MEDIA Schiff

Current disease surveillance in the US : physicians and...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:01:29 -0500

Current disease surveillance in the US : physicians and labs submit data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “There’s typically a week-long delay between an outbreak and the release of an official report,” Adam Cole reports on NPR’s Shots.

So what’s a public health expert in search of more real-time information to do? Hit the Internet, of course.

Think about it, what do you do when you think you might have the flu? Call your doctor? No (unless you really think you might be dying). You Google it.

"Old-school tropical medicine is really a thing of the past."

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:08:46 -0500

“Old-school tropical medicine is really a thing of the past.”

- Joep Lange, the head of the department of global health at the University of Amsterdam, is quoted in a New York Times piece on how European universities are approaching the study of international health.

Bird Flu Flap: A Timeline of the Controversy Over H5N1 Research

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:10:47 -0500

In advance of the tomorrow’s closed-door World Health Organization meeting, I created a timeline of the bird flu research controversy: The timeline is also hosted on Humanosphere.

producermatthew: Children in Homs, Syria pose with photographs...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:58:41 -0500

producermatthew:

Children in Homs, Syria pose with photographs of signs written in Arabic, one reading “Who is going to bring my father back to life?” and the other reading “I miss you, father.” [Syria Freedom activist photograph]

At the White House Science Fair today, students from Petersburg,...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:58:05 -0500

At the White House Science Fair today, students from Petersburg, Indiana, exhibited this compact emergency shelter. The team “won a grant from the Lemelson-MIT Program to develop a lightweight, portable disaster relief shelter, designed to be complete with a water purification system and a renewable energy source to power an LED light, which could be used after disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, or tornadoes to house people who have been displaced,” according to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Science journalist Miles O’Brien, who tweeted the snapshot of the shelter, wrote that the shelter weighs 120lbs and can be assembled in 30 minutes.

Gates Foundation Twitter map created by online sociologist Marc...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:07:19 -0500

Gates Foundation Twitter map created by online sociologist Marc Smith, founder of the Social Media Research Foundation.

The map is “mostly just an echoing of the Gates Foundation,” according to Smith. “There’s not a lot of response, or engagement. Basically, it looks like people preaching to the choir.”

Change.org is attracting one million new members each month

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:52:30 -0500

Change.org is attracting one million new members each month:

The focus of Nicholas Kristof’s column this week is Change.org, the site that is helping “very ordinary people to defeat some of the most powerful corporate and political interests around.”

“We’re growing more each month than the total we had in the first four years,” Ben Rattray, Change.org’s founder, told Kristof.

Users launch about 10,000 petitions each month on the site.

Change.org has several high-profile accomplishments under its belt. On the health front, Kristof highlights the website’s success involving a network of “clinics” — accused of abusing lesbians (in an effort to “cure” them) — in Ecuador:

A petition denouncing this practice gathered more than 100,000 signatures, leading Ecuador to close the clinics, announce a national advertising campaign against homophobia, and appoint a gay-rights activist as health minister.

Facebook's Worth > 6 Years of Breast Cancer Treatment

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:04:43 -0500

Based on Facebook’s IPO filing, market analysts put the company’s total value at a high of $100 billion. Assuming it is worth that much, Mashable compiled a list of “giant” things that are less valuable than Facebook. The third spot on the list puts it into perspective for the health wonks out there:

The Cost of Breast Cancer Treatment for 6 Years

Breast cancer costs the U.S. $16.5 billion per year. Multiply that number by six years and you reach $99 billion.

7 Questions with Barbara Bush, CEO of Global Health Corps

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:32:36 -0500

7 Questions with Barbara Bush, CEO of Global Health Corps

african-problems: (Previous problems)

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:30:07 -0500

african-problems:

(Previous problems)

"The London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases serves as a new generation Marshall Plan for..."

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:32:21 -0500

“The London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases serves as a new generation Marshall Plan for the bottom billion, but with a priority on girls and women living in poverty to wipe out the 10 most common NTDs by 2020.”

- Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, describing a new partnership between 13 pharmaceutical companies, the U.S., U.K. and U.A.E governments, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and other organisations.

"I am proud to live in a world where a stranger’s suffering matters. Yet foreign aid, the best way to..."

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:17:42 -0500

“I am proud to live in a world where a stranger’s suffering matters. Yet foreign aid, the best way to address that suffering, has a growing legion of critics. That is a contradiction we must remedy, and the best way to do it is to tell the truth about aid.”

- Bill Gates

#Devnews Tweets from #SOTU

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:29:11 -0500

View on Storify.

Science writer Carl Zimmer discusses a deeply personal story and...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:05:21 -0500

Science writer Carl Zimmer discusses a deeply personal story and profound realization on Radiolab. Do yourself a favor and listen to it!

One night 14 years ago, Carl Zimmer woke up in the middle of the night in a panic. He was in South Sudan to research a collection of terrible, deadly diseases—like sleeping sickness and a particularly virulent strain of malaria—that plagued the region. As he looked up at the moon, he noticed several holes in his mosquito netting, and his brain began to spin through the grim possibilities.

Without giving too much away, Carl goes on to tell the story of how he found himself in that tent with the torn netting in the first place. And he explains how what happened that night changed his life.

Global Fund launches a blog, revamped web site

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:04:41 -0500

From the first post:

For the 10th anniversary of the Global Fund, and as part of the on-going improvements to our online platforms, the web site is seeing a number of changes. …

The updated design aims to improve the look and feel and functionality of our web site, with more changes to come in the weeks ahead.

As of today, the Global Fund web site will maintain a blog where you can find information we view as useful or interesting for our audience.

Globally-focused charities on Tumblr

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:16:00 -0500

Globally-focused charities on Tumblr:

earthandspacequest:

I hope that more charities will be joining tumblr’s ranks, so in an effort to raise awareness of different organizations and their missions, I’m creating a list of these groups & their tumblr presence!

UNICEF

Doctors Without Borders

For Japan With Love: Raising awareness & money for…

… click through for full list.

Alarming footage of starvation in North Korea. Reuters gained...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:46:13 -0500

Alarming footage of starvation in North Korea. Reuters gained rare access to South Hwanghae, a farming province about 60 miles south of Pyongyang.

Will new fellowship create a Dr. Oz for the global health crowd?

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 08:40:00 -0500

Will new fellowship create a Dr. Oz for the global health crowd?:

“I think in order to be effective change agents and advocates for global health, we need to tell a story quite persuasively and we need to learn to do that through various forms of media, whether it’s TV, social media or investigative journalism,” Michele Barry, director of Stanford’s Center for Innovation in Global Health, said of the Stanford-NBC News Global Health Media Fellowship.

The first fellow is Joyce Ho, a Stanford med student who has worked in the communications office of the World Health Organization in Geneva. As part of the fellowship, Ho will spend time at NBC News in New York, work with a documentary photographer, and she’ll collaborate with Ning, the online social media group.

It’s a little weird that the Twitter account and blog associated with the fellowship (listed at the end of the story) both lead to dead links. But since the article is dated Nov. 21, I am thinking the links might be activated then.

Clinton calls for “AIDS-free generation,” signs Ellen DeGeneres up to help

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:36:47 -0500

My piece for Humanosphere. Check out the Storify at the end.

Two thoughts on this video, which is receiving a lot of...

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 09:39:00 -0400

Two thoughts on this video, which is receiving a lot of attention.

1) This is a major collective reference point. It’s the sort of thing people could point to years from now to symbolize a major shift. Not sure that this is possible anymore because of how decentralized media is, but it totally has the makings of an NPR interview a 20 years from now. I can already hear the questions about whether she remembers playing with an iPad, how her media habits have changed etc.

2) I’ve seen people questioning whether the baby really thinks the magazine is an “iPad that doesn’t work.” There’s a health story in all this. What is the baby actually able to realize / process? Maybe a neonatal neurologist is the person to ask.