GLOBAL HEALTH FORUM SPRING 2010 PROGRESS REPORT

This report covers the events and decisions that were made during the spring of 2010 regarding the Minus Malaria Initiative. It also summarizes the challenges we have encountered this semester and the changes we are considering for the future. This document is based on a meeting of the Spring 2010 Executive Board held at the end of the semester.

Group Mission, Focus, Campaigns

While the mission of Global Health Forum has remained the same this semester, we are considering making a few changes to the mission of the Minus Malaria Initiative. We have realized that instead of building a network around malaria, it would be much more reasonable and feasible to build a network of undergraduates interested in global health. Through our networking efforts this semester, we have realized that many groups have a specific mission, just as our mission is to alleviate the burden of malaria. Therefore, it is difficult to ask these groups to have a continued focus on malaria. However, we have also come to realize that many topics in global health, such as water security, malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS, are all extremely related to one another, and that we could benefit from partnering and communicating with groups that do not specifically focus on malaria. Thus, we are considering broadening the creation of an MMI network to the creation of an undergraduate global health network. We will discuss this idea further in the fall and make a decision at this time. However, Global Health Forum still plans to focus on our Minus Malaria Initiative.

The “Give a Net, Get a Vote” campaign has been very successful this year. We sent almost 400 letters total. This semester, we sent 161 letters from the Variety Show and 100 letters from Randall Packard from his donated honorarium. The letters supported H.R. 2639: Global Poverty Act of 2009, H.R. 1410 (S. 1966): Newborn, Child, and Mother Survival Act of 2009, H.R. 3560 (S. 1591): 21st Century Global Heath Technology Act, S. 1524 (H.R. 2139): Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009, and S. 384: Global Food Security Act of 2009. This semester, we sent 30 letters to Senator Benjamin Cardin, 45 letters to Senator Robert Casey, 20 letters to Representative Joe Sestak, 51 letters to Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, 66 letters to Senator Johnny Isakson, 33 letters to Senator John Kerry, and 16 letters to Representative Howard Berman. Many Executive Board members received a response from Senator Robert Casey. However, we have not heard back from any other congressperson, and we are going review the effectiveness of our current approach and possibly make changes to the campaign next semester.

MMI Campus Events

On January 22, 2010, in partnership with Americans for Democracy (AID), we hosted Tim Klein, who screened his movie What Are We Doing Here?, a documentary that explores how aid to Africa is often inefficient and harmful. An audience of about 200 people watched the movie, which was extremely powerful and educational, and gave GHF an opportunity to think critically about the work we do. Following the screening, we opened up for questions and the audience was able to address their questions to Mr. Klein for 30-45 minutes. The audience included students and non-students. Overall, the event was highly successful, even though it was put together for the first weekend back from winter break with little time to advertise. The screening was supported by GHF, the Political Science Department, AID, and the Movie Committee.

On February 8, 2010, from 4-5 PM in the Science Center Commons, GHF hosted a live poster session, where members of GHF presented malaria-related posters to Swarthmore community members. The poster session was part of MMI Week. The posters were set-up on tripods in the Science Center Commons, so that many Swarthmore community members could see them and learn from them. The poster session was an idea that was inspired by Sigma Xi’s research poster session held at the beginning of the Fall semester. GHF thought that this would be an effective way for our members to research and learn about the various aspects of malaria. Several members and all of the Executive Board created a poster. Topics ranged from the economics of malaria to the sociological/cultural issues of malaria. We also had posters introducing GHF, MMI, and Give a Net, Get a Vote. Members were taught how to create posters using the template available on Professor Purrington’s website. Much of the feedback was positive, and many audience members complimented GHF’s creative method of sharing information on malaria.

On the night of the Variety Show, we moved the posters to the Lang Performing Arts Center lobby, so students could see them during intermission. The posters were arranged throughout the Lang Performing Arts Center and created an educational atmosphere for the Variety Show. This poster session would not have been possible without the support of the Sigma Xi society, Professor Purrington, and Matt Powell of the Biology department. The Sigma Xi society covered the printing costs of our posters and provided the poster tripods and necessary materials. GHF is definitely interested in creating posters again next year. However, while many people read the posters, the actual poster session was not well attended, so we are rethinking this aspect.

