri-
tion seen among children in the
surrounding areas, especially
in children under the age of
five. However, we need
your help! Our projects would
not be possible without help
from you, our family and
friends!
If you feel compelled to
support us, there are two ways
to donate: through online dona-
tions or through sending
checks in the mail. Please see
the attached letter for more
information.
Thank you for all your sup-
port! With your help, we can
work together to fight for a
brighter future.
This past summer, the co-presidents of GlobeMed at NU—Lalith Polepeddi
and Tiffany Wong— visited the H.O.P.E. Center, our partnership organization in
Ho, Ghana. The center, which opened in April 2007, currently serves around 4,000
people in eight villages with child welfare clinics, childhood immunizations, mater-
nal health classes, insecticide-treated bed net distribution, and family planning
services.
Also, GlobeMed members were busy raising funds and awareness through
events such as the Global Marketplace and Health Week, along with utilizing so-
cial media in America’s Giving Challenge and initiating GlobeMed’s Imagine 2030
online campaign. We were able to accomplish so much this quarter thanks to all of
your support and generous donations.
Although we had a great start to this year, we are excited for 2010 and all the
wonderful projects we can achieve through your support!
Head nurse Margaret Asante stands outside the H.O.P.E.Centre as another day begins.
The newest feature of the clinic, a pathology lab, was built to accommodate the needs of
the Centre for diagnostic testing.
GlobeMed Quarterly Page 2
Imagine the world in the year 2030. Go ahead, think about it. Is it different than the world we live in today? Do millions of people still die from preventable and treatable diseases? Do poor women still over-whelmingly die in childbirth? Are AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria still global scourges that disproportionately affect those living in poverty? Are global health leaders still squabbling over crumbs when they should be looking to secure the resources necessary to truly achieve global health equity? My vision is quite different. I see a world where all people have the opportunity to live a healthy and full life; where life expectancy is not determined by locale of birth, gender, or race. Then, the central question: How do we get from here, to there? Who will be shaping this better, more just world? The only logical answer that I can think of is: The students and the young people of today. We need an entire generation of student leaders who think radically and optimistically about the world that they are a part of. We need student lead-ers who think pragmatically about how they can contribute to this movement over the course of their lives. With more than 400 students at 19 universities, GlobeMed is working to build this movement for global health equity on college campuses now. Students have raised more than $150,000 to support 21 public health projects at grassroots organizations around the world. Nearly 50 GlobeMed students have traveled to their partner organizations and worked alongside the grassroots leaders to both strengthen the partnership and contribute to their efforts on the ground. What’s more, greater than 90% of the GlobeMed students surveyed this year reported that they intend to stay involved in global health no matter their career choice. Yet, significant gaps exist for stu- (Continued on page 4) (Continued from page 2)
The world in 2030,
and the vital role
of student leaders
Welcome to Ghana!
Jon Shaffer is the
executive director of
GlobeMed.
(jonathanshaffer2007
@u.northwestern.edu)
By: Tiffany Wong
Imagine showing up in a new
country halfway across the world to
stay with a host you’ve only met
through e-mail. After a grueling 19-
hour ride, you get to the airport, shake
hands, and get into an old, rickety Jeep
to start the two-hour ride to the coun-
tryside. Everything is going well until
it starts to rain. Then the car begins to
slow, groaning down the muddy road as
the sky begins to darken. And by the
time the battery dies, it is nightfall and
you are stranded on a bumpy dirt road,
with not one car in sight. You can’t
help but laugh and think to yourself,
Welcome to Ghana.
As the incoming co-presidents
of GlobeMed at Northwestern, Lalith
and I spent four weeks this summer in
rural Ghana visiting our partner, the
H.O.P.E. Centre, a primary health clin-
ic that serves a population of roughly
4,000. Having spent two years raising
both funds and awareness to support
the Center, I was eager to see the clinic
we worked to build and the projects
that we continue to fund. We recently
expanded clinic services by building a
pathology lab to test for diseases such
as malaria and HIV. Additionally, we
support a child nutrition project that
uses locally grown soybean plants to
fortify the diets of malnourished chil-
dren, and, through our adolescent sexu-
al health resource center, train stu-
dents to become peer educators and
raise sexual health awareness in
schools.
Most of our work focused on
developing the next phase of the child
nutrition program. By working with
the nurses at the Center and with local
community leaders, we were able to
identify gaps in nutrition knowledge.
