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IN THIS ISSUE

  1. April 19th: Join us as CHHS hosts seminar in Innovation in Public Impact Research Across Georgia Tech
  2. Last Chance to register for Professional Certificate in Health & Humanitarian Supply Chain Management, May 15-20, 2017
  3. Call for Presentations: 2017 Conference on Health & Humanitarian Logistics, June 7-9, UN City in Copenhagen
  4. May 8th: GSU World Affairs Council Global Health Summit, Focus on Women and Adolescent Girls
  5. GT Alumna Mallory Soldner shares TED@UPS talk, “Your Company's Data Could Help End World Hunger”
  6. Highlights from CHHS and GT Affiliates: New Developments and Research
 

April 19th: Join us as CHHS hosts seminar in Innovation in Public Impact Research Across Georgia Tech

Innovatio in Public Impact Research Across GA Tech: Catherine Ross, Margaret Wagner Dahl, and Ellen Zegura

PLEASE RSVP ONLINE (Event is free, light refreshments will be provided)

Join the Georgia Tech Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems (CHHS) for a presentation and discussion on new research and technology relating to resilience, social impact, public health, international development, and other topics. See the GT calendar event post. Speakers include:

  • Dr. Catherine Ross, Harry West Prof., School of City & Regional Planning, School of Civil & Environmental Engineering; Director, Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development
  • Dr. Ellen Zegura, Professor and Chair, School of Computer Science, College of Computing
  • Margaret Wagner Dahl, Associate Vice President for Health IT, Enterprise Innovation Institute
  • *Moderated by CHHS Co-directors Drs. Pinar Keskinocak and Julie Swann

The discussion will highlight research, project-based courses, and internships taking place at the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development, Computing for Good (C4G),  the Serve Learn Sustain Initiative (SLS), Data Science for Social Good, and the Enterprise Innovation Institute (Ei2), as well as related partnerships with local and federal government and organizations around the world.

Last Chance to register for Professional Certificate in Health & Humanitarian Supply Chain Management, May 15-20, 2017

Professional Certificate in Health & Humanitarian Supply Chain Management

The professional certificate program in Health & Humanitarian Supply Chain Management will take place at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center, May 15-20, 2017. Please register online here as soon as possible as spots are filling up.

The program is designed for practitioners in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government, and private industry, who are active participants in humanitarian operations including disaster response, long term development and public health operations. Courses focus on building skills to improve decision making in preparedness, response operations planning, and system design and include interactive components such as case studies and games, which help professionals in the health and humanitarian sectors to link the challenges and decision-making tradeoffs they face in practice with the systematic approaches, tools, and techniques presented.

For those interested in inquiring about reduced rates for applicants frmo NGOs or developing countries, please email msmithgall@isye.gatech.edu.

Call for Presentations: 2017 Conference on Health & Humanitarian Logistics, June 7-9, UN City in Copenhagen

2017 Conference on Health & Humanitarian Logistics

The organizing committee is pleased to announce the CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS for the 9th annual Conference on Health & Humanitarian Logistics (HHL) in Copenhagen, organized in partnership with the UNICEF Supply Division.

The 2017 HHL Conference will explore challenges and solutions for building efficient and effective supply chains for health and humanitarian challenges. Particular topics of interest include partnerships, innovative uses of data or technology, and creating sustainable supply chain systems. Information on agenda, workshops and presentations, panel speakers, and UNICEF Supply Warehouse tours will be posted on the website as it is confirmed.

There are 3 different types of presentation opportunities for the 2017 event: Oral presentations, Collaborative Workshops, and Posters. The committee will begin reviewing proposals Friday, April 14th (submissions following this date will be accepted on a rolling basis). Please read instructions for each type of presentation and submission process at link above. You may also contact us with questions about submissions directly at humlogconf@gatech.edu.

May 8th: GSU World Affairs Council Global Health Summit, Focus on Women and Adolescent Girls

GSU World Affairs Council Global Health Summit

On May 8th, the World Affairs Council of the Robinson College of Business (GSU) will host the Global Health Summit: Focus on Women and Adolescent Girls. CHHS will be sponsoring a table at the event and we hope those of you in Atlanta will also attend.

The WAC has co-organized the 6th annual event with CARE USA, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and McKinsey Social Initiative, with a focus on Women and Adolescent Girls. The summit also will feature the newly released report of the CSIS Task Force on Women’s and Family Health, which proposes a major U.S. initiative to expand the delivery of four proven health interventions to adolescent girls and young women.

Speakers include: Michelle Nunn, CEO, CARE; Beatriz Perez, chief sustainability officer, The Coca-Cola Company; Anne Schuchat, MD, (RADM, USPHS), acting director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Shawn Baker, director of nutrition, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Amb. Deborah Birx, U.S. global AIDS coordinator and U.S. special representative for global health diplomacy and other leaders across global health field.

GT Alumna Mallory Soldner shares TED@UPS talk, “Your Company's Data Could Help End World Hunger”

Mallory Soldner shares TED@UPS talk

Mallory Soldner, now an advanced analytics manager for UPS, works on research and development projects and consults within the company. Her recent TED@UPS talk, “Your Company's Data Could Help End World Hunger,” is featured on the TED website and to date has been seen almost 675,000 times.

