Celebrating Health for All: GHI 2020-2021 Impact Report

IMPACT BY THE NUMBERS

335 Undergraduates earned the Certificate in Global Health in 2020-2021

>2,500 Undergraduate Certificates in Global Health awarded 2012-2021

600+ Registered for 2021 virtual Global Health Symposium

18

Planetary Health Graduate Scholars advanced health for all 2020-2022

>110 global health seminars + 10 global health symposiums 2011-2021 38 Advisory Committee members represent 13 schools/colleges

251 Graduate • Professional • Capstone Certificates in Global Health awarded 2007-2021

12 Wisconsin K-12 educators joined the Planetary Health Partnership 19 Students earned Graduate • Professional • Capstone Certificates in Global Health 2020-2021

157 Grants awarded to faculty, staff, clinicians and graduate students 2011-2021 436 UniverCity Year students worked with Wisconsin communities 2020-2021

A NOTE FROM DIRECTOR JONATHAN PATZ

WoW! 10 years has gone by quickly, and I am proud and grateful as I ask you to join us as we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Global Health Institute (GHI). Growing out of the Center for Global Health, GHI’s launch event was October 27, 2011. As the inaugural director, I promised to look to all of campus to join us in addressing the complex challenges to health and well-being.

Our 2020-21 Impact Report shows how well GHI has met that promise. The last decade underlines our success in making a difference. We, for example, co-convened the cross-campus UniverCity Alliance and the 4W (Women & Well-being in Wisconsin & the World) Initiative. In this decade, our 157 grants and awards have supported projects examining topics from Indigenous knowledge and improved food systems to disaster management and emergency medical care in low-income settings. Since 2011, more than 2,500 students have earned the Undergraduate Certificates in Global Health, and GHI helped shape the new global health major, which launched in 2020. Likewise, we have seen 251 students earn the Graduate • Professional & Capstone Certificates and 18 become Planetary Health Graduate Scholars.

In 2021, global health is on the front burner as we strive to mitigate climate disasters, address systemic racism, grapple with the current pandemic, and plan strategically to avoid the next. Now, more than ever, thanks to all of you—friends, colleagues and students—for helping us advance health for all. This has been an amazing 10 years. Here’s a closer look at our success in 2020-2021.

MISSION

We embrace a global health ethic that fosters deeper understanding of the complex determinants of health and disease for people, animals, and ecosystems. In working locally and globally, we uniquely apply research and education both within and across disciplines, advancing health today and ensuring well-being for the future.

VISION

Equitable and sustainable health for people, animals, and ecosystems —across Wisconsin and the world.

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has helped shape and support global health education for students at all levels.

IMPACT 20202021

INSPIRING GLOBAL LEADERS

y 335 students earned the Undergraduate Certificate in Global Health

y 19 students earned the Graduate • Professional & Capstone Certificates in Global Health

y 50 high school students attended the global health session at HOSA’s 2020 Fall Leadership Academy

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assocIaTe

dIrecTor Janis Tupesis was lead author for a paper in AEM Education and Training on how to foster administrative and leadership skills for the world’s emergency medicine providers. The authors, including Capstone graduate Arthur Chiu, look for new curricula for medical schools and advanced training.

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The onlIne Graduate • Professional and Capstone Certificates in Global Health, launched in spring 2021, provides more flexibility and access for students oncampus and across the world. Ann Evensen, professor of Family Medicine and Community Health, is the new director; Christopher Olsen retired.

dIrector Jonathan Patz and 2020-2021 Planetary Health Scholar Jessica LeClair helped develop a framework to embed planetary health education across disciplines to achieve transformative change and ensure health for all. The model looks at five foundational domains, including equity and systems change. It appeared in The Lancet Planetary Health.

BEST WISHES

Undergraduate Global Health Certificates awarded 2011-2021

To

ChristoPher olsen, lonG-TIme

GHI leader and retiring director of the online certificate program. And to former undergraduate advisor Katie Freeman, now at the Area Health Education Program (AHEC).