Mothers understood that protein was
essential for the diet, but were not im-
plementing the soybean supplements
provided by the clinic effectively. We
developed a training manual and new
peer education program for mothers to
monitor the growth of children in their
villages enrolled in the nutrition pro-
gram. We launched the program by
selecting two mothers in the neighbor-
ing village of Ando, who will report
back to the nurses at the H.O.P.E. Cen-
ter monthly. This peer education pro-
gram also helps to lighten the burden
of the nurses as the clinic is currently
understaffed. As we’ve seen during
monthly weigh-ins at the Center, local
mothers seem to be taking the initia-
tive seriously and are invested in the
success of this project.
To return to the opening sto-
ry, it turned out to be quite the warm
welcome to Ghana—within an hour, a
kind taxi driver not only offered to help
us, but turned around with his passen-
gers to borrow a car battery from some-
one he knew down the road, offering to
lead the way until we got home. I en-
joyed my trip thereafter thoroughly,
and am proud to be working with the
H.O.P.E. Center as our partner clinic.
Tiffany Wong spends time with chil-
dren during a training session about
the soybean nutrition project.
Pictures from Ho, Ghana
Tiffany Wong and Lalith Polepeddi help
plant soybeans with a machete.
Page 3 Volume 4, Issue 1
Promoting health equity
through social media 3D model offers virtual experience of clinic
By: Lalith Polepeddi
By: Dandan Liu This summer I had the
opportunity to visit our partner in
Ghana, the Health Outreach and
Peer Education (H.O.P.E.) Centre. It
was humbling to physically be at the
same clinic at which several Globe-
Medders before me had worked, and
for which even more GlobeMedders
campaign to support throughout the
year.
GlobeMed’s partnership
with the H.O.P.E. Centre is unique
since our fundraising efforts have
directly expanded its facilities and
the services offered. Last year, we
supported the development of a di-
agnostic laboratory, which is now
capable of testing blood for parasites
common to the region.
However, the nature of our
global partnership is also inherently
limited in its accessibility. We re-
ceive updates from the Centre
through email, which are useful to
provide rationale for fundraising,
but they do not offer the visual con-
text or the sense of immediacy that
being physically present does. To
this end, I constructed a 3D model of
the H.O.P.E. Centre.
During my first two weeks,
I took dimensions of the rooms and
property of the Centre, which I then
translated into a modeling software
to develop the 3D model. The final
product, a virtual clinic, was upload-
ed to Google Earth and situated on
the Centre’s actual geographic coor-
dinates. Using this tool, Globe-
Medders can situate themselves at
the Centre and virtually observe
how their fundraising efforts at
Northwestern have directly expand-
ed the infrastructure and services at
the Centre. As part of our movement
for health equity, you can also visit
the Centre remotely and virtually
enter and negotiate the clinic as it
appears in actuality. You can heck it
o u t o n l i n e a t
http://virtualclinicsite.org.
So what comes next? We
are fortunate to have a talented and
motivated team at Northwestern
who have already made a tremen-
dous impact on our projects in Gha-
na. We raised over $2,500 this quar-
ter by hosting a global marketplace
and by participating in an online
donation contest hosted by Face-
book. These funds will directly sup-
port our work at the H.O.P.E. Cen-
tre, specifically a program to remedy
malnutrition in children under five
years of age. I’m excited to continue
our work in 2010 as we advance the
movement for health equity togeth-
er.
“You may say I’m a dreamer.
But I’m not the only one.
I hope someday you’ll join us.
And the world will live as one.”
John Lennon Although more than thirty
years have passed since the world-
debut of John Legend’s iconic song
―Imagine,‖ it seems as if its message
has completely stood the test of time,
surpassing the realm of popular culture
and transforming into a source of inspi-
ration for all generations all across the
world. This past October, through
the synergized, collaborative, and
grassroots efforts of GlobeMed’s Imag-
ine 2030 campaign, Lennon’s vision is
one step further transformed into reali-
ty with regards to the fight for global
health equity.
Based on the technological
prevalence of today, GlobeMed incorpo-
rated its Imagine 2030 campaign with
America’s Giving Challenge, an online-
based competition where organizations
from all around the world competed for
a $50,000 grand prize by rallying in the
most number of donors. Daily $1,000
prizes were also awarded. Through
strategic teamwork such as designated
storm sessions in which members
spread the word to family, friends, and
even Bollywood movie stars via face-
book, twitter, and email, GlobeMed was
able to capture a top-ten spot, raising
approximately $26,000 with 2,432
members. That’s $1,500 per chapter to
support projects that empower commu-
nities with healthcare access! For
Northwestern’s chapter, the money will
go to support the ongoing services and
projects of the H.O.P.E. Center.
So just imagine by 2030 a
world without health disparities, where
all people, regardless of race, gender,
and status will all have equal access to
cures and treatment, and where ―the
world will live as one.‖
Counterclockwise from the picture on
the left: (1) Tiffany Wong walks to-
ward a soybean farm with children
from the community. (2) Lalith
Polepeddi enjoys an afternoon snack
of peanuts with one of the children. (3)
Lalith Polepeddi learns firsthand
about planting and harvesting in a
community soybean farm.