On February 9, 2010, GHF hosted a Professor Panel on responsible aid/giving. The panel was composed of Professor Timothy Burke, Professor Niklas Hultin, Professor Christopher Kilby from Villanova University, and our very own Lois Park. Questions were asked about the structure and role of aid in today’s world and how panelists would define responsible giving. The panel was not very well attended, probably due to the heavy snowfall and imminent blizzard. However, those who did attend were very engaged, and the discussion went on for over two hours. GHF is interested in holding more of these panels as part of our MMI efforts.

On February 13, 2010 at 8:00 pm, the Global Health Forum held our second annual Variety Show. This year, the Variety Show was part of our Minus Malaria Week. The suggested donation for admission was set at $5, and 100% of donations were used to purchase bed-nets for Global Minimum’s distribution in the summer of 2010 in the Malen Chiefdom of Sierra Leone. We also used this as an opportunity to further implement our Give a Net, Get a Vote campaign, through which a letter is sent to a targeted member of Congress, asking him or her to support a global-health related bill. The show was extremely successful: attendance is estimated to be over 350. We surpassed our goals, raising over $1100 (enough to purchase 220 bed-nets), and sending 170 letters.

The show was MCed by GHF members Lois Park and Cariad Chester. The show featured many student performing arts groups, including the a capella groups Mixed Company, 16 Feet, Essence of Soul, and Chaverim; representatives from the tango, caopiera, and martial arts groups on campus; music from Ozan Erturk (2012) and the Balkan Brass Band; and improv comedy from Vertigo-go. Julian Leland (2012) provided music in between acts. We began contacting groups once the date of the show was set, just after Thanksgiving. It was very helpful to contact groups ahead of time and to remain in contact to answer questions and send out reminders. The most important aspects of this communication involved confirming attendance at the actual show as well as the technical rehearsal the night before and receiving any needed music a few days before the show. In the future, phone numbers of group contacts should be requested near the beginning of communication—possibly even in the first email—rather than right before the show. The exact types of performances intended by each group should be discussed before the show, and some guidelines should be constructed. We should also consider shortening the show.

Unlike last year—when the show took place in S.C. 101 (a lecture hall)—we were able to hold the Variety Show in the Pearson-Hall Theatre of the Lang Performing Arts Center, where we worked closely with the LPAC staff, most notably Brady Gonsalves, Nick Kourtides, and David Todaro. Andreas Bastian (2012) provided extensive assistance with technical work and stage-managing. The partnership was extremely successful and lucrative. Global Health Forum should definitely seek to work with the Lang Performing Arts Center in the future. For this to be possible, it is necessary to schedule events far in advance, and plan around the availability of the stage. Overall, the fundraiser was extremely successful. Although this is only our second year and other groups have held variety shows, this show is becoming associated with Global Health Forum by the student body. Outcomes of other variety shows on campus have demonstrated that an incredible amount of organization is necessary for the success of this event, and that it should be one of the larger events hosted by the group each year. It is definitely an event that we should continue to pursue annually. In the future, we hope to increase the size of our audience with more advertising to the faculty, the Swarthmore town community, and the Tri-College community.

On April 28, 2010, Sean Carasso came to speak at Swarthmore. Sean Carasso is the founder of Falling Whistles, a nonprofit working for peace in Congo by raising awareness and supporting the rehabilitation of former child soldiers. Mr. Carasso told the story of his travels through Africa and the founding of Falling Whistles, and he was an extremely inspiring and engaging speaker. About 20 people attended the lecture, and we think attendance may have been higher if the talk had not been scheduled for the last week of classes, which is often an extremely busy time for Swarthmore students. Global Health Forum was contacted directly by Falling Whistles to see if Swarthmore wanted to be part of their spring tour, and they have expressed interest in returning to speak at Swarthmore next year. The event was co-sponsored by SASA, STAND, and the President’s Office.