TEACHING TEACHERS

adozen WIsconsIn K-12 teachers went back to school to learn more about the connections between the health of humans and the planet.

“Planetary health means we have to think about the planet as a bunch of systems that are dependent on each other. If we don’t see that picture, that’s a problem.”—Heather Messer, Clark Street Community School, Middleton.

From Madison, Middleton, Milwaukee and Montello, they were part of the Planetary Health Partnership, a professional learning program coordinated by GHI, the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and Professional Learning and Community

“Oftentimes, students ask, why are we learning (planetary health)? They need to know it’s relevant to them and useful to them in their life.”—

Sandra

Education (PLACE) in the School of Education. The program equipped a network of educators with knowledge and tools to change how environmental health issues are taught in the classroom. They heard from

UW experts as they developed new ways to introduce students to how humans are changing the world and inspire them to take action to solve environmental problems.

Read more.

Campos-Diaz, James Madison Memorial High School

Above: Students in Sandra Campos-Diaz’s class designed posters to encourage entomophagy, or eating insects.

RESEARCH

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GranTs and aWards support innovative global health projects across campus that lead to further funding, scholarly papers, research and action. The 2021 awards: 3 Seed Grants • 1 Clinical Research Award • 6 Graduate Student Research Awards • 1 Henry Anderson III Graduate Student Award • 1 Virtual Visiting Scholar Award

FOSTERING INGENUITY

will use a Clinical Research Award to work with Ugandans to improve cervical cancer diagnosis and treatment, looking at barriers, social determinants and why women haven’t been able to get the screening and treatment that they need. Read more.

STUDENTS CONFRONT CHALLENGES

FaculTy, sTaFF, clInIcIans and students will use the 2021 GHI grants and awards to explore topics as diverse as traditional knowledge of health and well-being, land use and cervical cancer. The awards went to investigators from Engineering, Veterinary Medicine, Education, Medicine and Public Health, Agricultural and Life Sciences, Letters & Science, and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

CELEBRATING 10 YEARS

GRANTS & AWARDS

TO FACULTY, STAFF , CLINICIANS, STUDENTS, 2011-2021

157

Tana Chongsuwat, postdoctoral trainee in Family Medicine and Community Health and Graduate Certificate student,

Local to global, animal to planetary to human: Students looked at health and well-being from a wide spectrum of disciplines during the April 2021 Global Health Symposium. Five students’ virtual posters were honored:

y Haley Sisel, Agricultural & Life Sciences, looked at addressing mycotoxin exposure in rural Guatemala.

y Max Beal, Engineering, considered seasonahead water quality forecasts.

y Amber Sheth, Medicine and Public Health (SMPH), explored emergency care in rural Guatemala.

y Madilyn Sass and Rylee Doucette, SMPH, developed a hygiene curriculum.

Watch the presentations.

“What we want to know is (the Salaskas) community’s own narrative and how they make sense of what is happening ... and used their own knowledges to confront this pandemic.”

—Diego Román, 2021 Seed Grant recipient

—Holly Gibbs, 2021 Seed Grant recipient

“This project will provide the first causal analysis of indirect exposure to agricultural pesticides and cancer, and the first such study at a national scale.”

Soy beans and beef are replacing forests in the Brazilian Amazon. (Photo courtesy of the Gibbs Lab.)

PLANETARY HEALTH

SCHOLARS MAKE A DIFFERENCE

The planeTary healTh GraduaTe Scholars program brings together graduate and professional students and their faculty advisors who study how the health of the planet and humans are interdependent. The program is co-administered with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

The 2020-2021 cohort looked at topics from healthy landscapes to climate justice and resettlement. Scholar Rebecca Alcock in Engineering, for example, helped mobilize production of personal protective equipment in low- and middleincome countries during the pandemic.

Her Planetary Health project looked at providing electricity for rural clinics in subSaharan Africa.

