Center for Global Pediatrics

Fourth year medicine-pediatrics resident Chrisanne Timpe DuPuis (pictured) is currently at our partner site in Arusha, Tanzania, providing care for children at Selian Lutheran Hospital, teaching interns and learning from residents, staff and faculty there. Check out her blog here

Tina Slusher, M.D. presented "Pediatric Pearls" for the Global Health Course August 7, 2009. Her talk gave course participants real-world advice about providing acute care in environments that are sometimes lacking for basic medical equipment, such as conditions sometimes are in hospitals in developing countries. Dr. Slusher is a pediatric intensivist at Hennepin County Medical Center, provides pediatric sedation services at University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital, and does patient care at missionary and academic hospitals in Nigeria and Kenya.

On Tuesday, August 4, Chandy John, M.D., M.S., director of the Center for Global Pediatrics, presented options for medical residents looking forward toward careers in pediatric global health. Some of the opportunities highlighted were public health, disaster relief, immigrant and refugee medicine, traveler health, activism and advocacy, and volunteer work, in addition to clinical work, research and teaching.



The U of MN Pediatric Global Health Track offers these training opportunities to prepare residents for a lifetime of service:

• noon lecture series (core curriculum in advocacy; parasitic and infectious diseases; ethical, cultural and social issues; public health and disease prevention; and practical interventions)
• journal clubs
• visiting global health faculty program
• electives in developing countries
• local global health and adoption medicine electives

....as well as opportunities to participate in the travel and tropical medicine seminar series, two-month intensive global health training course, and public health courses.

Pediatric Global Health Track resident Cuong Pham received an $1800 grant from the Office of International Programs to support departmental collaboration. This grant will be used to host Dr. Bui Vu Huy, Deputy Head of the Infectious Disease Department at the Vietnam National Hospital of Pediatrics (Hanoi, Vietnam). The Center for Global Pediatrics hopes to develop a partnership with Vietnam in order to build future educational and research collaborations together.

Congratulations to the Global Health Track residents who completed international electives during the 08-09 academic year: Katie Durrwachter and Tara Zamora (Cambodia), Ayesha Kadir (Uganda), Aneel Gursahaney (Uganda) Melissa Moore (Nicaragua), and Sarah Frenning (Ethiopia). Read more about their experiences at our Partner Sites page.

Read about our program, as featured in University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital, in the January 2009 edition of Innovations.

The work of Robert Opaka and Chandy John was highlighted in a January 2009 article in Minnpost.Com, entitled "Misery and death: Minnesota doctors fight malaria in eastern Africa".  Read the full article here

Cynthia Howard was asked to present a talk, "Developing Competencies in Global Child Health: Why and How" at University of Utah; Salt Lake City, UT in January 2009.

2008 

Chandy John was awarded two NIH grants: R01: "Pathogenesis of cognitive/neurologic deficits in central nervous system malaria" (Uganda) and D43:  Global Infectious Disease Research Training Program, entitled, "Translational Research in Malaria Transmission and Immunity in Kenya."

Chandy John published the article "Cerebral Malaria in Children Is Associated With Long-Term Cognitive Impairment.  Pediatrics. Published online June 9, 2008; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2007-3709. Read more 

Jared Austin and his brother Dan established a charitable organization for Cambodia orphans called 88 Bikes (see photo at right). Dr. Austin completed his pediatric residency in 2007 and was a chief resident in pediatrics in 2008. He is a graduate of the Pediatric Global Health Track at the University of Minnesota. Read more

The 2009 Global Pediatrics Summer Advocacy Series wound down this week with Charles Oberg's presentation "Dickens Revisited: Hunger and Homelessness Today". His update brought to the attention of U of MN pediatricians in attendance at Pediatric Grand Rounds the alarming fact that the number of families in the United States who are homeless has surpassed the number of single-middle aged men, and the predominant group receiving food assistance are these families. In response to this new information, Dr. Oberg said that it is imperative for pediatricians to screen all children for food security issues and refer as indicated to appropriate agencies in their communities.

Click here to learn more about the origins of the advocacy series and to see past topics.
Click here for Pediatric Grand Rounds, including links to recorded past lectures.

Our mission: to improve the health of underserved children worldwide through medical education, translational research, clinical care and advocacy.

Our Center offers a nationally-recognized education program (Pediatric Global Health Track) for pediatric and medicine/pediatric residents that emphasizes child advocacy. We provide clinical services for adopted children through our International Adoption Medicine Program & Clinic. We manage multiple funded research studies. Our organization also lends itself as a collaborative mechanism for faculty with diverse expertise in immigrant and refugee health, outcomes of post-institutionalized children, tropical medicine, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, infectious disease epidemiology, and travel medicine--to name just a few.

The Center is directed by Chandy John, M.D., M.S.  The associate director is Cindy Howard, M.D., MPHTM. We are proud to be located in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School.