Are You a Leader Working Across Sectors?

The National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health (NLAPH) offers an innovative approach by bringing together teams of leaders from multiple sectors to actively engage their communities to  achieve health equity.

Do You Learn By Doing?

We use blended learning modalities including webinars, a retreat, coaching from national experts, and peer networking to advance your team’s skills and…

It used to be you could only get a slice of pizza or a cheeseburger while waiting to board your flight. So it's great to hear that airports are increasingly offering healthy food options. These high-fiber, low-fat foods are great for weary travelers in order to rev up their energy and aid in digestion. And while its great that 83% of restaurants in the busiest airports attest to having a healthy option on their menus, this may still be only one option among many unhealthy ones. …

Non communicable diseases (NCDs), mainly cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and chronic lung disease, are responsible for roughly two out of every three deaths today. Other NCDs, including mental illness, accidents, renal disease and dental disease, kill or maim millions more. The World Health Organization (WHO) is now putting the final touches on a draft Action Plan…

During Spring and Summer of 2012, World Health Organzation (WHO) staff and interested member states have been  at work preparing a series of documents as follow up to the September 2011 High Level Meeting on Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs). They have pored through hundreds of comments, position papers, speeches and technical information to create…

Very early this morning, after a long day of debate, the House Agriculture Committee reported the 2012 Farm Bill, H.R. 6083, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act (FARRM), out of committee by a bipartisan vote of 35-11.

The Public Health Institute (PHI) strongly opposes the $16.5 billion in cuts that H.R. 6083 makes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). If these cuts were enacted, up to 3 million individuals would no longer receive the food…

Dr. Nicholas Alipui, director of programs at UNICEF, announced last week that the agency has decided to update its iconic information resource "Facts for Life" to include information about non communicable diseases (NCDs) in children and adolescents. Speaking at a Ministerial breakfast as part of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on July 6, Dr. Alipui said that by updating "Facts for Life" with information about NCDs,…

A huge collective sigh of relief was heard across the nation this morning when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act will be the law of the land.  Foes and supporters will be pouring over gallons on of ink and gigabytes and information this weekend trying to determine the meaning and devilish details of the decision.  Below are are few same-day reactions from population health organizations across the country.  Click on the link after each quote to read complete…

As those who have followed the United Nations proceedings on non communicable diseases (NCDs) know, one piece of unfinished business is the establishment of global targets to help quantify the global response to this increasing epidemic. On May 25, the delegates to the World Health Assembly took a large step in that direction, by agreeing to the world's first NCD target.  As widely reported,…

Global health knows no boundaries.  There are no dividing lines that respect illness and disease, nor are there places where prevention is irrelevant.  I was privileged to join a group recently who saw what a dedicated community can do to protect itself from the threat of non communicable disease, in this case the Tohono O’odham reservation in Arizona.  The Tohono O’odham Nation is composed of approximately 30,000 Native Americans,…

Public Health Institute, together with Caring and Living as Neighbors and Global Health Council, will convene a conference on "NCDs in Children and Adolescents" during March 19-20.  The conference has been sponsored by the Medtronic Foundation, …

As the HIV pandemic rattles into its third decade, the impact on women and girls has not gone unnoticed. Numerous international political declarations including ICPD and the UNGASS Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS have recognized women’s and girls’ specific risks and needs and have committed to act to address them. Multilateral and bilateral donors have established strategies to better address women, girls, gender equality and HIV/AIDS including the PEPFAR Gender Strategy, the Global Fund’s…

On International Women’s Day, the majority of the more than 60 million child brides around the world will spend their time as they spend every other day of the year: out-of-school, at-risk, marginalized and poor. The theme chosen by the United Nations for International Women’s Day 2012 is “Empower Rural Women – End Hunger and Poverty.” At first glance, this has little to do with child marriage. But rural poverty is at the root of the high prevalence of early marriage (UNICEF, 2006). Within…

Nearly 2 million people—mostly women and children—in the developing world die annually from illnesses brought on by breathing toxic smoke from indoor cooking stoves.

 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Each day, half of the world’s families eat meals cooked on an open fire or a three-rock traditional stove. Women feed the fire with wood, dung, coal or crop waste—solid fuels that they’ve scavenged or purchased for a fraction of the…

Many global health donors are focused on providing medicines, paying for diagnostic technologies, and building hospitals and clinics in places where few health care resources exist.  These items are critical to diagnosis and care, and are relatively easy to measure.  Donors like to fund them because they can be counted and named, and their benefits are well-known. The problem is that providing for only these tangible things does not by itself build the kind of global health architecture that…

As part of the outcome of the UN High Level Meeting on NCDs, the political declaration adopted acknowledged the special challenges faced by children and youth in preventing and treating non communicable diseases, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and chronic lung disease (including asthma). It is…

After the dust settled from the UN High Level Meeting on Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in September, the really hard work began.  Delegates from around the globe who had heard speech after speech about the depth of the problem, returned to capitals and began to grapple with their own health planning processes. In many places, there is a clear consensus on the need to put national programs in place…

Because climate change is already affecting health in the United States and around the world, we all have a stake in the negotiations now underway in Durban, South Africa at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  Public Health Institute's Center for Public Health and Climate Change has developed a one-stop web presence for updates from COP17, and related news and…

One criticism of the UN High Level Meeting on Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs), held in New York over September 19-20, is that donor nations came to the table, but made no real financial commitments to deal with the rising tide of NCDs. In part because of the global financial crisis that is squeezing all major sources of development assistance for health, but also because of the enormity of the…

On Nov. 3-4, the Coalition Advancing Multipurpose Innovations (CAMI), a project of PHI, convened a symposium in Washington, DC, on “Multipurpose Prevention Technologies (MPTs) for Reproductive Health.” The gathering was attended by more than 100 product developers, researchers, academics, funding…

One of the opinions that bubbles up consistently in the global health community is the difficulty and expense of working on chronic illnesses in developing countries.  The costs to prevent, detect, and treat illnesses like cardiovascular disease, chronic lung disease and diabetes are high, the complexities involved are too stringent, and the staff and resources necessary are simply not available.  At the far…