The 2021-2022 cohort includes five scholars from Medicine and Public Health, Agricultural and Life Sciences and the Nelson Institute. Watch the scholars’ flash talks.

PATZ HONORED

GhIdIrecTor Jonathan Patz was well along in his work on climate change and health when he arrived at UWMadison in 2004—then everything took off. “I found myself coming into a university with a culture of collaboration and a breadth of faculty expertise that could come to bear in addressing climate change as a health crisis,” said Patz, who has faculty appointments in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and Population Health Sciences. His pioneering work was recognized with a 2020-2021 Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) Named Professorship for distinguished research contributions of the UW-Madison faculty. Patz named the professorship after his mentor Tony McMichael.

PROTECTING PEOPLE THE PLANET

Read more.

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PROTECTING PEOPLE & PLANET

assocIaTe dIrecTor James Conway, Advisory Committee member Ajay Sethi and Seed Grant recipient Nasia Safdar became leading voices to help everyone understand COVID-19 and how to confront it. Their consistent message: Get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Sethi predicted that masks could become a seasonal norm: “When is it prudent to put one on? We’ll pay attention to local epidemiology about different infections, and I think that’s wise to do.”

Read more.

CHILDREN AND COVID

WhIle chIldren are less likely to develop severe COVID-19 symptoms, GHI Associate Director James Conway and colleagues found other health impacts disproportionately affect vulnerable children globally. In a call to action in Tropical Medicine Reports, they found negative impacts on children, from worsening food insecurity to disrupted health services.

The paper calls for providers to advocate for an equitable response to improve children’s health globally.

Read more.

“We will never eradicate any disease without reaching every child and reaching every corner of the world.”—GHI Associate Director James Conway on the need for world-wide COVID-19 vaccinations

2021 GLOBAL HEALTH SYMPOSIUM

IndIGenous scholars and communITy members joined faculty, staff, clinicians and students to share the many ways to advance health at the April 14 virtual Global Health Symposium. “Fostering Resilience Through Indigenous Wisdom & Scientific Knowledge” explored the intersection of traditional practices and academic endeavors that advance wellbeing. The UW Native American Center for Health Professions co-hosted the symposium.

Keynote speaker Mariaelena Huambachano, an Indigenous scholar formerly in the School of Human Ecology, looked to Indigenous practices to address the increasing demand for food and preserve the natural world. Leaders from Wisconsin’s Native Nations showed how they are reclaiming food sovereignty to benefit their communities. Front-line physicians shared the struggles they and their communities faced in confronting COVID-19.

Watch the videos.

“Within the community, we organize and provide services without many resources from the community at large. Because there are only a few of us, there’s no time to advertise what we do, no time to wait for resources. We keep going within the community with the resources we can gather.”—Patricia Tellez-Giron, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, Latino Health Council

What we heard:

“Indigenous people are the knowledge holders of biodiversity preservation, environmental health and how to produce food in a sustainable way without compromising the natural resources for generations or the well-being of humanity.”—Mariaelena Huambachano, Indigenous scholar

BUILDING BRIDGES

uW-madIson sITs on ancesTral Ho-Chunk land, a place called Teejop. An 1832 treaty forced the Ho-Chunk to cede this territory, and the people of that sovereign nation faced decades of ethnic cleansing and forced removal. In the spirit of UW-Madison’s Our Shared Future initiative, GHI has embarked on a journey of learning and building new relationships. A Land Acknowledgement Statement will speak to a shared history, celebrate the contemporary Ho-Chunk culture, and can lead to healthy

relationships with the Ho-Chunk and other Indigenous nations.

