Seattle, WA - More than 180 UW Department of Global Health (DGH) students, faculty, and staff came together for the Global Healthies, the Department’s largest annual event that seeks to strengthen connections and start new collaborations for better global health impacts.

“The Global Healthies event brought together faculty, staff and students to network around potential work together. I thank all the faculty and staff who identified projects in which our students can participate, and all the students for showcasing their innovative work at this event. Together you have made the Global Healthies event a big success,” said Judy Wasserheit, Chair, UW Department of Global Health.

At the event, more than 50 faculty and representatives of DGH centers, programs, and initiatives were on hand to explore and discuss current opportunities that they offer to students to get involved in research and fieldwork.  

“The event really helped me connect with a wide group of students in global health, and start to find ways for us to work together,” said Dr. Adam Akullian, Affiliate Assistant Professor, DGH, who works on spatial epidemiology and analysis of HIV incidence. “I was able to connect with students interested in statistical and qualitative analysis, epidemiology, and data management.”

The Global Healthies event also provided an opportunity for global health undergraduate, Masters, and PhD doctoral candidates to showcase and discuss their work with participants through a poster competition.

“As a pharmacology student, I don’t often get a lot of chances to meet faculty and students from other departments. This event really helped me make interdisciplinary connections, including faculty and staff who have projects in Cambodia,” said Mason Chiang, PharmD candidate who presented a poster on his research “Assessing the Role of Hospital Pharmacists to Improve Medication Access and Safety in Cambodia.”

The poster competition winners in each category were:

• Discovery and Development - High impact research from laboratory bench to bedside, to community, and national-level programs: Jiho Kim, PhDc: “Development and Optimization of a Conjugable Joint-opener Adenoviral Protein as a Co-Therapeutic Against Solid Tumors”
• Education and Training - Innovative efforts to build capacity to improve global health at the individual, community, organizational, or population-levels: Courtney DeCan, MDc: “Tackling Malnutrition and Anemia in the Sacred Valley of Peru
• Implementation and Application - Systematic approaches to increase the speed, efficiency, and impact of interventions as they are taken to scale: Roy Burstein, PhDc: “Under – 5 Mortality in Africa: Subnational MDG Progress and SDG Potential”
• Public Health Service and Direct Care - Assessments of individual clinical services or population level prevention services and/or strategies to improve services: Elizabeth Karman, MPHc: ”Facility Assessment and Baseline Data Collection for the “Faith Leaders Advocating for Maternal Empowerment (FLAME)” Study” and Grégoire Lurton, PhDc: “Making a Livelihood as a Health Worker in a Fragile Setting: Evidence from DRC
• Oscar Gish Social Justice and Health Equity - Work that challenges inequality,and improves health and justice for all: Erica Orange, MPHc: “Assessing Universal Test and Treat Implementation in South Africa”

“Participants left the event with new connections, new opportunities, and most of all a sense that we are a global health community!” said Daren Wade, Director, Global Health Resource Center, UW Department of Global Health.

For more information contact dghcomm@uw.edu