It's time once again to apply for the Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN) Summer Internship Program!  The program gives students from the HESN Labs, including SEAD, the opportunity to bring their talent to the US Global Development Lab and USAID. In the past Duke students have had the opportunity to work with the Senior Advisor of International Education, the Center for Global Solutions, the Saving Lives at Birth program, and more through the internships.

This summer 25 HESN internships are available in USAID's Washington D.C offices and remotely. Each student may apply for up to three positions. The internships cover a wide range of topics, from global health to sustainability efforts, and provide a wide range of skill-building opportunities such as data analysis, monitoring and evaluation, marketing, and communications.

While these internships are unpaid, SEAD is planning to provide small stipends (amount TBD) to eligible students and students may be able to seek funding from sources around campus to cover summer costs.

Eligibility: Duke undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students are invited to apply; students who will have recently graduated are also eligible. Interns must be U.S. citizens and obtain security clearance for in-person internships. If security clearance is not granted before the start of the internship, the intern may participate virtually. Please note that dual citizens are unlikely to obtain security clearance in time to participate in the program.

Deadline: Application materials (see full list) must be submitted by 5pm on November 10th through USAID's online form accompanied by an email to USAID. However, in order to receive a Letter of Approval (see more) from SEAD, students must make the request to SEAD by 12pm on November 9th.

See the full instructions for applying here.
​The list of internship opportunities can be found here.

Good luck!

Every year, USAID's Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN) hosts a photo contest for the HESN Labs to showcase the work their students, faculty, staff, and partners have done over the year. This year SEAD has six photos entered into the contest and you can help us win! 

If you have a Yahoo! or Flickr account, sign in and simply favorite the photos you like by clicking on the star icon in the photo. You may vote for as many photos as you like. Voting closes Wednesday, October 20th. In the below gallery you'll find the photos from the SEAD Lab; clicking the photo will bring you to the voting page for it. You can find all of the entries here.

​Best of luck to all the entrants! 

An inter-professional team from the Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center (HSPSC) recently traveled to Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, as part of a global health education program. The initiative, funded by Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD), was focused on delivering postpartum hemorrhage education using screen-based simulation. This proof-of-concept, using multi-player screen-based simulation, is meant to address gaps in care and to decrease disparities in healthcare education.

The long-range goal of the program is to establish a means for simulation training across continents. The goal of this trip was to train local champions who could sustain the program. Over the course of a week, Ugandan learners (including midwives, anesthesia providers, nurses, and physicians) participated in the inter-professional simulation focusing on teamwork and communication in the context of postpartum hemorrhage.

The success of the program was highly dependent on the diversity and passion of the team, both in Uganda and in the U.S. The project required support from simulation experts, anesthesia providers, computer scientists, nurses, and obstetricians both in the U.S. and in Africa.

One recurrent question was whether the learners would accept and the hospital infrastructure would support our software. The Ugandan trainees embraced every aspect of the training, including the technology. Some learners were tech-savvy while others sheepishly admitted they had never used a computer. Despite the learning curve being different for each trainee, everyone remained intently focused on the learning objectives. Even those with no computer background learned new skills that would be useful to them in practice.

Prior to our trip, we identified many potential barriers to our success: inadequate computer infrastructure, potential interruption of power or Internet connection, potential damage to computer equipment in austere environment, poor acceptance of technology by Ugandan learners, and work responsibilities that would usurp the time of the training sessions. It was critical to consider each of these situations in advance and come up with contingency plans prior to our departure from the U.S. The planning time was well spent, as we had to institute many of our contingency plans while in Africa. These on-the-fly changes included: moving to different computer lab, moving from the wired to the cellular network, purchasing additional network airtime, and borrowing compatible equipment. Although we planned for many contingencies, the project still required team members on the ground to think quickly and creatively on their feet.

Perhaps the most important lesson learned was the amount of time needed to navigate an international IRB. We budgeted approximately three months of time to obtain IRB approval in Uganda. Three months was not enough. With future projects, we would reserve at least six months of time to obtain international IRB approval (and thus were only able to obtain part of the data we hoped to obtain while abroad). Despite this challenge, we were rewarded with lots of positive feedback from Ugandan trainees and a crew of local champions that are interested in continuing the project long-distance.
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We are thankful to our counterparts at Mulago Hospital in Uganda, without whom none of this work would have been possible or worthwhile, and to SEAD (and USAID) for their belief in our vision. 

​Megan Foureman, CRNA, has been a CRNA at Duke for nearly five years, and in 2012 was awarded the Duke CRNA Peer Service award for her formation and oversight of the Duke CRNA Global Health Committee and her volunteer work at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti. 
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​Jeffrey Taekman, MD, is a Professor of Anesthesiology at Duke and the Assistant Dean for Educational Technology within the School of Medicine. Dr. Taekman directs the Duke University Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center.  Dr. Taekman is a recipient of the  International Anesthesia Research Society Teaching Recognition Award for Innovation in Education and recently served as lead judge in the Institute of Medicine/Society for Simulation in Healthcare Serious Games and Virtual Environments Showcase at the Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education.

Right now is an exciting time to be involved in global health innovation. Organizations are creating amazing, innovative ideas that have the power to improve the lives of millions of people. But an innovative idea alone is not enough to transform healthcare. You also need money.

For that reason, Investors’ Circle and CASE i3 worked together during the SEAD East Africa visit to hold a series of events in Nairobi, Kenya, to connect and inform both local and global health investors about each other’s work as well as help highlight the innovative solutions to health that are growing into investable ventures.

Investors’ Circle brought several experienced US angel investors to Kenya and together they visited more than nine local healthcare ventures in and around Nairobi. They also held an Investor Forum on September 17th which was attended by over 15 investors, including representatives from organizations such as Eleos Foundation, Intellecap, Anthos, Calvert Foundation, Pharm Access, iDev International, Novostar, Alpha Mundi and more.

At Investors’ Circle Investor Forum: Nairobi 2015, investors reviewed the findings from SEAD’s recently completed report Opportunities and Challenges for Global Health Impact Investors. They also shared the opportunities, trends and challenges of investing to improve healthcare outcomes in Kenya based on their own local experiences. Key trends from these discussions included:

Following the Capital Roundtable, five entrepreneurs pitched their ventures to this elite group of investors. A wide range of enterprises pitched, including SEAD innovator Penda Health, a low-cost, high-quality clinic in Nairobi that has reached break-even across its current facilities and is looking for expansion capital. Nick Sowden, co-founder of Penda Health, noted “60% of Kenyans have indicated they would not return to the last place they went to receive healthcare,” a clear signal that there is a business opportunity for clinics like Penda in the Kenyan system.

Other enterprises included several health-influencing businesses such as GreenChar, a clean charcoal briquet provider. According to GreenChar, more than 1 billion people in Africa cook with firewood or charcoal and estimates don’t show that number dropping before 2020. It’s easy to imagine the health and environmental benefits of providing a clean charcoal option to these families.

After the pitches, Investors’ Circle ran its trademark “investor deal debrief” in which investors discuss their reactions and histories and start making plans for joint due diligence on the deals. The day culminated with the Investor Reception, co-hosted by SEAD, which allowed over 65 investors, entrepreneurs, foundations and others to network around shared interests.

The East African healthcare industry is quickly expanding with tremendous room for growth and innovation. By hosting events like the Capital Roundtable, we can help foster that innovation by connecting promising ventures with the capital they need to scale their growth. Several investors expressed excitement to make new connections, with one commenting “I’m happy to see so many new-to-me faces here!” Those connections are ones we aim to continue to foster in these burgeoning markets.