These resources will help you write a Land Acknowledgment:

y Native Governance Center: A guide to Indigenous land acknowledgment

y UW-Madison Our Shared Future Initiative

y Indigenuity and Teejop: Launching Mindfulness of this Sacred Place

y Ho-Chunk History with Andy Thundercloud

y “Indian Nations of Wisconsin” by Patty Loew

“We all have voices that are not heard in the mainstream regularly. ... Think about your voice; think about those traditions that you have within you.”—Arvina Martin, Madison Alder

“This has been the uniquely hardest year for physicians. Every day while working in a clinical setting, we see a health system that has often been overmatched by COVID-19.”—Janis Tupesis, GHI Associate Director, Department of Emergency Medicine

“(Seeds are) more than just food. They’re our relatives. We have mutual responsibilities to each other. ... The philosophy is that every seed an Indigenous person plants is an act of resistance and assertion of sovereignty.”

—Rebecca Webster (Oneida), University of Minnesota Duluth

Photo courtesty of Mariaelena Huambachano.

Global healTh spans The spectrum from people to planet, and research shows the health of animals and ecosystems affects human health and vice versa.

DON’T MESS WITH MOTHER NATURE

Trees In The peruvIan rainforest fell as the population exploded, a road was paved and fields expanded. Researchers showed the rate of bites from malaria-carrying mosquitoes was 200 times more than in forested areas.

CONNECTING ALL HEALTH

human health, calling for collaboration among environmental, wildlife and human health researchers and practitioners to understand the roots of zoonotic diseases—spread from animals to humans—like COVID-19 and HIV. Read more.

RESEARCH

In Australia, researchers found the loss of winter food can drive bats into closer contact with humans. That’s where they saw an emergence of the deadly Hendra virus.

In The Lancet Planetary Health, GHI Director Jonathan Patz and colleagues called for a deeper and broader look at how changes to the landscape—from deforestation to climate change—influence diseases, animal biology and human-animal interactions. They looked at how land-use can affect environmental, animal, and

edIble InsecTs represenT an understudied food resource that may promote human health, GHI Postdoctoral Researcher Valerie Stull reported in the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed. She found evidence of multiple benefits in her article “Impacts of insect consumption on human health.”

ePidemiology Professor tony goldberg, a member of the GHI Advisory Committee, and colleagues connected a mysterious chimp disease to humans in an article in Nature Communications. Goldberg also identified a new virus behind the mysterious illness plaguing eagles around the Wisconsin River.

“Surging sea and salt water damages everything— health, water, land, infrastructure, community dynamics, family connections to traditional practices and the ability to feel that you are part of a community that can bounce back.”—Maria Moreno, GHI associate for experiential education, on the project to restore Puerto Rican coastal mangroves.

. Read more.

Planting mangroves in Puerto Rico. (Photo courtesy of Robert Mayer.) Read more.

s a FamIly physIcIan in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, Joel Charles has seen more than his share of flooding—and the toll it takes on his patients’ mental and physical health.

In Eau Claire, Pam Guthman, assistant professor of Nursing and Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, has watched patients and her farming family struggle with asthma and air hunger in the face of pollution. She sees how flooding, heat and “rain bombs” affect farming and leave farmers in crisis.

Both see climate change as a culprit and look to a report led by GHI Director Jonathan Patz and Advisory Committee member

Dominique Brossard,

chair of Life Sciences Communications, to show how climate change already affects Wisconsinites and what can be done to protect their health.

CLIMATE YOUR HEALTH a

“Medical Alert: Climate Change is Harming our Health in Wisconsin,” funded through a grant from the Brico Fund, gives health professionals ways to discuss climate issues with patients, the public and policy makers, highlighting the importance for policy actions to protect Wisconsinites from harm.

“One of the challenges of climate change is that it’s commonly understood as a problem that’s far away and in the future. It’s happening here and now,” Charles said. “The report will make it clear to the public and the policy makers.”

Read more.

“The reality of climate change impact on human health has been documented for a long time. No one has put together a resource of how it would affect Wisconsin.”—Dominique Brossard, GHI Advisory Committee member, on the new report on Wisconsin and climate change.

TreK bIcycle looKed To GHI’s Health-Oriented Transportation (HOT) team to quantify how bicycling could lead to better health for people and the planet.

