GUESTS:
Ilona Kickbusch, Founder and Chair of the International Advisory Board, Global Health Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute
Aída Mencía Ripley, Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation, Universidad Iberoamericana

How can scientists and diplomats work together to advance the global health agenda? Ilona Kickbusch, who founded the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, reflects on her experiences working within science diplomacy and the importance of having strong evidence to be able to reach a diplomatic consensus. She also urges scientists to initiate dialogue with policy-makers and diplomats. Aída Mencía Ripley, Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Universidad Iberoamericana in the Dominican Republic, shares an insightful case study of how diplomacy enabled researchers at her university to contribute to the national COVID-19 response.

GUESTS:
Tim Mackey, Professor, University of California San Diego
Yara Aboelwaffa, Independent Digital Health Consultant

We kick off the new year with a conversation about new advances in technologies that are transforming public health practice. In this episode, we explore the promise and perils of artificial intelligence (AI), big data, infodemics and the importance of culturally appropriate innovations. While speaking with Florence 2.0, an AI health worker, host Dr Garry Aslanyan tries to get advice on leading a healthier lifestyle. Yara Aboelwaffa, co-founder of Health 2.0 Egypt, tells us about the fastest-growing innovations in the Middle East. And Tim Mackey, co-founder of a health care big data startup, shares the realities of attracting funding for public health-focused innovations.

GUESTS:
Monica Kirya, Senior Adviser, U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre
Patty Garcia, Former Minister of Health, Peru. Professor of Public Health, Cayetano Heredia University
Jonathan Cushing, Global Health Programme Director, Transparency International

This podcast episode on corruption is opening up the discussion to a wider audience to understand the scale of the problem for health systems and to hold more people to account for their part in the resulting damage.
Our host Dr Garry Aslanyan delves deep into the topic to uncover the sources, the offenders and the solutions from our panel of experts. Together they are able to define the subject matter, provide examples from around the globe and piece together the puzzle of how to solve this conundrum.

GUESTS:
John McCauley, Former Director, Worldwide Influenza Centre, Francis Crick Institute
Mahmudur Rahman, Former Director, Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research and National Influenza Center

For this episode, TDR have partnered with GISRS, the World Health Organization’s Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System. Your podcast host, Garry Aslanyan, brings together two professors to share their unique experiences from both the global and national level of the influenza response: John McCauley and Mahmudur Rahman.

GUESTS:
Eugen Ghiță, Human Rights Monitor and President, Roma Lawyers Association, Romania RomaJust
Reem Mussa, Humanitarian Advisor and Coordinator of the Forced Migration Team, Médecins Sans Frontières

For this episode we bring you a topic that rarely reaches the top of the global health agenda, that is the subject of the health of refugees and migrants. This podcast episode lays out the key issues for the listener and through our guests it builds an awareness to ensure this topic gets better attention in the future. During this podcast we hear the health experiences of Eugen Ghita who was a migrant and he is now working as a human rights monitor on behalf of the Roma community in Europe. Reem Mussa is able to give us context in relation to the policies of the different types of refugees and migrants, including the repercussions for the health of the newcomers may encounter on their journey such as mental health needs or respiratory conditions for those subjected to detention.

GUESTS:
Stephanie Topp, Associate Professor, Global Health and Development in the College of Public Health, James Cook University
Renzo Guinto, Chief Planetary Health Scientist, Sunway Centre for Planetary Health and Director, Planetary and Global Health, St. Luke's Medical Center

This month's podcast is about global health career paths and approaches. Garry Aslanyan speaks to with two career professionals sharing their knowledge of how they chose their path and giving clear guidance on ways to get the support needed to increase opportunities to make a difference in the ever pressing global health challenges. Stephanie Topp looks at how global health can support the next generation of thinkers and leaders, and suggests that networked capacity building and an emerging voices model is a critical example. Renzo Guinto wants to listen to different voices and challenge power structures to address the inequities that global health is trying to address.

GUESTS:
Marie Ba, Director of the Ouagadougou Partnership Coordination Unit
Tom Wein, Director, Dignity Initiative IDinsight

An important Global Health Matters podcast topic discussing the need to build an awareness of the ways we interact with colleagues in the workplace to adapt our programmes to be more inclusive. We need to talk about “the future of global health through diversity and dignity”. Host Garry Aslanyan interviews our special guests who have a deep understanding of diversity and dignity and their application worldwide. Marie Ba questions whether diversity is just a tick-box exercise, ensuring that we break down the definition and elements that make up the term “diversity”. Tom Wein is based in Kenya where he leads research on dignity in development with IDinsight. By analysing further the two concepts of diversity and dignity together, the link is formed and shows that representation is only one aspect, and that agency and equality also need to be factored in to realize dignity within diversity.