At the very end of the semester, Global Health Forum organized a small-scale Dance Marathon fundraiser—small-scale in that it involved the participation of Global Health Forum members only—that proved to be extremely lucrative. Through the GHF Dance Marathon, members reached out to our fellow students, friends, and family members to help raise money for Global Minimum’s 2010 bed-net distribution. Global Health Forum pledged that for twenty-four hours, from 10:00 pm on April 30^th until 10:00 pm on May 1^st (the last day of classes and the Saturday following), at least one member of our group would always be dancing (or at least on their feet). We sought sponsorships from friends and family, and raised over $1900. While this fundraiser was a great success, it is likely that it will become less lucrative if it is held frequently. Because the most generous sponsors were close to very active members of Global Health Forum, we might want to consider the implication of relying on the same sponsors for support annually. However, if we were to start organizing for this fundraiser early on in the year—and organize events to entertain participants—we might be able to involve other “teams” in the Dance Marathon and make it more successful.

Website and Electronic Media

Andreas Bastian (2012) will be our new webmaster for the Fall 2010 semester. He will be working closely with Executive Board members over the summer to improve the layout of the website, which we think is a little confusing and difficult to navigate. We will continue to have our summer blog as we did last summer. We have currently created a page on our website describing the bills supported by the Give a Net, Get a Vote campaign, the members of Congress targeted, and the number of letters sent. We hope to make this page more accessible and to include information on our own site about our fundraising successes to complement the information on our AgainstMalaria page. Daniel Pak (2012) will be in charge of the GHF facebook group and twitter account this summer.

Partnerships and Networking at Other Campuses

We contacted multiple schools in the beginning of the year (means of contacting was an email and groups were selected by searching college global health groups online). This process should not be used again because it has a terrible success rate. The few schools that replied eventually failed to respond to emails, and the process overall is very time consuming. After realizing that emailing was not effective, we approached a friend of Cariad Chester (2013) at the University of Buffalo and asked her if she knew of a group involved with public health on her campus . Once she identified a group, we asked her to send us their contact information. This worked well and a trip to Buffalo was scheduled. Unfortunately, it was too close to the actual date to buy plane tickets, so the trip was postponed. We think it should be easy to get in touch with that contact again and travel to Buffalo in the fall semester.

Our contact at the University of Pennsylvania, Ben Brockman, borrowed a malaria net and set up a malaria awareness display at Penn’s campus for human rights week. A new contact at Cornell, Kristen Welch, led a successful informational event - a night where everyone slept outside to raise awareness.

The conferences we attended at the end of the semester appeared to be a much more successful way to network with other students interested in global health. Hopefully the networking that was accomplished this year at the conferences will be helpful in establishing future connections.

We have also decided that all Executive Board members should be more involved in networking, not just the network coordinator. We have decided that when a new contact is formed, we will no longer automatically pass this contact onto the network coordinator but will instead have both the original contact and the network coordinator communicate with the new contact. We are hoping that this will increase the response level we get from potential contacts at others schools.

We have updated our memorandum of understanding with Global Minimum. The money we raised this year will be used to fund their bednet distribution this summer in Sierra Leone. We have also decided that any future distribution partners must be cleared by Against Malaria to ensure that they are distributing bednets responsibly.

Conferences

GHF Executive Board members Jessica Downing (2012), Cariad Chester (2013), and Daniel Pak (2012) attended the Clinton Global Initiative University conference on Saturday, April 17, 2010, held at the University of Miami in Florida. All members attended the plenary sessions, two public health sessions, and the poster session. Through the public health sessions, we were able to meet representatives of various groups with many interesting public health projects and initiatives. Meeting and interacting with these representatives was exciting and helped us to form new ideas for MMI. Each session had a panel with leading professionals in public health. We all came out of CGI U with a better understanding of public health and its numerous aspects. We made some potential new contacts, particularly those working with clinics abroad who would be interested in obtaining bednets. We could not have attended the conference without the generous housing provided by the family of Swarthmore alum Gwenn Maclaughlin. CGI U is a conference that GHF should consider attending in the future. Next time, GHF should get a table at the poster session, where networking seemed most effective, and apply for the CGI U grant.

