2007 Center for Global Health Headlines

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September 12, 2007

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Roger Glass speaks as part of the Global Health Leaders Forum

Roger Glass firmly believes that an early overseas educational experience can have a significant impact on a student’s potential global health career.

By way of example, he sites Robert Black, Chair of the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health; Thomas Quinn, Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health; and Alfred Sommer, former Dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, as just three of numerous global health leaders who got their start in an overseas program.

Glass worked alongside Black and Sommer in Bangladesh at the beginning of his career, an illustrious one that has culminated with his appointment as the Director of the Fogarty International Center and the Associate Director for International Research at the National Institutes of Health last year.

During his visit to campus on Wednesday, September 12, 2007 as a part of the Global Health Leaders Forum, Glass spoke about the importance of global health education and on his views of global health in the 21^st century.

The Global Health Leaders Forum is a program that brings leaders in the global health field to campus to meet with students, faculty, and staff. The program is supported by both the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health and the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

During his speech, Glass discussed the opportunities the Fogarty Center offers to provide overseas training experiences to students.

Johns Hopkins University is the recipient of several Fogarty training grants, including the Framework Program in Global Health, which is co-funded and sponsored by the Center for Global Health.

Glass also discussed the challenges he and his colleagues face in their duties at the Fogarty Center. The organization has had a flat budget for the past few years, which in turn, limits the number of activities the Center can fund.

“Clearly, this has real repercussions on how we can expand our activities and where we go next,” Glass commented.  Currently, the Center funds more than 100 institutions.

Glass also discussed the increase in life expectancy that the world has experienced in the past 50 years. Japan currently boosts the longest life expectancy, at 85 years, and China has experienced an addition of 8 years to life expectancy every decade for four decades, which is the most rapid prolongation of life in history.

“Through the years, life expectancy has gotten older in the richest countries, but it has also gotten older in the poorer countries, as well,” Glass explained. “This represents the influence of technologies, vaccines, oral rehydration therapy and other interventions.”

Because people are living longer, they are having to deal with lung cancer and cardiovascular disease as they age, Glass said. “This rise in life expectancy means that our focus can’t be only on infectious diseases, it has to be on the chronic diseases, as well.”

Glass also focused on the opportunities existing for research today.

“This is a great time for global health research. We have new advocates with the Gateses, with Mandela, the most visible people in the world, the richest people in the world. Presidents, people in power, the G8. It’s really an opportunity we have never had before. Those of us who have worked in global health for more than a decade appreciate what prime times these are, what a challenge and an opportunity we have to make the best use of these resources. Part of that will be capacity building and research.”

The Fogarty International Center operates with an eye towards capacity building by collaborating with other government organizations, Glass said.

“If you look at the leaders of global health, there are lots of people in infectious diseases. But cardiologists, oncologists, bioengineers -- those ranks are really vacant, and we hope by engaging some of the other centers at NIH, we can begin a research agenda that might begin with capacity building.”

To build support for collaboration with other agencies and NGOs, Glass feels it is important for all involved in global health to demonstrate how the American public benefits from collaborative international health research.

“To make the case for the lay public and for politicians, we have to come up with strong examples to let them see the value of these investments is clearly at home. It’s in chemotherapy, oral rehydration therapy, the human genome project…identifying emerging infections, drug discoveries.

“Opportunities abound and it is really our duty to make our best case, our strongest case, for further investment.”

-- Heidi Glatfelter