In preparation for the 2013 United Nations (UN) General Assembly, the UN is inviting interested individuals and groups to submit “think pieces” on the positioning and role of health in the post-2015 agenda. The UN aims to garner experiences and lessons learnt from the health-related Millennium Development Goals and consider how these can be harnessed to ensure that health remains intrinsic to the new development agenda. Papers may also address disease-specific policy and programming challenges, health systems issues, measurement, monitoring and evaluation, or cross-sectoral action for health. Lessons learnt from the past should be used to highlight how new global goals, targets and indicators could be used to strengthen country action and tackle emerging challenges, such as enhancing health equity; building intersectoral links; using health action to achieve human rights, justice, peace and security; and involving communities, business and industry in successful, sustainable health action. Papers can be summaries of existing research and development activities or secondary analyses and discussion around key topics.
Jobs and Announcements
Durban’s hosting of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-SA summit in March 2013 requires critical civil society to share views ranging from local to global. the Durban 'counter-summit' supports bottom-up unity of peoples in these countries and their hinterlands, collaborating on analysis, advocacy and activism, including a community/labour/environmental teach-in on 23 March, reality tours on 24 March, a university-based conference on 25-26 March, and a rally outside the International Convention Centre on 27 March.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has announced the names of 70 new members and ten foreign associates during its 42nd annual meeting. Election to the IOM is considered one of the highest honours in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service. New members are elected by current active members through a selective process that recognises individuals who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health. Among the foreign recipients of the honour was Dr Diane McIntyre, South African Research Chair in Health and Wealth in the Health Economics Unit, School of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. Dr McIntyre sits on the EQUINET Steering Committee.
A new African research fund has been launched by the Royal Society and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), called the Royal Society-DFID Africa Capacity Building Initiative. The fund is specifically designed to help form research consortia in Africa, arranging research exchange programmes between the United Kingdom and Sub-Saharan Africa. The scheme provides funding towards research expenses, travel and subsistence costs and PhD training, with limited funds for equipment and training in laboratories. The fund comes as part of a new collaborative initiative to strengthen research capacity in Africa by addressing the current skills gaps within higher education in Africa. Applications will be accepted in three research priority areas: water and sanitation, renewable energy and soil-related research.
Maker Faire Africa is a yearly pan-African maker faire and a community of makers. It gathers creative inventors, designers & fabricators that hail from Africa’s tiniest villages to expansive urban areas, with a shared commitment to origin, ingenuity & innovation. At the annual pan-African Maker Faire, local creators and manufacturers connect and redefine the future through authentic, African ingenuity.
CHESAI is calling for expressions of interest from African policy-makers and mid- to senior-level managers in the public health system in a short-term sabbatical of one to three months in Cape Town, South Africa. CHESAI is a four-year collaborative endeavour between the Schools of Public Health of the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC), funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC). UCT and UWC are engaged in research and policy development with health system decision-makers on a range of health policy and systems’ issues, and also offer teaching programmes in these fields. Applicants must be working as a policy maker or manager in the public health system in an African country and have substantial experience in public health sector management and leadership to share and draw on. The sabbatical is an opportunity for you to contribute to and participate in health policy and systems research activities, such as a seminar series, and the wider academic life of the hosting organisations, an opportunity to read and engage with other practitioners and with researchers working in this field, and you will be given space to write up and present some of your experiences, with the aim to publish a paper or article.
The theme of this year’s South African HIV Clinicians Society Conference is 'Striving for Clinical Excellence'. The Conference will focus on clinical content, setting it apart from other conferences held to date in South Africa. Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are welcome to attend presentations by senior faculty members from the region and abroad delivering talks relevant to clinical care.
The International Health Economics Association (iHEA), which is hosting the July 2013 World Congress on Health Economics, is looking for abstracts and session proposals for the Congress. While all submissions in the field of health economics are welcome, the programme committee is particularly interested in the following topics: health care reform; universal coverage; health workforce; health technology assessment; econometrics; history of health economics; health status measurement; paying for health care; and reporting system performance. Session description and individual abstracts should not exceed 500 words.
As part of the United Nations (UN) led effort to catalyse a “global conversation” on the post-2015 agenda through a series of global thematic and national consultations, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), together with the Government of Sweden, have launched a global consultation around health. The purposes of the consultation are to: stimulate wide ranging discussion at global, regional and country levels, on progress made and lessons learnt from the present Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) relating to health; and discuss and develop a shared understanding on the positioning of health in the post-2015 development framework. WHO and UNICEF will also propose health goals and related targets and indicators for the post-2015 development agenda, as well as approaches for implementation, measurement and monitoring. The online global health consultation has now been launched online, at the address given above. You are urged to visit the website to review key documents, submit background papers, join moderated e-discussions and contribute to the discussion on twitter using the hashtag #health2015.
The International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) and Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth) are hosting the 21st IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion, 25–29 August, Pattaya, Thailand. The conference aims to contribute to the development of equity and social justice across the globe by offering a unique platform for dialogue on the best investments for health between participants from various sectors from all over the world.