HEEDA is very proud to introduce our newest and most ambitious new health delivery program. In partnership with Embrace,Harvard School of Public Health, and the Stanford University School of Medicine we will implement a new program this coming January 2013 to address the issues of neonatal hypothermia during Afghanistan's cold and unforgiving winter.
The project announced in theEmbrace Newsletterwill begin at one public hospital in Kabul and quickly expand to others. The Embrace Nest, an innovative infant warmer/incubator, will provide much needed warmth to a population with one of the highest mortality rates anywhere. It will also help address issues of infection control and crowding of infants in incubators.
Please contact us with any questions or if you would like to get involved. Take the time to learn more about Embrace and the Embrace Nest here:How it Works.
Our next stop after San Francisco was Toronto, Canada where we presented our finding at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health in mid-November, 2011.
Each time we presented our work, we prepared a new perspective and delivered a different portion of our research. At ACEP our focus was on the clinical implications of our work while at CUGH we focused more on policy and the impact we would like to have on the broader population.
You can find the Consortium of Universities for Global Health here: www.cugh.org
As we write our first definitive paper from this project it is obvious that we have a vast collection of data that may take some time to sort through. For now we have specific questions we want to address, but we will visit this source again for guidance in the future.
Having compiled over 500 pages of data on emergency services in the Kabul area, we compressed the information to identify the most important points. We submitted our initial findings to multiple academic venues for review so we can share our perspective with the various academic communities and look for feedback before we being interpreting our data into conclusions, and our conclusions into implementation.
We were invited to present our findings at multiple local, regional, national and international conferences. We made it a point to take our work to one of each of these settings. The first presentation was given at the Emergency Medicine Residents Assembly of Michigan at the Michigan College of Emergency Physicians (EMRAM at MCEP) in April of 2011.
This was followed in October of last year by the national RESEARCH FORUM at the American College of Emergency Physicians(www.acep.org) in San Francisco. It was truly an honor to be invited to present our findings at such a prestigious event. It was especially important for us to be recognized at this ACEP event since the bulk of our attention thus far has has been on Emergency Medicine development.
Summer 2011: We are back
in full swing of residency life. All the usual things occupy the
mind; there is little time to reflect. It seems long ago that we were in Kabul this past summer, going with the intention of building on the groundwork for our future involvement but being faced with
unfortunate tragedy that overshadowed the entire effort.
July
was our scheduled return to Kabul. After months of preparation we had 3 major goals: 1)We had our data
from the first Emergency Medicine project was pressed out into over 500 pages with set plans
to revisit the topic with the Ministry of Health and take the next steps. 2) Both of us had
clinical work planned in two area hospitals. and (3) with much enthusiasm we
were sponsored for another project to use a Primary Care Assessment Tool (after discussion and approval from the late Dr. Barbara Starfield) to look at the field of Primary Care in Afghanistan.
Furthermore, we put into motion another promise we had made. Last year I had mentioned in the post "The Legacy of Avicenna" what an impression the Ibn Sina hospital had made and why we thought it deserved special attention. We petitioned our local Medical Societies (Thank you Saginaw, Michigan and wonderful people at CRXSP!) to donate medical supplies for us to take to Ibn Sina. MedShare--a nonprofit from San Francisco-- donated a trailer packed full of supplies that I personally hand picked (no joke). Unfortunately, they never left port...
3 days before we were scheduled to leave for Afghanistan, the hotel where we had made reservations, the Intercontinental came under attack. Click here for the full story. We had family staying at the hotel the night of the attack. After a sleepless night, a crushing worst-case scenario was unfolding. We took the first flight out of Detroit the next day and found ourselves in an all out battle of survival in one of the worst security situations in Afghanistan.
...But that story for another day when we get the okay; that story deserves undivided attention...
In light of this future story that you will hear, we nevertheless did achieve some degree of stability. With mixed emotions and fear in our hearts we decided to continue our work. Except we had to agree to no emails, no status updates, no sight seeing. Just very low key maneuvering. Given the circumstances, we did more than we thought we could.
a video collage of this trip
Mid-August is when we returned to Michigan. Since then we have presented our work on Afghanistan on both national and international scenes--San Francisco and Montreal, Canada (update and pictures to follow soon!); data for our second project is complete; and we are looking forward to our last year in Michigan (با خیر, as my mother would say.)
The events at the Intercontinental had unintended victims well beyond it's immediate vicinity. I can't say it didn't influence our perspectives. In mid-August, we had doubts about continuing with this project and we did some serious soul searching. But as time allows thoughts to settle, a sense of impatience creeps in; a sense of urgency. In today's Afghanistan, instead of us ending our work, we realize we need more like us to commit.
