Abundance Project for Global Health
Abundance Project for Global Health is an innovative partnership between the Abundance Foundation, Harvard Medical School, Partners In Health and Global Health Delivery Project to empower local health workers in Haiti and Rwanda. Combining the on-the-ground expertise of Partners In Health with the multidisciplinary clinical and scholarly resources of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, the Abundance Project for Global Health will create empirically-based delivery strategies to improve health equity in two of the world’s hardest hit locales, Haiti and Rwanda. The Project is led by Abundance Partners Louise Ivers, M.D. MPH., Senior Health and Policy Advisor for Partners In Health in Haiti and Corrado Cancedda, M.D. PhD., Medical Education Director for Partners In Health in Rwanda.
The Abundance Project for Global Health (APGH) was instrumental in helping to develop an Emergency Medicine Residency at the University of Mirebalais in Haiti. In Sierra Leone, the Foundation’s President, Dr. Stephen Kahn, continued to work with the leaders of Harvard Medical School’s Global Health Research Core to support the discovery of critical Ebola-related knowledge and build the country’s clinical capacity, using lessons from Rwanda’s “Human Resources for Health” Program.
As part of the APGH, Dr. Kahn continued to work in partnership with the Global Health Delivery Program at Harvard Medical School to support the development and dissemination of essential medical knowledge to a global network of doctors, nurses, and community health workers through Global Health Delivery Online (GHDonline.org). Through GHDOnline, the Foundation also supported the scaling up of the distribution of free institutional licenses of the preeminent digital medical reference tool, UpToDate, to medical practitioners and trainees in resource poor settings throughout the world.
We also continue to work with the directors of the two-
year program, the Masters of Medical Science in Global Health Delivery (MMSc-
GHD) at Harvard Medical School. This two-year program trains and mentors
tomorrow’s future global health leaders in the design, implementation, evaluation, and improvement of health programs in resource-poor settings.
The Abundance Foundation continues to engage other funders to sustain, scale and replicate this important work, attending site visits and advisory council meetings and representing APGH in other venues.
Team
Corrado Cancedda
Corrado Cancedda, MD, PhD, graduated (with honors) in Medicine in 1996 from the University of Genoa, his hometown in Italy. From 1997 to 2001 he worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the Division of Immunogenetics at Columbia University in New York City. The results of Dr. Cancedda’s research on allograft rejection earned him a PhD in Clinical Immunology from the University of Genoa.
In 2002 Dr. Cancedda decided to pursue his clinical training in United States. From 2002 to 2005 he completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Jacobi Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 2007 he completed his Infectious Diseases fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis.
Dr. Cancedda currently spends most of his time in Rwanda where he holds the position ‚ÄúPoorvu Family Faculty Fellow‚Äù for the country. In addition to direct patient care, he provides close clinical supervision and mentorship to rotating Global Health Equity (GHE) residents from Brigham & Women’s Hospital, as well as Rwandan physicians and nurses. His interest lies in the creation of high-quality and sustainable post-graduate training programs for health care providers in developing countries through the establishment of replicable partnership models between local and foreign academic institutions. Dr. Cancedda has been involved in the development of several post-graduate nursing training programs in Rwanda and is currently working on launching a Family and Community Medicine residency program for Rwandan medical graduates.
Louise Ivers
Chief of Mission for Partners In Health (PIH) in Haiti
Dr. Louise Ivers is Chief of Mission for Partners In Health (PIH) in Haiti, an international non-profit organization that provides direct health care and social services to poor communities around the world, supported by research and advocacy. She is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the combined MGH/BWH program. Dr. Ivers also received a diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a Master of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Dr. Ivers implements health programs, and is interested in improving the delivery of healthcare in resource poor settings, the provision of care to the rural and urban poor, as well as patient-oriented investigation that offers solutions to barriers to healthcare. She balances her time between management of PIH Haiti, direct clinical service and operational research. Dr. Ivers has contributed to published articles on HIV/AIDS, food insecurity, and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Current projects include investigating the impact of targeted food assistance on people with HIV infection in rural Haiti, the effectiveness of ARV therapies on viral suppression in community-based programs, and humanitarian assistance in response to the January 2010 earthquake. Dr. Ivers has served as a Technical Advisor to the WHO and also mentors Haitian and American physicians.
Blog Posts
Harvard global health researcher and Chief Abundance Partner, Dr. Megan Murray, hypothesizes that the most widely used vaccine in the world (BCG, originally developed for tuberculosis), might be useful in protecting people against COVID-19. Her insight is based on clinical studies that show BCG works against a host of unrelated infections, including many respiratory diseases.
As long-time collaborators -- fighting epidemic disease including Cholera and Ebola -- Dr. Murray immediately
...Dear Abundance network,
This is certainly an unprecedented challenge we are experiencing. I hope you and all of your loved ones are managing to stay both physically and emotionally healthy.
Since the first week of March, the Abundance Foundation has been doing everything we can to support research on a potentially game-changing COVID-19 medication. We are ready to take it to the next level, and I am reaching out now to harness the collective wisdom and support of our incredible friends, colleagues,
...
