Participants will engage with the research community at York University to generate new insights, foster collaboration, and discover new research opportunities in global health research with critical social science perspectives that uses social science theory and methodology with social justice aims in global health. It is transdisciplinary, participatory, experimental, or experiential. It seeks greater effectiveness, equity, and excellence in global health by engaging directly with global public health actors, structures, and systems to transform global public health.
This year, Professor Cary Wu (Department of Sociology, York University) will be delivering the keynote presentation titled "A triple trust penalty? The majority-minority gap in subjective wellbeing."
Following the keynote, we will hear from the 2023 seed grant recipients regarding the progress of their global health research projects funded by the Critical Perspectives in Global Health Seed Grant. The seed grant program supports critical global health research within the three themes at the Dahdaleh Institute (planetary health, global health and humanitarianism, and global health foresighting).
Finally, York faculty and global health researchers will then have the opportunity to deliver a brief 5-minute presentation on any current or planned research project that takes a critical social science approach to global health at the workshop. Register as a presenter to receive valuable feedback on your proposal from expert researchers. Please complete the registration form to present a new research idea by Monday, April 22, 2024, by 11:59 p.m.
Agenda
9:30
Continental Breakfast
10:00
Welcome and Overview to Workshop
10:10
Keynote Presentation and Q&A with Cary Wu
11:00
Break
11:15
Research Updates from the 2023 CPGH Seed Grant Recipients
Join us for the 2024 World Health Assembly Simulation beginning virtually on May 1, 2024 and in-person from May 2 to May 3 in Toronto, Ontario. This immersive experience replicates the highest level of governance at the World Health Organization. Students will engage in captivating discussions on urgent global health matters, connect with an array of diverse experts, and gain valuable insights into potential global health career paths and more. The theme for the WHA SIM 2024 is "One Health", which emphasizes the interconnected nature that binds together human, animal, and environmental health. This event is brought to you by the School of Global Health.
Seats are limited, so don't delay and secure your place today to be a part of this transformative event!
Learning to Shift the Goal Post: One Health Research and Policy, with John Amuasi
Local Time
Timezone: America/New_York
Date: Wednesday, May 01, 2024
Time: 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Location
Hybrid
John Amuasi is head of the Global Health Department at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana and a W2 Professor of Global One Health in Hamburg, Germany. Via a talk and discussion titled "Learning to Shift the Goal Post: One Health Research and Policy", he shares his rich experience in infectious disease research from a One Health perspective.
Speaker Profile
John Humphrey Amuasi is based at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), where he is Head of the Global Health Department of the School of Public Health and Leader of the Global One Health Research Group at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR). Amuasi is also a W2 Professor of Global One Health at the Bernhard Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine and the University of Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany, an adjunct Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in the USA, and an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford in the UK. Amuasi trained as a physician in Ghana, and later graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, USA, with post-graduate degrees terminating in a PhD in Health Research and Policy.
Amuasi set up and was the inaugural head of the Research and Development Unit at the 1,200-bed Komfo Anokye teaching Hospital in Kumasi. For over 20 years, he has engaged in Tropical Medicine and Global Health research in LMICs - including in malaria, NTDs, AMR and One Health. He has also consulted for several Global Health-focused organizations and supported civil society organizations with technical expertise on matters related to access to drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, as well as strategic advice related to Global Health research priorities. Amuasi’s current research involves clinical and field epidemiologic studies on malaria, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, AMR, snakebite and other neglected tropical diseases. He further serves as Co-Chair of The Lancet One Health Commission, an adjunct to a number of academic institutions, and as a regular technical advisor/contributor to the WHO, Africa CDC, African Academy of Sciences, and several other Global Health organizations. John is a board member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in the USA, The Soulsby Foundation in the UK, and an advisory board member of The British Medical Journal. Amuasi is passionate about mentorship and sustainably building both clinical and non-clinical health research capacities in Africa.
Register below and join us on Wednesday, May 1, at 1 p.m.
Gender Inequality in Health Across Life Cycles in India, with Rajnish Prasad
Local Time
Timezone: America/New_York
Date: Wednesday, May 08, 2024
Time: 10:30 am - 11:30 am
Location
Online
On Wednesday, May 8, Dahdaleh community fellow Rajnish Prasad will provide a brief overview of gender inequity in health, followed by detailed analysis of health inequity among girls and women across life cycle in India. He will discuss the role of social and gender norms in perpetuating inequities and the health outcomes. Drawing from his own experiences working at the UN Women's Asia-Pacific Regional Office, Rajnish will share the insights gained from implementation of community-level health initiatives in India. Register below to join us in an engaging discussion about the implications of gender inequality.
Speaker Profile
Rajnish Ranjan Prasad is currently working as Programme Specialist- Gender Equality and Health & HIV/AIDS at the UN Women’s Asia-Pacific Regional Office. He has around 17 years of experience in addressing inequalities, empowering marginalized communities and providing technical support to Governments. Rajnish is working with UN Women Country Offices in the Asia Pacific region to address gender inequality in planning, and utilization of health services. He has previously worked with UNFPA and supported Government of Rajasthan, India in strengthening of large-scale programmes for holistic development of young people specially girls, addressing gender inequalities and to promote youth leadership. He has also worked with National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), Government of India and managed large-scale HIV/AIDS programme.
Rajnish holds a Doctorate in Public Health from IIHMR University, India, a Postgraduate Certificate in Global Health from the University of Manchester, Postgraduate Diploma in Public Administration from University of York, Master’s in Rural Management from Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) and Bachelor’s in Computer Application from Devi Ahilya University, Indore.
Register below and join us on Wednesday, May 8, at 10:30 a.m.