Our Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action (attached) included three essential components: networking, fundraising, and political advocacy through our “Give a Net, Get a Vote” program. We have met and exceeded our goal for the Swarthmore Global Health Forum fundraising campaigns in the 2009-2010 academic year: we committed to raise $2,000 and 300 letters, and we have raised approximately $4,324 and sent around 400 letters since we began the Give a Net, Get a Vote campaign in October. We have not been as successful in our networking goals, and hope to make substantial changes in our approach in hopes of improving our efforts to create and maintain a sustainable global health network among college students. We hope that the contacts made at the Unite for Sight and Clinton Global Initiative conferences will provide us with a starting point for continuing to work toward fulfilling our networking commitment.

We still have considerable work to do on our website. When writing our commitment, we acknowledged that our website would be a valuable networking tool, and recognized the need to increase the volume of visits, interaction on discussion, and blog-posts. This is something we hope to focus on over the summer, when we will update and reorganize some of the site.

Emilia Thurber (2011), Elizabeth Cozart (2012), Lois Park (2010), and John McMinn (2013) attended the Unite for Sight Global Health and Innovation Conference at Yale University from April 17-18, 2010. Since the conference was split up into concurrent sessions, we generally all went to different sessions and took notes to maximize the number of topics and speakers we could cover. Each session had a topic and approximately four speakers. We all heard Jeffrey and Sonia Sachs give keynote addresses about “Breakthroughs in Health Care Delivery in Low Income Settings,” and “Advances in the Millennium Villages Health System.” We also heard Jennifer Staple-Clark, the founder of Unite for Sight, speak. It was inspiring to see someone not much older than us who had accomplished so much. Many potential students contacts were made at the conference, especially at the designated networking session, and we hope to follow up with these groups over the summer and at the beginning of next year.

New Positions

Some changes have been made to the Executive Board for Fall 2010. Emilia Thurber, Mi Zheng, Camilia Kamoun, and Mary Klap will be returning as emeritus board members. Melissa Frick, who will be returning from abroad, will be the new Director of Development.

Anticipated Executive Board, Fall 2010:

Board Secretary: Elizabeth Cozart (2012), elizabeth.cozart@globalhealthforum.org

Board Treasurer: Jes Downing (2012), jessica.downing@globalhealthforum.org

Director of Development: Melissa Frick (2012), melissa.frick@globalhealthforum.org

Director of Education: Dan Pak (2012), dan.pak@globalhealthforum.org

Network Coordinator: Cariad Chester (2013), cariad.chester@globalhealthforum.org

Future Plans

We plan to host two major events next year. We are planning to have our Variety Show again during the fall semester and have contacted the staff at the Lang Performing Arts Center about setting up a date for the show. We will start emailing groups over the summer to let them know about the show and ask for confirmation of their participation in the early fall.

Our second large event will be the conference we are hoping to host in the spring. This conference will be the first meeting of the undergraduate global health network that we hope to build. During this conference, we hope to discuss what each student group is currently working on, what challenges each group has faced, and how we can work together in the future to learn from one another and better integrate our efforts. We will start planning this conference in the early fall. We understand that a lot of effort must go into planning this conference and recruiting interested groups, and a lot of our effort next year will be devoted to preparing for this conference.

Challenges

As mentioned in the networking section above, our main challenge is still networking. We have learned that emailing groups with which we have no previous connection is relatively ineffective. We have discussed several ways to alleviate this problem. First, we are hoping that the contacts we made at conferences will prove to be more successful because we have actually met these contacts in person. Also, we are hoping to make more trips to other campuses to talk to interested groups about what we do and why they should join our network. We hope that personally meeting with groups will increase interest. Finally, by broadening our network goals to include all global health groups and interests, we hope to increase interest in joining the network. We think it is much more feasible and useful to create a network of groups with many different global health interests than a network of contacts who have decided that they will support our interest in malaria. Through this global health network, other groups can participate in our MMI activities and fundraisers, and we can participate in their initiatives as well. We hope that this approach will be more appealing to groups that wish to focus on issues other than malaria.

Thanks

The members of Global Health Forum would like to thank the Pericles Foundation and the Lang Center for their continued support of our campaigns and initiatives. We would particularly like to thank Jennifer Magee for her advice, assistance, and encouragement throughout the semester.