GUESTS:
Bill Rodriguez, CEO, FIND
Sikhulile Moyo, Research Laboratory Director, Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new global awareness of the accessibility of diagnostics: we need to test to protect with equal access for all. In this episode of Global Health Matters, we answer key questions such as “how available are essential diagnostics in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)?” Host Garry Aslanyan interviews our special guests who have a deep understanding of diagnostics and their application worldwide. Bill Rodriguez is CEO of FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, and is also founder of his own diagnostics company, Daktari Diagnostics. Our second guest is Sikhulile Moyo who led the team that helped discover the Omicron variant in Botswana through careful cross-examination of COVID-19 tests.

GUESTS:
Uche Amazigo, CEO, Pan-African Community Initiative on Education and Health
Aidan O’Leary, Director, WHO Polio Eradication
David Reddy, CEO, Medicines for Malaria Venture

What are the differences between the various paths to a disease-free world? Why are we pursuing eradication of some diseases while for others, control or elimination is the more realistic option? In this episode, host Garry Aslanyan speaks with three experts who answer these questions and more. Uche Amazigo shares lessons she learned during her tenure as the Director of the WHO African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control; David Reddy discusses the new and exciting innovations for malaria elimination; and Aidan O’Leary makes the case for pursuing worldwide eradication of polio. Join us in this discovery of what is needed to reduce or remove the risk of infectious diseases.

GUESTS:
Fatima Hassan, Founder, Health Justice Initiative
Petro Terblanche, Managing Director, Afrigen Biologics
Judit Rius Sanjuan, Policy Specialist, Health Technologies Innovation & Access, UNDP

As the world commits to equitable access to medicines and vaccines, is this just on paper or a reality? In the case of COVID-19, as of early March 2022, 74% of those in high-income countries have been fully vaccinated, compared with just 11% of people in low-income countries. Can South Africa’s experience with tackling HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 point to future solutions for other low- and middle-income countries? How has intellectual property rights affected development of vaccines across Africa?

GUESTS:
Teresa Soop, Senior Research Advisor, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)
Mohammad Alsafadi, Senior Health Officer, Global Polio Eradication Initiative

Throughout the first season of Global Health Matters, we’ve covered a range of topics including research during the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling racism within global health, science communication and implementation research. For this bonus episode, host Garry Aslanyan sat down with two of our listeners who shared their reflections on various episodes from Season 1.

GUESTS:
Catherine Kyobutungi, Executive Director of the African Population and Health Research Center in Kenya
Agnes Binagwaho, Vice Chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda

What are the colonial legacies in global health? And what impact have they had on how some health and health research programmes are run in Africa? In this episode, we speak to two visionary women leaders who tell us what’s wrong in global health and give concrete steps toward more equitable and inclusive partnerships. Host Garry Aslanyan speaks with Catherine Kyobutungi and Agnes Binagwaho.

GUESTS:
Alvin Marcelo, Executive Director of Asia eHealth Information Network and Chief Medical Information Officer of St. Luke's Medical Center in the Philippines
Karin Källander, Senior Health Adviser and Chief of the Digital Health & Information Systems Unit, UNICEF

Increasingly, digital technologies are transforming the delivery of health services and the functioning of health systems. Many of these technologies have also presented new ways of doing research and informed rapid decision-making. In this episode, we hear how UNICEF worked with Jamaica to rapidly deploy an electronic registry solution for the COVID-19 vaccine. We also learn that the Government of the Philippines created a huge opportunity for research by allowing open access to data from COVID-19 tests.

GUESTS:
Margaret Gyapong, Director, Institute for Health Research at the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ghana
Lee Hampton, Vaccine preventable disease surveillance and vaccine safety focal point at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Switzerland

The World Health Organization recently made the historic recommendation to widely use the first ever malaria vaccine, RTS,S. This recommendation was based on evidence generated from a pilot vaccine implementation programme in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that has reached more than 800 000 children since 2019. This is an excellent example of how evidence based on implementation research tells us whether health interventions, such as vaccines, will be effective in real life, after clinical trials show its efficacy and safety. In this episode, Margaret Gyapong shares her first-hand experiences and learnings from the malaria vaccine pilot. Lee Hampton also tells us how implementation research has played a key role in the success of health programmes for diseases such as yellow fever, typhoid and more.