Global Marketplace: Lucky finds on an
unlucky day - Friday November 13, 2009 By: Aimee Peng
The Global Marketplace was held in the Norris Northwestern Room. Students shopped for
items such as clothes, jewelry and shoes with upbeat music playing in the background.
Friday the 13th turned out to be
rather lucky for some savvy shoppers.
On November 13, GlobeMed
members successfully transformed the
Norris Center’s Northwestern Room into
a Global Marketplace, a rummage sale-
style fundraiser benefiting the H.O.P.E.
Center in Ho, Ghana.
Led by executive board mem-
bers Katie Smiley and Alyson Weiner,
GlobeMed members collected donations
of gently used clothes, shoes, accessories,
furniture and electronics from North-
western students to be sold at the Global
Marketplace.
Priced between 50 cents and
five dollars and bearing labels like An-
thropologie, Forever 21, Lacoste and
Marc Jacobs, the items sold at the Mar-
ketplace were both affordable and styl-
ish. The sale was not only for the style-
conscious on a budget, however – with
one table full of electronics and others
dedicated to room décor and other mis-
cellaneous items, there was something
available for everyone.
In addition, raffle tickets were
sold for a variety of prizes, which includ-
ed Chipotle gift cards and a new iPod
shuffle.
To promote this event – and to
educate fellow students about Globe-
Med’s cause – members covered the cam-
pus with flyers, handed out coupons and
launched an online publicity campaign
via Facebook. In addition, the Global
Marketplace was featured by Northwest-
ern University’s premier style magazine,
Stitch, on its fashion blog. After being
open to the public for only five hours, the
Global Marketplace raised a total of
$1,221.39 for the H.O.P.E. Center, which
will benefit its child nutrition program.
Leftover items were donated to charity.
dents who want to engage in this move-ment at universities without GlobeMed chapters. For this reason, we believe that now is GlobeMed’s opportunity to rapid-ly expand to many more campuses and communities around the world. Over the next two years, we plan to grow from 19 to 60 chapters at universities across the nation. By seizing this opportunity to grow rapidly now, we can envision a world where tens of thousands of Globe-Med alumni are devoting their lives to global health and social justice. These students, now professionals, will work in the private, public, and NGO sectors across the globe to improve the health of the impoverished. If we are successful, this generation of global health leaders will help shape a world where all people have the opportunity to live a healthy life. Join with us in this movement: www.imagine2030.org. Let’s imagine a world in 2030 that we can be proud of: one that is more just, sustainable, and equitable.
The world in 2030,
and the vital role
of student leaders
The Health Week Collaborative: November 16-20, 2009
Mid-November marked the next
phase of the globalhealthu curricu-
lum—one involving an intimate exam-
ination of the evolving role gender
plays in global health. The week of
November 16-20 coincided with Am-
nesty International’s Stop Violence
Against Women week, and in honor of
the focus, GlobeMed furthered the
attention to gender at the university
level by partnering with NCDC
(Northwestern Community Develop-
ment Corp) and EWH (Engineering
World Health) to present Health
Week. During the week, each student
group sponsored a health-related
event ranging from community in-
volvement to global engagement.
NCDC organized a thoughtful
discussion with representatives from
La Rabida Children’s Hospital and
Rainbow Hospice, while EWH hosted
By: Lily Ryzhkova a student panel, offering rich dialogue
about global health opportunities
abroad. GlobeMed’s co-President Lalith
Polepeddi served on the panel, contrib-
uting the GlobeMed model and its chal-
lenges and triumphs to the conversation.
Health Week culminated with Globe-
Med’s screening of ―A Powerful Noise,‖ a
documentary featuring stories of three
different women who, despite unfortu-
nate circumstances, empower them-
selves and their respective communities
through creative undertakings. The film
includes Hanh, an HIV-positive woman
living in Vietnam, who upon discovering
her status founds an organization called
Immortal Flower to provide support and
guidance for others afflicted with
HIV/AIDS. The second story is that of
Madame Urbain, who, witnessing the
abuse and neglect of women, provides
learning and job opportunities through
her organization called APAF. The third
story follows Nada, a woman recovering
from the devastation of the Bosnian War,
who organizes a cooperative to restore
positive ethnic relations and provide
employment for her community. The
magnetic narratives nicely parallel the
topics that were discussed during Health
Week from local involvement to gender
dynamics placing into a realistic context
lessons in global health.
After screening ―A Powerful Noise‖, glob-
alhealthu leaders Gabriela Escobar and
Sana Rahim led a discussion on the lives of
the different women and the issues they