On Monday, April 19, a panel of experts came together to discuss innovations in the public health sector, translating health research into practice, and the challenges of creating an enabling environment for these innovations to thrive.
On April 22, Professor Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School, and Director, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University, addressed the Thirteenth Session of the Distinguished Global Indian Speaker Series (DGISS) organized by Amity University Gurgaon.
The years of post-mortem that follow will dissect how we arrived here. But for now, the path out of the current inferno requires unwavering commitment to science, and perhaps tremendous rectitude. Let us examine what we can do in the coming months.
The Global Alliance for Medical Innovation, a group of students and faculty based at
Harvard University working to increase access to healthcare via engineering and advocacy, was awarded a Mittal Institute Seed for Change grant in summer 2020. Their proposal explored the development of low-cost, scalable technologies to allow point-of-care diagnosis of common eye disorders in under-resourced regions of the globe.
Through a collaboration between the Tata Trusts and the Mittal Institute, Project Empower is working to bridge the mental health provider gap in India by building a digital platform to provide virtual training and supervision to community health workers as they identify and treat common mental health disorders.
India, the world’s third-largest energy consumer, generates 80% of its energy from coal, oil and biomass. To meet its future projected growth, the International Energy Agency in Paris says that India will need to add an electric power system the size of the EU’s every 20 years. It has made great strides, including ensuring each village is connected to the power grid, and its solar PV deployment program is one of the world’s ambitious. Yet it faces many challenges – energy poverty, access to clean water, increased road transportation, and high temperatures that yield a demand for air conditioning.
On March 26, the Building Bharat Boston Biosciences (B4) program held a two-session online webinar to mark the conclusion of its final phase. The Building Bharat-Boston Biosciences (B4) Program is the second iteration of the earlier Boston-Bangalore Biosciences Beginnings Program. Funded by the Department of Biotechnology within the Government of India, the B4 program is a collaboration between the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) in Bangalore, the Harvard Global Research Support Centre India, and the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University.
The Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System is an ambitious, cross-sectoral initiative to lay out the path to universal health coverage in India. Its guiding principle is that structural change toward universal health coverage can only be achieved through consultative and participatory engagement with the diverse sectors involved in healthcare and, most importantly, with India’s citizenry.
This event aimed to introduce the Commission to the Harvard community and invite students, researchers, faculty, and alumni to participate in the initiative. It consisted of a panel discussion featuring several of the Commission’s co-chairs and commissioners, who are leading voices from across India’s healthcare landscape. They discussed the Commission’s five work streams (citizens’ engagement, financing, governance, human resources, and technology) and ways to get involved.