Based on the theme of 'Transcending Borders and Transforming Paradigms: Shaping a Future That Unites Us’, the Los Angeles Global Health Conference collected media and art submissions from global health scholars around the country. These submissions highlight their personal experiences in the field and bring attention to the need for an interdisciplinary lens when creating solutions to some of the world’s most prominent global health issues. Their submissions will be presented during the 2019 Los Angeles Global Health Conference alongside perspectives from other invited speakers and researchers.

2019 Media Submissions

High-accuracy detection of malaria vector larval habitats using drone-based multispectral imagery

Photo By: Gabriel Corrasco-Escobar and Edgar Manrique

Description: In Amazonian Peru, the identification of the most productive, positive water bodies would increase the impact of targeted mosquito control on aquatic life stages. The present study explores the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for identifying Anopheles darlingi breeding sites with high-resolution imagery and their multispectral profile in Peruvian Amazon.

In Absence of Evidence

Documentary By: Komal Kumar

Description: In Absence of Evidence tells the bold story of Dr. Elmi Muller, a South African female surgeon who performed the world’s first HIV-to-HIV kidney transplant in 2008. Strained by limited resources and political upheaval, she pioneered an established procedure on a stigmatized population. In celebration of the 10th Anniversary of this surgery, we explore what it means to go against the system in order to save lives.

Camp Idomeni, Syrian Refugee Camp

Photos By: Nardeen B. Dawood

Description: These photos were taken at a Syrian refugee camp in March of 2016. The camp, Idomeni, was erected along the border of Northern Greece and Macedonia when Macedonia decided to close its borders to the hundreds of thousands of Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees traveling along the Balkan Route to Western Europe. The camp lied on destitute land and featured overwhelming lack of basic provisions, medical need, poor sanitation, and frequent violence. 

CGN Global Health Initiative: Uganda, Africa

Video By: Jordan Smith

Description: This compilation of pictures and videos was taken in August 2018 on the island of Buvuma Island and Mayuge District in Uganda, Africa. It shows the journey of six nursing students and their professor who partnered with a local organization to provide a medical clinic to over 1000 village members of Buvuma Island in deep Uganda and an education training in the Mayuge district to over 150 village health leaders who are responsible for ten homes each. The significance of this project was that we were able to reach villages that haven’t had any relief and are in dire need of help. They were beyond grateful and receptive to our efforts to help their communities.

Apapai

Photo By: Nikhil Bellamkonda

Description: Apapai is a small village in northeastern Uganda. Families farm and raise animals to sustain themselves. The elders here have seen the extremes of life: from hunting with spears in their youth, to hiding and surviving from the radical Lord’s Resistance Army, to the modern day. Each person I met was unendingly welcoming and giving, even when they had so little to give. Our research conducted at a local government hospital near Apapai provided evidence that a full spectrum of care, from medical to surgical services, can be available to individuals like them regardless of their ability to pay. 

Soroti Regional Referral Hospital

Photo By: Nikhil Bellamkonda

Description: This photo was taken at SRRH, a government run hospital in Uganda. Resources and personnel at the hospital are scarce and stretched thin. Here you can see many family members of patients who must relocate to the hospital to be the primary caregiver for their loved one. Due to how overwhelmed the nursing staff is throughout the day, they are often in charge of ensuring that the patient’s medications are administered on time and that wounds are re-dressed. Families cook for themselves and the patient, and sleep on the hospital grounds. Some even bring their livestock. Staying here at the hospital generates an enormous financial and familial burden; the costs of a hospitalization in these rural areas reach deep into each family’s lives. 

Ya Tú Vives Por Ti (Lima, Perú)

Video By: Alexander Winnett

Description: In 2015, Harvard Medical School, Socios En Salud Sucursal Perú, and the Peruvian Institute of Child Health initiated a collaboration to better understand the needs of HIV-positive youth in Lima, Perú, with the overall goal of developing tailored interventions for this group. A chief finding of this collaboration was that a lack of health literacy, particularly with regard to HIV disease and treatment, was pervasive among adolescents of all age groups, and resulted in decreased treatment adherence starting around age 12. This piece is an adolescent-friendly health-related rap video, developed as a novel approach to improving health literacy in HIV-positive youths in Latin America. It explains features of HIV infection, starting with the role of the immune system and how the virus attacks and weakens it, decreasing the body's defense against other infections. Key clinical terms, such as CD4 Count and Viral Load are explained, as is the importance of taking medication as prescribed, and concurrently empowering listeners to ask their healthcare providers if they have any questions. 

International Center for Research on Women in Delhi, India

Photo By: Nirshila Chand, MPH

Description: This video captures a strong message resonating to women's global empowerment and the power of EDUCATION!! This picture was taken at the "Women's Collectives Enabling and Empowering Effective Mechanisms to Ensure No Woman is Left Behind," at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on July 19, 2018. The meeting was attended by women from several regions who work as part of women's collectives. Various forms of collectives exist in South Asia and have emerged as one of the most responsive platforms for women to get support as survivors of violence, especially in rural areas. The collective is considered a safe space for women to discuss their concerns and the collective strength when leveraged through feminist training and with hand-holding from women’s rights organizations, has emerged as one of the prominent platforms that helps invoicing and recognition of violence, and in connecting survivors to institutional services, even if the primary reason for organizing was to improve livelihoods alone.

(Nair, 2018) (Pande, et al., 2017). Nair, T. (2018). Women’s Collectives as a platform for addressing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in India. New Delhi: International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). Pande, R. P., Nanda, P., Bopanna, K., & Kashyap, A. (2017). Addressing Intimate Partner Violence in South Asia: Evidence for Interventions in the Health Sector, Women’s Collectives, and Local Governance Mechanisms. ICRW.