The World Health Organization’s “Global Initiative on Health Technologies” addresses disparities worldwide and is working to expand the role of technology. Katherine Cauley, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Community Health and the Director of the Center for Healthy Communities at Wright State University (WSU) located in Dayton, was appointed to serve on the World Health Organization’s “Expert Advisory Group for Innovative Technologies”.
The goal of the Advisory Group is to bring the benefits of core health technologies to resource-scarce areas of the world. The project is being organized by the WHO’s Department of Essential Technologies and the project is funded and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Cauley will join representatives of 23 countries spanning North, Central and South America, as well as Africa, Australia, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The members will work to identify health issues in resource-scarce regions that would be most likely to respond to health technologies. The next step is to solicit business and industry proposals to apply these technologies in these regions and to determine which proposals will move forward in partnership with the WHO.
The three year project began at a meeting in Singapore in June to review current health issues and potential technology solutions. In 2010, the committee will meet in Copenhagen to review the proposals submitted from business and industry.
In other news at Wright State University (WSU), the School of Medicine recently received a $2.7 million award to establish a joint venture with the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine and WSU’s National Center for Medical Readiness (NCMR). The funding will help develop the NCMR Tactical Laboratory, also known as the “Calamityville Tactical Laboratory Project” to develop projects to help others respond to disasters.
The program is expected to bring 30 full time jobs to the area and could generate as much as $75 million for the region. With more than $13 million in state and federal funding, this unique research facility will provide one-of-a-kind training opportunities for the world’s medical, public health, public safety and civilian and military disaster response decision-makers.
The project will also:
• Identify needed civilian and military staffing requirements for community and healthcare facility evacuations
• Develop modeling technologies to enable community health system, public health agencies and emergency management leadership to identify, train and distribute DOD and non-DOD response forces in the event of a large-scale disaster
• Create a common operating structure, communication and procedure for a national medical response
• Cultivate a rapid multi-model in residence training capability for medical staff around the nation
For more information on either project, email Phillip Neal at phillip.neal@wright.edu, call (937) 775-4587 or go to www.med.wright.edu.