In a white paper on bicycling, climate and health, the team showed that less than one percent of trips are taken by bicycle in most U.S. cities. Increasing the nation-wide rate of bicycling to six percent of trips—as in Madison, Wisconsin—would have significant impact:

y Reducing deaths from chronic disease in the U.S. by 20,000 a year

y Leading to 28,000 fewer cases of cardiovascular disease and 22,000 fewer cases of diabetes a year

y Improving air quality to save $780 million a year in health costs and avert about 7,000

BIKE BENEFITS

lost work days

y Providing about $1.2 billion a year in global benefits due to climate change mitigation

“Riding a bike is not only fun but has enormous physical health benefits and can offset carbon emissions when you replace a car trip with a bike trip,” said Eric Bjorling, Trek director of Brand Marketing and Public Relations, which partially funded the analysis for the report.

Read more.

“One of the best ways to improve our nation’s health, while at the same time lessening our contribution to climate change, is for more people to leave their car behind and hop on a bike instead. Transportation is our nation’s largest greenhouse gas emitting sector, contributing to the global climate crisis and health challenges.”—GHI Director Jonathan Patz

Photo by Bryce Richter/UW-Madison

connecTInG

FaculTy, sTaFF, sTudenTs and communities as they learn from each other is core to GHI’s mission.

SHARING SCIENCE

MAKING CONNECTIONS

as everyone seTTled InTo COVID mode, GHI successfully moved its Global Health Tuesday seminar series online, bringing together our largest ever audiences for each of the seven sessions. We learned about everything from efforts to find new viruses to global oncology. In June, for example, GHI Associate Director

Lori DiPrete Brown and Advisory Committee member Sumudu Atapattu from the Law School joined colleagues to look at sustainable development, based on their 2020 study in Sustainability. In January, Avriel Rose Diaz from Walking Palms explored Ecuador’s COVID response.

Watch the videos.

Nations Development Programme and others, the UW team helped navigate supplychain challenges and supported local personal protective equipment (PPE) production and local universities as they set up testing. Among the successes: Young Yemeni mechatronic engineers created low-cost and effective respirators, a disinfection tunnel and PPE.

Read more.

“Human

BUILDING CAPACITY

assocIaTe dIrecTor Janis Tupesis and Advisory Committee member Paul Block led an interdisciplinary response to COVID-19 in several countries, including Malawi and Yemen. In a partnership with the United

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Associate

Director Lori DiPrete Brown & colleagues in Sustainability.

rights, gender-sensitive approaches and Indigenous knowledges build on each other “to aid local communities, regions, nations and the world to achieve a more just and enduring quality of life, while sustaining the earth for future generations.””—GHI

SUPPORTING WOMEN

address well-being for women:

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WorKs ToWard Gender equity and well-being through the 4W (Women & Well-Being in Wisconsin & the World) Initiative, co-convened with the School of Human Ecology and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, and led by GHI Associate Director Lori DiPrete Brown.

This year, 4W awarded nine grants to researchers from across campus for projects from developing a curriculum for Black and Brown girls in the juvenile justice system to exploring how women’s groups catalyze food justice in India.

4W also worked closely with researchers to

y With Carey McAndrews from Planning and Landscape Architecture to bring gender analysis, sustainable development and the arts to Complete Streets Practice and Policy throughout the U.S.

y With Nancy Kendall, from the School of Education, to support highly vulnerable Malawian households headed by grandmothers or youth, focusing on holistic well-being.

y With the STREETS (Social Transformations to End Exploitation and Trafficking for Sex) Project, led by Araceli Alonso, Jean Geran and Lara Gerassi, to address sex trafficking locally and globally.

Learn more.

GHI, the International Division, College of Engineering and others collaborated to work with the United Nations Development Programme, helping communities build capacity to confront COVID-19. (Photo courtesy of UNDP.)

WHO IS GHI?

