20 Dean’s Report 2018–2019
I REACH
Opposite page: Tami
Center for Healthcare Data Analytics: With the acquisition of 10 years of Medicare and Medicaid data, data analytics capabilities have significantly expanded, generating collaborative work with the HMS Department of Biomedical Informatics. Marshall J. Seidman Fellowships: The department welcomed two new Seidman fellows pursuing mentored research, one studying economic and policy issues related to opioids and pain treatment and the other examining payment delivery reforms and factors that influence the use of telemedicine.
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Above: Stronger integrated health systems in rural Madagascar (pictured) and Rwanda have produced rapid improvements in health care, including declining child and maternal mortality rates.
GLOBAL HEALTH AND SOCIAL MEDICINE
The department trains professionals to design and implement improved health care practices and policies worldwide. Successes in Africa: Working to prevent future Ebola outbreaks, Paul Farmer, the Kolokotrones University Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine and chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, assessed the response to the 2013–16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, where HMS and Partners In Health, a humanitarian organization
co-founded by Farmer, helped deliver care and prevent further spread of the disease. In Rwanda and Madagascar, child and maternal deaths declined after health care systems were strengthened through public partnerships, improved data science and access to universal health care. Reframing Global Policy on Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries: HMS faculty are leading The Lancet NCDI Poverty Commission, which focuses on noncommunicable diseases and injuries among the poorest one billion of the world’s population. The commission is holding meetings in 2018 in Rwanda, Nepal and Mozambique and supporting national NCDI poverty commissions and groups in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Rwanda and Tanzania. Safe Surgery 2020: HMS faculty are partners in Safe Surgery 2020, a collaboration that aims to improve surgical services in resource-limited settings. In Ethiopia, the HMS Program in Global Surgery and Social Change provides research and policy support to increase national surgical capacity and strengthen data-capture systems. In Tanzania, the program led to the country’s first National Surgical, Obstetric and Anaesthesia Plan in partnership with the Ministry of Health. The HMS team is evaluating a suite of safe-surgery interventions focused on reducing postoperative infections, improving surgical access as measured by volume and referrals, and capturing surgical data in patients’ records. Mental Health: The GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard initiative draws on faculty expertise from across Harvard University departments and HMS-affiliated hospitals. The goal is to catalyze interdisciplinary innovations that can address the global burden of mental health problems, for example, by implementing psychosocial interventions delivered by community health workers. Master of Medical Science: In fall 2018, the two-year MMSc program in Global Health Delivery welcomed 16 health care professionals from 10 countries. Student research focuses on addressing critical problems and producing actionable results in resource-limited settings (see related story on page 6). n
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