There are times when I peek at twitter right before I leave to trek through a rainstorm to get home, and am so glad I saw something. Though this picture looks more like a house with words drawn by a kindergartner, maybe starting with this kind of simplicity in vision and focus is exactly what the World Health Organization needs: focus on the pillars of improving outcomes for women, continuing to support improved health in Africa, and focusing in on noncommunicable diseases. All with a roof of sustainable development and built on a foundation of universal health care. Love it.

From @richardhorton1, Editor in Chief of The Lancet & one of the best tweeters around.

A few of the very candid pearls they shared in advance for young public health professionals:

See the big picture, but sweat the details;
Keep an open mind, challenge the orthodoxies;
Learn from the field (“a DESK IS A DANGEROUS PLACE FROM WHICH TO VIEW THE WORLD” – John LeCarre);
Help people “diagnose” and solve their own problems.

-       Robert Steinglass, Immunization Senior Technical Advisor

Try to focus in on what it is you like or feel most passionate about in Public Health and then look for mentors that you can work with–even if you just start off by making photocopies and editing documents, you’ll learn so much and make connections that will help you later as you take on more responsibility and define your own niche.

-       Stephanie Mullen, Director/MEASURE Evaluation

Listen carefully and respectfully to experienced colleagues, use your mentors wisely, learn as much as quickly as you can, laugh a lot, gain useful skills, and network. But in the end, do not hesitate to innovate and take risks. Only results at scale make a difference in public health.

-       Nancy Harris, Director

If you are interested in international public health, then it’s important to work and live overseas, particularly early on in your career. Work to find a job where you are posted overseas for at least two years. Don’t worry if you are not in a long term relationship and will be going alone. You are more likely to find someone who shares your interest and passion to work and live overseas once you get there yourself.

-       Mary Carnell, Director/Center for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health

Fantastic video in a series from Mama Hope, dispelling common stereotypes of Africa & opening up a great dialogue.

Methods used to compile the resources:

“Several different search strategies were used to locate tools, papers, trainings, and
other types of resources pertaining to gender and health data and statistics. Websites
of global partners, NGOs, and other organizations that have conducted gender-related
work and launched gender strategies were searched for gender publications and tools
from September 2010 to January 2011. These organizations included UNAIDS, UN
WOMEN (formerly UNIFEM) and UNFPA, PAHO, WHO, and the World Bank, Futures Group,
International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Population Council, EngenderHealth,
and MEASURE Evaluation. Searches for gender publications and tools were also conducted
on other already existing compilations of resources. These included the IGWG’s website
and the newly launched, Knowledge for Health (K4Health) IGWG Gender & Health eToolkit.”

The document includes a list of existing resources and frameworks, as well as detailed information on how they are used and where related documents can be found. While it’s something of a laundry list of tools and resources, it would be a great starting spot for someone looking for a gender/health tool or data source.

Even better, two-thirds of Americans believe we are spending the right amount, or too little, on global health—somewhat ironic given that Congress just slashed the global health budget for FY2013 for the first time in years recently. If the vast majority of Americans support global health spending, maintaining the global health budget in an election year shouldn’t be as great of a controversy as it seems to be.

A nice snapshot of the results was published by KFF President Dr. Drew Altman, including this useful graph summarizing some of the key findings on the predictors of support for increased global health spending calculated by the survey.

I’d be interested in looking at crosstabs of some of the results; for example, are people who have traveled to developing countries even more likely to believe that spending on global health leads to progress? I’m delighted (and not terribly surprised) to see young people showing increased support for global health programs compared to their elders.

From my cursory review of the report and the summary findings circulated by KFF, efforts to educate Americans on the impact of our spending on global health must continue. Technical partners, implementors, advocates, think tanks, and donors each have stories (and data) to share illustrating the impact of global health programs; making those stories and that data accessible and compelling seems critical at this juncture.

Often times, championing the successes of our programs through peer reviewed journal publications, success stories, blog posts, and other outlets can be tough to manage when the end of a project is fast approaching and our time and efforts have been invested in maintaining the technical rigor of the project rather than communicating what we’ve achieved.  The results from the KFF survey, showing that “the ultimate obstacle to greater public support is the need to make the case effectively that aid is not ripped off and makes a difference,” place the onus on us, as global health professionals and advocates, to share our successes widely, rigorously and with enthusiasm.

The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is a shared commitment to achieve sustained and inclusive agricultural growth and raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years by aligning the commitments of Africa’s leadership to drive effective country plans and policies for food security; the commitments of private sector partners to increase investments where the conditions are right; and the commitments of the G-8 to expand Africa’s potential for rapid and sustainable agricultural growth.  President Obama will be joined at the event by African heads of state, private sector leaders and civil society members to discuss innovative and practical ways to advance food security and development.  Secretary Clinton and Administrator Shah will also speak.

The event is sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Get involved: Watch a live stream of the symposium sessions or to join the conversation on Twitter.

Learn more about the G8.

Post via @coregroupdc

Photo & idea from @heyamberrae

At an evening big ideas fair featured start ups that were pushing the boundaries of what could be done with data viz, data storage, and data processing. Quadrigram ran a table at the event, and took home the prize of people’s choice for best new innovation. Some combination of the charming bloke manning the table, the elegance of the program, and the wine tasting that was happening at the same time made it a memorable product.

So, I was delighted to see that the beta version of Quadrigram launched (officially) today! They describe themselves as:

From watching their introductory video and seeing how the program works, I saw the program as a great option for doing more complex, interesting visualizations of large data sets without having to know how to write code. The interface is a “stage” where users drag and drop various modules that allow for the display and manipulation in different ways, and the options available are far more numerous than in other data viz programs I’ve played with. That’s a huge advantage for some of us who haven’t spent the time learning complex code, but have an interest exploring data and creating interesting and compelling visualizations.

Because the service is a pay-to-use, data remains the property of the user (unlike in some open source data viz programs like Tableau Public). The software offers a thirty day free trial, and then has price packages for both individual and organizational users.

I’d be interested in hearing thoughts from some more code-oriented users of the product, to see if it’s something that just seems flashy and shiny to me, as a non-coder, or a really great tool.

*For other health professionals, O’Reilly just announced Strata Rx, an all-health conference October 16-17  in San Francisco, CA. Abstract submission is open through midnight June 7th!