We are physIcIans and veterinarians. Engineers and economists. Pharmacists, nurses, political scientists, and historians. We are teachers, researchers, and students. Leaders in law, public health, agriculture, ecology and many other disciplines—working to nurture sustainable, equitable global health for today and tomorrow.

LEADERSHIP

Jonathan Patz, Director patz@wisc.edu

James Conway, Associate Director jhconway@wisc.edu

Lori DiPrete Brown, Associate Director dipretebrown@wisc.edu

Janis Tupesis, Associate Director jtupesis@medicine.wisc.edu

Monet Hutchins, Administrative Director monet.hutchins@wisc.edu

Calyn Ostrowski, Director of Advancement calyn.ostrowski@wisc.edu

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Araceli Alonso, Gender & Women’s Studies

Sumudu Atapattu, Law

Lyric Bartholomay, Upper Midwestern Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Diseases, Pathobiological Sciences

Paul Block, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Dominique Brossard, Life Sciences Communication

Sabrina Butteris, Pediatrics

Maureen Durkin, Population Health Sciences

Kevin Eliceiri, Medical Physics

Ann Evensen, Family Medicine & Community Health

Daniel Gold, International Academic Programs

Tony Goldberg, Pathobiological Sciences

ADVISORY COMMITTEE (con’t)

Sundaram Gunasekaran, Materials Science & Engineering, Biological Systems Engineering

Jeff Hartman, Physical Therapy

Joel Hill, Physician Assistant Program

Li-Ching Ho, Curriculum & Instruction, Southeast Asian Studies

Tracey Holloway, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

Yoshihiro Kawaoka, Pathobiological Sciences

Richard Keller, International Division, History & Bioethics

Nancy Kendall, Educational Policy Studies

Karen Kopacek, Pharmacy

Jessica LeClair, Nursing

Laurel Legenza, Pharmacy

Carey McAndrews, Planning & Architecture

Gregory Nemet, La Follete School of Public Affairs

Susan Paskewitz, Entomology, Upper Midwestern Center of Excellence for VectorBorne Diseases

Eduardo Santana-Castellón, Forest & Wildlife Ecology

James Schauer, Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Ajay Sethi, Population Health Sciences

Sweta Shrestha, Population Health Institute

Kurt Sladky, Surgical Sciences

Karen Solheim, Nursing Sherry Tanumihardjo, Nutritional Sciences Girma Tefera, Surgery

Alberto Vargas, Latin American, Caribbean & Iberian Studies

Giri Venkataramanan, Electrical & Computer Engineering

Michel Wattiaux, Dairy Science, Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems

Claire Wendland, Anthropology

BEST WISHES

To GHI Administrative Director Monet Hutchins who moves to assistant director at the Center for Limnology. To Postdoctoral Research Associate Valerie Stull who has moved to CALS. To 4W Assistant Director

Olivia Dahlquist who is moving to NNE dot ARTS in Denver, Colorado.

CONTACT US

Websites: ghi.wisc.edu education.ghi.wisc.edu Office 1050 Medical Sciences Center 1300 University Avenue Madison, Wisconsin 53706

Email: globalhealth@ghi.wisc.edu Phone: (608) 265-9299

STAFF

Henry Fremont, Research Assistant

Ann Grauvogl, Communications Manager

Aaron Malone, Financial Specialist

Maria Moreno, Associate for Experiential Education

Abby Novinska-Lois, Outreach Specialist for Climate Crisis in Wisconsin project

Valerie Peterson, Executive Assistant

Samuel Younkin, Assistant Research Scientist

MAKE A GIFT

Your gift to GHI helps support research, outreach and educational initiatives leading toward a more just, sustainable, and healthy world. To learn about giving opportunities, contact Calyn Ostrowski at 608-265-9608 or calyn.ostrowski@wisc.edu.

Interns:

Paula Clemente

Anne Isman

SMPH Office of Global Health

Ann Evensen, Director, Graduate • Professional • Capstone Certificates Online

Betsy Teigland, Programs Coordinator