Aaron / Vanika

Article

This past weekend we had the privilege of attending the Global Health and Innovation
Conference, hosted by Unite for Sight at Yale University. First Year Programs & Learning
Communities and the Nutritional Science Department generously funded each of our tickets.
The focus of the conference was on global health and international development; lecture
sessions covered evidence based practice and generally what works well in the field. With
interactive workshops and speaker panels, we were able to directly engage with and learn from
a variety of health and international development experts.
The weekend kicked off with an interesting presentation by Jordan Levy, Chief External
Communications Officer of Ubuntu. He communicated best practices for NGO development with
an analogy relating to children. Like children, global development does not happen over night; it
takes perseverance and long term investment. He also stressed the importance of properly
evaluating the impact of ones public health programming. One of our main takeaways was the
importance of focusing on changes in health outcomes instead of unit output when evaluating
programmatic success. For example, it is better to examine changes in malaria cases versus the
amount of malaria nets provided.
Jordans presentation was followed by a talk by Jeffery Sachs, Special UN Advisor to the
General Secretary; we were excited to hear him speak as he is considered one of the most
influential authorities on international development. He spoke about the financial considerations
to achieving universal health care, Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3). We were

impressed with the depth of his knowledge on the issues as he explained in detail multiple
barriers and considerations to achieving the goal. Among the many barriers he spoke about, we
found his point about patent law most interesting. Patents can be positive in some applications,
although in terms of global health they create challenges. This issue of patent law is most
prevalent in the consumer drug industry. Companies charge higher prices then market value as
a way to collect the most profits while their patents are active; this dynamic poses issues of
access to life saving drug treatments for people around the world.
Throughout the weekend we attended a variety of presentations, which furthered our
academic knowledge of the field. In addition to the presentations mentioned above, we attended
talks covering nutrition financing, healthy food environments, political advocacy, chronic disease
intervention and health behavior change through communication. We also attended a talk by
student researchers who presented their projects that addressed maternal and child health in
countries around the world. The conference ended with a talk that we found to be the most
inspiring and unique. Leaders in global health, including Michael Jacobson co-founder of the
Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), gave insight on their personal journeys through
their careers in global health. This talk opened our eyes to the many possible career paths
available in the field of global health. This was timely as we are both graduating shortly. The
talked pushed us to consider options that we had not thought of before. All five of the speakers
exhibited passion when communicating their ideas. Some of our favorite quotes from the
session included

Love what you do, love who you do it with,

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

[exhibit qualities of] passion, character, and competence in everything you do

and finally Be happy

Reflecting on our time at the conference, we are both extremely grateful to be able to attend.

We learned so much about global health and international development and how our skills can
be used to effect change. It is opportunities like these, that are vitally important to a students
academic and professional development. We thank UConn and specifically First Year Programs
& Learning Communities and the Nutritional Science Department for contributing this added
value to our undergraduate experience. It affirmed a passion for global health as the focus of our
careers. We will look back at this time as a pivotal moment to realizing our potential in the field.