News and Features
International Conference Series on PEN-Plus in Africa to Debut in April
“PEN-Plus” was coined only five years ago, but already the integrated care-delivery model is receiving a spotlight on the global stage, with the launch of the first annual International Conference on PEN-Plus in Africa. An invitational conference hosted by the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa, ICPPA 2024 will take place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from April 23 to 25.
Integration Science Can Help Heal Global Health Inequities
Integration science can do more than deliver quality healthcare; it can also deliver global health equity solutions. That’s the central premise of “From Local Innovation to National Scale to Global Impact: Integration Science as an Engine of Change and an Agenda for Action,” the second annual symposium of the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity.
World Health Organization Recognizes Center for Its Leadership in Integration Science
The Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity has been named a WHO Collaborating Centre in recognition of its work in designing integrated care delivery systems for people living with severe noncommunicable diseases in extreme poverty.
What Women Want: Study in Rwanda Highlights Women’s Priority Health Concerns
Access to care for back pain, food insecurity, and abnormal vaginal bleeding. Overcoming the barriers to care posed by the high costs of transportation to clinic and missing work. Care delivered in a way that respects both dignity and privacy. Those are some of the top health care priorities identified by women in rural Rwanda in a study published recently in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
Photo Gallery: Network Gatherings in Tanzania
In addition to participating in the first International Conference on PEN-Plus in Africa, NCDI Poverty Network members took several occasions to gather, reflect, and renew their commitment to ensuring that lifesaving treatment reaches those who need it most.
Q&A: Center for Integration Science Aims to Break the Impasse on Global Health Equity
Type 1 diabetes, sickle cell disease, and rheumatic and congenital heart disease. In the United States, if people with any of these diseases walk through a hospital’s doors, they can get treated. Their treatment is typically swift and, by and large, effective. Yet, in low-income nations, these conditions can be a death sentence, together claiming the lives of more than 175,000 children and adults living in extreme poverty every year. More than 80 percent of these deaths could be avoided if people living in poor, rural areas of low-income countries had access to the highly effective treatment routinely available in the United States and other wealthy countries.
Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity Celebrates Inaugural Symposium
The Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity (CIS) hosted its inaugural symposium on Thursday, 10 November 2022 at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School (HMS).
Research to Measure Demand for PEN-Plus in Africa Finds Ministries of Health Are Determined to Expand Access to Care for Severe NCDs
A study co-authored by researchers from the NCDI Poverty Network and the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Africa (WHO AFRO) has found that health ministries in Africa have ambitious plans to address gaps in availability of services for severe NCDs by introducing and decentralizing care for insulin-dependent diabetes, heart failure, sickle cell disease, and chronic pain control over the next five years.
Study in Malawi Shows CHW Programs Can Be Successfully Expanded to Address NCDs and Antenatal Care
The stepped-wedge cluster randomized controlled trial evaluated expanding an existing HIV and tuberculosis (TB) CHW program to include NCDs, malnutrition and TB screening, as well as family planning and antenatal care (ANC).
New publication presents “quantitative evidence of significant health equity gap for the poorest billion”
A recently published article by a team of Lancet NCDI Poverty Commission members and researchers has found that the burden of both communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional (CMNN) diseases and of noncommunicable diseases and injuries (NCDIs) is much greater for the world’s poorest billion people than for high-income populations.
Article in Global Health: Science and Practice synthesizes key findings from National NCDI Poverty Commissions
An original article published in Global Health: Science and Practice synthesizes key findings of national NCDI Poverty Commissions established in 16 low- and lower-middle-income countries to determine an expanded set of priority NCDI conditions and recommend cost-effective, equitable health sector interventions to address them.
Crohn’s Disease among the Poorest Billion - Report finds higher burden than previously indicated
A first-ever global study of Crohn’s disease in low- and lower-middle-income countries (LLMICs) found a severe lack of research and data, but concluded, based on a survey of care providers, that the burden of the disease is higher than is indicated in the sparse literature that exists.
Lancet Commission Co-Chair Ana Mocumbi publishes article that examines pattern of emergency presentations for NCDs and injuries in Mozambique
Lancet NCDI Poverty Commission Co-Chair Ana Mocumbi was lead author of a research article that studied individuals presenting to the emergency departments of three hospitals to generate reliable and robust data describing the pattern of emergency presentations attributable to communicable diseases (CDs), non-communicable disease (NCDs) and injuries in three different regions of Mozambique.