GUESTS:
Natalia Pasternak, Founder, Instituto Questão de Ciência in Brazil
Imogen Foulkes, Geneva correspondent, BBC News and SWI swissinfo.ch
Sonia Lowman, Filmmaker and Senior Communications Specialist, International Medial Corps

This episode features three renowned communicators of science who work to inform, educate and inspire the public about health issues. Microbiologist Natalia Pasternak has become one of the leading communicators of science in Brazil and internationally. As founder of Instituto Questão de Ciência, she offers advice on how others can set up science communication institutes in their countries. Imogen Foulkes reflects upon how scientists can better communicate their research to the public, given her experience as a journalist with the BBC and SWI swissinfo.ch based in Geneva. And Sonia Lowman of International Medical Corps highlights the power of film to connect audiences to global health issues and create a vision for the way forward.

GUESTS:
Karlee Silver, Co-CEO, Grand Challenges Canada
Tembeka Mpako-Ntusi, former Director of Research, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa

Strong research ecosystems require strong research leaders. In this episode, we hear from Karlee Silver who speaks about how Grand Challenges Canada has supported the discovery and research of new solutions to health and other challenges. Tembeka Mpako-Ntusi of Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa says research management at universities should address not only current challenges but also those lurking on the horizon.

GUESTS:
Paul Gwakisa, Professor of Immunology, Sokoine University of Agriculture, United Republic of Tanzania
Pierre Quiblier, Programme Officer, Chemicals and Health Branch, United Nations Environment Programme

Most climate change predictions show an upward trend in temperature for at least the next nine decades. Rural communities whose health and livelihoods depend on the environment are more vulnerable to climate change. In recent years, persistent droughts have made Maasai communities in northern Tanzania vulnerable to sleeping sickness, a disease spread by the tsetse fly. Paul Gwakisa has dedicated his research to helping the Maasai people better understand and prevent outbreaks of sleeping sickness in their communities. Pierre Quiblier also speaks about global efforts to better tackle climate change through an integrated “One Health” approach that brings together sectors such as agriculture, health and the environment.

GUESTS:
Magaly Blas, Director, Mamás del Río (Mothers of the River)
Luis Gabriel Cuervo, Senior Advisor, Pan American Health Organization

Mamás del Río is a social innovation focused on improving maternal and newborn health in rural regions of the Amazon in Peru and Colombia. This episode explores how communities, citizen-led organizations and researchers are driving social innovations such as Mamás del Rio to improve health service delivery and strengthen health systems.

GUESTS:
Paul Kazyoba, Director of Research, Tanzania National Institute for Medical Research
Thabi Maitin, Division Manager, South African Medical Research Council

Africa has not seen the same scale of devastation from COVID-19 seen in other regions. Join host Garry Aslanyan as he and his guests explore some of the reasons why African countries have been able to deal with the pandemic so effectively. These include a prior experience in dealing with epidemics such as Ebola, strong sub-regional research networks and long-standing investments in research capacity.

GUESTS:
Roopa Dhatt, Executive Director of Women in Global Health
Rose Leke, Founder of HIGHER Women Consortium Cameroon
Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization

In science, globally, women account for only about 30% of researchers, according to UNESCO, and evidence shows that their participation is even lower at leadership and decision-making levels. Why is that, and what is being done to better support women’s careers in science? Join Dr Garry Aslanyan and his expert panel of guests as they share their inspiring journeys as women leaders in global health. They also discuss the root causes of gender inequality in science and some strategies they have developed to address them.

GUESTS:
Dissou Affolabi,National Tuberculosis Programme manager in Benin; Executive Secretary of the West and Central African Regional Networks for Tuberculosis Control
Muna Abdi, Director of Somaliland Central Statistics Department; Principal Investigator for a Study on Female Genital Mutilation Prevention and Care
Suneeta Krishnan, Deputy director of Strategy, Planning & Management, and Evaluation at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s India Country Office

The first episode of Global Health Matters takes us on a journey to Somalia, India and Benin to explore how researchers have adapted to one of the greatest challenges we have ever faced – the COVID-19 pandemic. Join Dr Garry Aslanyan and his expert panel of guests as they discuss the innovative approaches they have taken to continue their work amid the crisis.

GUESTS:
Ilona Kickbusch, Founder and Chair of the International Advisory Board, Global Health Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute
Aída Mencía Ripley, Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation, Universidad Iberoamericana

Guests: -Emmanuella Amoako, co-host of Global Health Unfiltered podcast -Leshawn Benedict and Gordon Thane, hosts of Public Health Insight podcast -Mark Goldberg, host of Global Dispatches podcast -Priti Patnaik, editor of Geneva Health Files