Innovation to catalyze development: Leveraging research in foreign assistance
Join MFAN and the GHTC for a congressional briefing to examine what global health successes can teach us about the role of innovation in international development
Date: Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Time: 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Location: Capitol Visitor Center, Room 212/210
The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) and the Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC) invite you to a congressional briefing to highlight the integral role that research plays in achieving our nation’s long-term foreign assistance goals. Speakers will explore the ways in which research efforts in can promote equitable, sustainable solutions to health and development issues in the world's poorest countries, using the examples of past successes and future opportunities in global health research to develop new technologies, such as vaccines and drugs.
American innovation has contributed to remarkable progress in preventing, diagnosing, and treating conditions such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, neglected tropical diseases, pneumonia, and diarrheal diseases. Since 1988, polio cases worldwide have decreased by more than 99 percent in part because of US efforts to eradicate the disease. In addition, 26 countries have reported cutting in half the number of malaria cases and deaths between 2000 and 2007 due in large part to US-driven efforts prevention and treatment efforts.
Despite these breakthroughs, existing global health tools are not sufficient to address drug resistance or new infectious conditions, while only outdated or insufficient products exist for some of the most intractable diseases worldwide. For this reason, leveraging science and technology to develop and deliver new medical innovations is critical to ensure that the United States' overall development goals are met.
Featured speakers
Maura O’Neill, PhD
Senior Counselor to the Administrator for Innovation, US Agency for International Development
Thomas Kalil
Deputy Director for Policy, Office of Science and Technology Policy, White House
Corey Casper, MD, MPH
Director, Uganda Program on Cancer and Infectious Diseases and Assistant Member, Vaccine Infectious Disease Institute, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Associate Professor of Medicine and Adjunct Associate Professor, Global Health & Epidemiology, University of Washington
Moderator
Susan Dentzer
Editor-in-Chief, Health Affairs
For more information contact Jenni Rothenberg of MFAN at jrothenberg@modernizingforeignassistance.org or Kimberley Lufkin of the GHTC at klufkin@ghtcoalition.org.
To RSVP, contact Jenni Rothenberg at jrothenberg@modernizingforeignassistance.org or 202-464-8191.
