International Child Health Section
Tobey Audcent, MD (for Doug McMillan, MD, Section President)
The Section is busy preparing for the CPS annual conference in Ottawa in 2009. We look forward to hearing from this year's Hillman awardees at the annual section dinner and meeting with our section members. We are excited that this year's Section Concurrent Seminar will feature Laura Sauve and Jack Forbes speaking on the impact of HIV/AIDS on children, particularly programs aimed at prevention of mother to child transmission.
Hillman resident travel awards were given in the fall of 2008 for Dina Kulik to go to Malawi and for Julie Johnstone to travel to Tanzania . The next application deadline is April 30, 2009 . For further information please see the bi-annual resident newsletter from Dr. Gillian Morantz.
The International Child Health Curriculum group continues work on a modular curriculum in Global Child Health for pediatric trainees (funded by a two year grant from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada). Modules have been successfully piloted at McMaster University and UBC and the group will be holding a training day for research site champions at this year's CPS conference.
The Healthy Child Uganda (HCU) continues active community-based child health education activities in southwest Uganda . Main activities this year have included well received research mentoring offered to Ugandan faculty by Drs. Noni MacDonald and Bob Bortolussi (Dalhousie University), Ugandan student elective placements in HCU areas, child health (IMCI) training courses for health workers from our 12 sites, and community level health education and development activities. Communities have been busy building roads, gardens, energy efficient stoves and over 12,000 homes received bed nets this past year. Currently, HCU has 354 active volunteers (70% female) who are creating real change for children under five. We look forward to learning more about HCU impact this spring when data from our recent field surveys becomes available. Thanks again to the many CPS members who have donated to HCU through Healthy Generations and to Buy-A-Net, a Kingston , ON based NGO who supported our bed net distribution.
The section continues our relationship with the AAP Section on International Child Health. AAP members are invited to join the CPS and the International Child Health Section, just as many members of our CPS section also hold AAP memberships. Minutes of our business meetings and executive meetings are now being sent to the AAP Section on International Child Health to help promote communication.
Although we do not currently have a regular newsletter, Dr. Gillian Morantz has agreed to provide leadership and coordination in bringing relevant articles to the attention of our members. We invite any member who identifies a good publication to forward it, preferably with a short summary, to Dr. Morantz for review and anticipated distribution to Section members.
Looking forward to seeing you at the CPS annual meeting in Ottawa June 23-27, 2009!
Tobey Audcent for Doug McMillan, President
Posted: April 2009
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