Archive for the ‘Infectious Disease’ Category

Tonique
Heaven

Gaming That Changes Lives, Part I

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

I was very intrigued when I first heard about the “Games for Change” effort that is taking shape in the United States. Games that don’t just entertain but educate and foster understanding and social change – I thought it was a fascinating idea. But when I sat in on the “Games for Change & Health Workshop: Brainstorming and Game Design Jam for HIV/AIDS” for Digital Capital Week, I was floored. The workshop, hosted by Spectrum, aimed to educate attendees on HIV/AIDS and “edu-gaming.” And, in doing so, supply them with the knowledge to conceptualize video games that could help a variety of audiences better understand HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C. and around the world. You can watch the live stream of the event in our DC Week video archives.

Two of our panel speakers – David Phillips, an information governance contractor at The National Institutes of Health, and Justin Goforth, RN, Director of Medical Adherence Unit and STD Services, Whitman Walker Clinic – were extremely educated on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Before delving into the gaming aspect, they introduced the hard hitting facts of the virus. After all, we need to know the subject matter before we could brainstorm about the game. (more…)

Posted in Disease Awareness, Health 2.0, Infectious Disease, Technology
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MaggieSchmerin
Maggie
Schmerin

Spectrum To Host Free DC Week Event: Games for Change & Health – Brainstorming and Game Design Jam for HIV/AIDS

Friday, June 11th, 2010

dcweek2010-320Spectrum is excited to help kick-off Digital Capital Week, by hosting “Games for Change & Health Workshop: Brainstorming and Game Design Jam for HIV/AIDS” on Monday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. at our K Street office. 

Video games are said to be extremely effective when designed to address a specific problem or teach a certain skill, where clear objectives can be stated and when deployed selectively within a context relevant to the learning activity and goal.

This workshop will give attendees knowledge about HIV/AIDS and “edu-gaming” – creating video games for an educational purpose – and attendees will work together to conceptualize video games which could help a variety of audiences better understand HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C. and around the world. 

To register to attend this free workshop, click here.

Let the gaming begin!

Posted in Disease Awareness, Health 2.0, Infectious Disease, New Media, Social Media
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Spectrum

Week-Long Immunization Campaign Reaches Millions

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

FACT: An estimated 10 million cases and 164,000 deaths from measles occur each year.

FACT: Measles is a leading cause of vaccine-preventable deaths among young children.

FACT: For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die.

When I came across these chilling statics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I was surprised by the incidence rate and the severity of a disease that we in the U.S. rarely see. In developing countries, measles is a killer, so I was interested to learn about a program underway in Zimbabwe.

Image Courtesy of WHO

Image Courtesy of WHO

Last week, Dr. Henry Madzorera, Zimbabwe’s Honorable Minister of Health and Child Welfare, launched a week-long nationwide measles immunization campaign. The “Child Health Days” campaign targeted approximately 5 million children aged 6 months to 14 years with the measles vaccination, as well as vitamin A supplementation and all the other recommended antigens for children less than five years of age. This mass immunization campaign came in response to the current measles outbreak that has affected 55 out of 62 districts in Zimbabwe, killing approximately 384 children. (more…)

Posted in Immunization, Infectious Disease
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Kaitlin Doody
Kaitlin
Doody

Spectrum Infection: Video Games for Health Care

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Growing up, my brothers and I would play N64. To this day, MarioKart and MarioParty are my favorite video games. I never thought I’d be blogging about video games for my job, but when you can apply gaming to real life health care challenges, I can’t help but notice.

Most health-savvy gamers are familiar with the landmark health care video game case: the Corrupted Blood incident on World of Warcraft. In 2005, a “virtual plague outbreak” occurred on the multiplayer online role-playing game.  While the outbreak was actually glitch in the video game system, the virtual plague’s resemblance to a real world epidemic drew attention from epidemiologists and other public health professionals. The prestigious medical journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, even published an analysis of the video game outbreak.   infectious_disease
(more…)

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Spectrum

Spectrum Infection: Everyday Barriers to Combating Malaria

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

As organizations around the world honor World Malaria Day today, I’d like to give you something else to think about.  And no, I’m not talking about the numbers and statistics that are vaunted so often as deterministic in the fight against infectious disease in the modern world.  I’m talking about a snapshot of the day-to-day experiences and efforts that prove most valuable to malaria prevention, and just how important it is to educate individual people about the disease.

It may be hard for many of us in the developed world to imagine that many people in still-developing countries live in constant fear of mosquitoes-the primary carriers of malaria-or that other groups, in cultural contexts different from our own, may attribute causes of malarial infections to religious beliefs, or may reject preventive technologies for similar reasons.  But barriers like these are all too common. World Malaria Day’s “Rollback Malaria,” a campaign funded by the Global Malaria Action Plan, aims to address these barriers directly by reaching out to individuals, providing access to preventive care, education and holistic support.

The Global Malaria Action Plan proposes to eliminate malaria once and for all by providing individuals with supplies and services such as insecticide-treated bednets, in-home spraying for mosquito, diagnostic tests (RDT’s) and ample doses of effective treatment. (more…)

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MaggieSchmerin
Maggie
Schmerin

Spectrum Infection: Lessons Learned – H1N1 A Year Later

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

nicGreetings from the 44th National Immunization Conference in Atlanta! With the one year anniversary of the H1N1 outbreak upon us this week, there is not a more fitting place for officials from NIH, HHS, CDC, FDA, state and local health agencies, vaccine advocacy organizations and vaccine manufacturers to gather.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius delivered the conference’s keynote address, which focused on the response to the H1N1 flu pandemic, the lessons learned and efforts to strengthen America’s health security in the future.

On April 21, 2009, the CDC was alerted to a new strain of influenza in California and Texas, similar to one that was presenting in Mexico. Kathleen Sebelius was still serving as governor of Kansas, but seven short days later would be sworn in as our country’s 21st HHS Secretary and quickly whisked into the Situation Room at the White House where President Obama and other government leaders were beginning to mount an attack on what would become the world’s first pandemic in 40 years.

Over the course of the past 12 months, the federal government worked alongside state and local health agencies to ensure that Americans were prepared for and protected against H1N1, and the H1N1 vaccine was the keystone of these efforts. As Secretary Sebelius stated, “The H1N1 vaccine was the most ambitious immunization campaign ever.” (more…)

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