Increasing Ambient Temperature Disrupts Sleep and Impairs Cognitive Function, with Godfred Boateng and Gabriel John Dusing
Local Time
Timezone: America/New_York
Date: Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Time: 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Location
Hybrid
Cognitive decline and sleep disorders are prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, but the role of extreme heat in these conditions remains poorly understood. In this seminar, Professor Godfred Boateng and Dr. Gabriel John Dusing will discuss their latest research findings analyzing extreme heat events which are increasing in frequency and intensity, and impacting the health of older adults. Their study explored the relationship between temperature, sleep quality, and cognitive function in Ghanaian adults over the age of 50, particularly women.
Using structural equation models and accounting for data clustering, they examined the direct and indirect relations between increasing average temperatures in the past, sleep difficulties, and cognitive impairment, while adjusting for appropriate covariates. They created a novel dataset by combining data from the WHO Ghana Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (2014/2015) with temperature measurements derived from the Climatic Research Unit (University of East Anglia) gridded Time Series (CRU TS v.4.07). The speakers will then recommend the acceleration of climate mitigation and adaptation practices that aims to reduce the effects of global warming for Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Join us for this talk addressing global health inequities for socially disadvantaged populations, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, amidst a rapidly changing environment.
Speaker Profile
Godfred Boateng
Dr. Godfred Boateng is an Assistant Professor at the School of Global Health, Director of the Global and Environmental Health Lab, a Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Humanitarianism, and a faculty fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University. Dr. Boateng is an expert in the design and application of culturally relevant scalable methodologies to study the multidimensional factors and processes that shape health and health equity across spatial scales (household, community, institutional, national), and how they can be promoted and sustained. His research program is transdisciplinary and focuses on resource insecurity, health, and sustainable livelihoods; the socio-ecological determinants of cardiometabolic conditions in aging adults; social inequity in health systems; quantitative data analysis methods and survey scale development; and COVID-19-related health effects. Dr. Boateng’s research in these areas has been critical in transforming the understanding of the key social and structural determinants of health among vulnerable populations, including women, infants, children, and older adults.
Dr. Boateng’s research is supported through both internal and external funding sources from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; Canadian Institutes of Health Research; Canadian Foundation for Innovation; International Development Research Centre; Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities; United States Health Resources & Service Administration; the National Institute of Transportation and Communities; and the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research.
Gabriel John Dusing
Dr. Dusing's research utilizes linked longitudinal health administrative data and employs techniques such as survival analysis and difference-in-differences to examine complex social and health issues. He holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Tennessee. His publications in journals such as, Psychological Medicine, Social Science & Medicine, PLoS One, and the American Journal of Psychiatry, highlight his expertise in addressing critical topics such as mental health, population health, and the social determinants of health.
Register below and join us on Wednesday, May 15, at 1 p.m.
Analysing Environmental Integration in Antimicrobial Resistance Strategies in Kenya, with Srinivasa Reddy Srigiri
Local Time
Timezone: America/New_York
Date: Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Time: 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Location
Hybrid
Increasing recognition of the global burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) on public health and resulting economic losses have led to global and subsequent national efforts to prevent and contain AMR. While these strategies emphasise a One Health based approach for governance, effective coordination among actors across relevant sectors, core principle of the approach, seems elusive, risking the effectiveness and sustainability of the mitigation strategies. Further, despite the wide acknowledgement of the critical role environmental resources play in the emergence and transmission of AMR pathogens, the first wave of national strategies have largely bypassed the design and implementation of measures to control environmental AMR. Systematic analyses of governance of AMR mitigation are scarce and have only begun recently, which nevertheless show that majority of the countries studied, especially the low and lower-middle income countries, did not even have an environmental surveillance component. Therefore, the study aims – (i) to understand existing institutions and governance mechanisms for integrating the relevant sectors and levels, (ii) identify potential barriers of cross-sectoral coordination and especially the integration of environment sector, and (iii) explore potential solutions of how to overcome such barriers in order to sustainably contain and prevent AMR development and spread through a OH approach.
The study applies a qualitative case study approach, focusing on AMR governance in Kenya and analyses from a polycentric governance perspective adapting Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. Data analysed included primary and secondary literature pertaining to the topic and the case study region and transcribed semi-structured interviews with key informants from human health, animal health, environment sectors, at national and county levels.
Preliminary results from analysis show that the governance of AMR in Kenya is fragmented across multiple sectors and legislations, often incoherent and even conflicting with each other. The coordination mechanisms at the national and county levels established under the national action plan (NAP) for AMR did not effectively integrate the environmental dimension, thereby missing components of AMR stewardship and surveillance for environment. Asymmetrically distributed information and resources negatively affect coordination among multi-sectoral actors.
It is crucial to overcome the key barriers for effective coordination, namely policy incoherence across sectors and asymmetries in distribution of resources for AMR mitigation across sectors. Besides including an integrated surveillance component across three relevant sectors in the new NAP, it is crucial to embed the new mandate of AMR surveillance and regulation within the existing framework of environmental governance, and arrangements for developing appropriate capacities of relevant actors in different sectors.
Speaker Profile
Dr. Srinivasa Srigiri received his PhD in Agricultural Economics from the Humboldt University Berlin in 2010. His primary research interests involve governance of natural resources, sustainability transformations in rural and agricultural sectors, and strategies for climate adaptation at national and subnational levels. Since August 2019, he holds a position as senior researcher within the Research Programme on Environmental Governance at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). Prior to joining IDOS, he held research positions with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India, and Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) and Humboldt University Berlin in Germany.
Register below and join us on Wednesday, May 22, at 1 p.m.