Soldner earned her Ph.D. from Georgia Tech's Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) in 2014, and is, in her words, “driven to push the boundaries of how to do the most good with data.” She came to Georgia Tech in 2009 specifically to focus on health and humanitarian issues by completing her graduate work with the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems (CHHS). During her time with CHHS as a doctoral student, Soldner worked in Rome, Italy at the UN World Food Programme (WFP) headquarters on a supply chain optimization project. Soldner discusses her passion for solving humanitarian issues and the idea of data philanthropy in an interview with ISyE here.

Highlights from CHHS and GT Affiliates: New Developments and Research

  • ISyE Alumni Magazine : Highlights CHHS Co-Director Pinar Keskinocak's work in Health & Humanitarian Systems: "Our goal is to apply our expertise to help our partners improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations, leading to a positive impact on people’s lives...For example, in her work on modeling infectious diseases, such as cholera or pandemic flu, the models and analysis lead to 'recommendations on the most effective intervention strategies or the allocation of scarce resources such as vaccines.'" To read full article, see page 29 at link above.
  • Optimization Tool for Job Placement Makes Impact in Mozambique: Former students working with CHHS collaborated with the Task Force for Global Health (TFGH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Mozambique Ministry of Health (MOH) to jointly develop a solution to healthcare worker shortages, called the Workforce Allocation Optimization Tool. GT graduate and current TFGH Business Analyst Sheereen Brown continues to work on the tool's next stage of implementation. Read SaportaReport.com post about the project's impact by TFGH former CEO Mark Rosenberg here.
  • "Children's Healthcare and Scheller College Collaborate on Business Practices for Pediatric Care:" Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) is a partner of CHHS and Georgia Tech on various research and application projects. CHHS affiliate and Professor of the Practice in the Scheller College of Business, Bill Todd, oversees students in his "Management in the Healthcare Sector" (MGT3662) course in various practicum. In response to a call from CHOA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Dan Salinas, Todd initiated a special senior-level inaugural elective course to address the potentially fragile circumstances of pediatric primary care and its importance and impact on the hospital’s mission. The students in the Practicum recommended a suite of consulting services that could be offered within the construct of a management services organization to small pediatric practices. Read complete story at link above.
  • "Poverty Should Be Measured By More Than Just Income:" Dr. Shatakshee Dhongde, Research Affiliate with CHHS and Associate Professor of Economics at Georgia Tech highlighted research on poverty and inequality at the CHHS "Health Systems" Forum in 2016 and will be publishing research as a book chapter titled "Poverty and Inequality: Multidimensional Perspectives on Deprivation" as part of Palgrave-Macmillan's series titled "Global Perspectives on Wealth and Distribution". Click here to read WABE feature on Dhongde's research.
  • "Science For Public Good:" Dr. Joshua Weitz, Professor in the School of Biology and Dr. Kim Cobb in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (both College Sciences at GA Tech) maintain a listserv called Science for Public Good, which “facilitates information exchange on events, opportunities, and discussions relevant to the informed use of scientific advances in the nation's service. Recent work includes an Open Letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt led by Mario Molina, Nobel Prize winner (UCSD) and Steven Wofsy, NAS member (Harvard), along with 28 other climate scientists including Kim Cobb from GT, a letter from the American Meteorological Society, and an Essay on Science and Compromise in The Chronicle of Higher Education, written by Joshua Weitz. Sign up for listserv at link in title above.
  • Stratified patient appointment scheduling for mobile community-based chronic disease management programs": CHHS affiliates and Professors Martin Savelsbergh (James C. Edenfield Chair and Professor in ISyE, GA Tech) and Karen Smilowitz (Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Engineering and Management Science at Northwestern Unniversity) recently published a study showing that capturing patient characteristics in appointment scheduling, especially their time preferences, leads to substantial improvements in community health outcomes. Read more at link above: IIE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, Vol 6, 2016- Issue 2.
  • "A little empathy goes a long way in averting outbreaks:" CHHS affiliate Professor Joshua Weitz and and Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences, Ceyhun Eksin, PhD, recently published findings on disease dynamics in a stochastic network game. The study pitted the self-interests of susceptible individuals against those of infected persons, and found that only if sick persons took precautions to avoid infecting others could the illness be eradicated. Healthy people attempting to protect themselves couldn’t, by themselves, stop the disease from spreading. Among the key factors was empathy of infected persons. Read more in Nature.com.
  • Omic and Electronic Health Record Big Data Analytics for Precision Medicine:" Prof. May Dongmei Wang, Ph.D., Professor, Biomedical Engineering at GA Tech and Emory shows in recent paper that big data analytics is able to address –omic and EHR data challenges for paradigm shift toward precision medicine to improve healthcare outcomes for long lasting societal impact. See paper at link above: IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.
  • Impacts of Climate Change on the Assessment of Long-Term Structural Reliability:” CHHS affiliate and Assistant Professor in Structural engineering at GA Tech, Iris Tien, demonstrates the need to account for the impacts of climate change on the long-term resistance and loading of infrastructure by using global climate projections through the end of this century. Published in American Society of Civil Engineers, 2017.
  • Preventing Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation - Leveraging Special Operations Forces to Shape the Environment:” Dr. Maggie Kosal, Associate Professor and Director of the Sam Nunn Security Program at the School of International Affairs at GA Tech published study on activities needed to eliminate catastrophic WMD risks. See issue of Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), January 2017 at link above.
  • "Resilient Atlanta: New Perspectives on the Civil War and Its Aftermath:" CHHS affiliate Dr. Sy Goodman, Regents' Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy, led the symposium March 30th focused on an explicit look at public health on both the descent and rise of Atlanta during and after the Civil War, featuring presentation from Dr. Martin Moran on the medical history of Atlanta.