[University World News] BANGLADESH: University has big impact on public health

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2008111315093225

With a vision of a world where everyone enjoys the maximum potential of health, the James P Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University in Dhaka has made a significant mark in public health education in Bangladesh and in South Asia in general.

One of the first public health institutions in the region was the school of tropical medicine, set up in Kolkata in 1922. After that, similar institutions soon began to appear but, according to a WHO report, most of those in India and other South Asian countries failed to create a major impact because of “neglect, assignment of lowest priority, low prestige, poor quality of staff, and inadequate facilities such as transport and field practice areas”.

To integrate community experiences in public health education, the Rockefeller Foundation helped set up a few schools of public health in Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe and Vietnam. But the number was much less than that needed to meet the demand.

To address the many problems public health is facing, and to test new teaching and learning methodologies, the Bangladesh company BRAC, one of the largest development organisations in the world, set up a school of public health in Dhaka.

Named after the late Executive Director of Unicef, the James P Grant School of Public Health is breaking new ground in innovative teaching – and in creating leaders for public health in developing countries.

During the school’s establishment, BRAC collaborated with prestigious public health schools in developed countries, including Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities, to develop the curriculum. Guest professors from those schools also teach in some of the school’s courses.

“The idea of setting up the school grew from BRAC’s continued effort in alleviating poverty in disadvantaged parts of the world,” says Professor AMR Choudhury, dean of the school.

Since its commencement in 2005, three batches of 77 participants from 14 countries have graduated from the school through its master of public health (MPH) programme. In the current academic year are 12 students from 11 countries of Asia, Africa, Europe and North America, and 18 students from Bangladesh.

While some students from the earlier classes have continued on to doctoral-level studies, most are now back in their own countries and have taken up jobs in various government, donor agency, media and non-governmental organisations.

The James P Grant School has several features which make it stand apart from its counterparts:

* It emphasises the art and science elements of public health. Apart from the MPH and the several other short courses the school offers, faculty members are involved in research on important issues that Bangladesh and other low-income countries face.
* The location of the school is in a developing country, thus providing a ’social laboratory’ for teaching and learning.
* The fact that it is placed in a development organisation such as BRAC which is committed to helping the poor and the disadvantaged, and which tries to blur the artificial divide between health and development and its vast human, material and infrastructural resources.

In the December 2007 issue of the widely circulated Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, the school has been featured and the article states that, “[The school] is one of a new breed of public health institutions based in a developing country. It offers courses relevant to Bangladesh as well as international public health issues, and attracts students from both developing and developed countries.”

The World Bank global health equity project has provided funding to:

* The Centre for Health Systems Studies of the school which has the potential to strengthen the health system in Bangladesh by informing, guiding and systematically evaluating policies of the health sector and to promote population health. In addition to launching the Health Watch Report, the centre has undertaken a number of research activities. Currently, a study is being done on the public-private partnership service delivery models in Bangladesh.
* The Centre for Gender, Sexuality and HIV-AIDS, established in collaboration with UNAids, is designated for research, policy, advocacy and training activities utilising state-of-the-art methods and technologies of teaching and learning, and providing unique opportunities in hands-on field experience in dealing with gender, sexuality and HIV-AIDS in Bangladesh and other developing countries.

Modern healthcare is about disease control and MPH is about learning methods and techniques to control disease at the grassroots levels in developing countries, including Bangladesh. The James P Grant School of Public Health, through its continued quest for success, should serve as a model for similar institutions in Bangladesh and in other South Asian countries.

[StarTech]TechReport – No power waste in the all new Digital Signal Processors!

http://thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=63244

ACCORDING to a report by Samuel K Moore, news editor of the IEEE Spectrum Magazine, hearing aids, power converters, medical implants, and telecommunications could benefit from continuous-time digital signal processing.

Digital signal processorsthose practically ubiquitous (available everywhere) circuits that make cellphone conversations understandable and MP3 players possiblecome in a great many varieties, but until recently, there was one variety no one had even thought to make! Called continuous-time digital signal processing (CT DSP), it has the ability, unique among such circuits, to consume dynamic power in proportion to the intensity of the signal it processes.

When there’s no signal, such as during the silent spots of a cellphone conversation, the processor is practically inactive. But when the signal appears, it kicks into gear. Its inventor, Yannis Tsividis, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, says the device’s miserly management of power could make it attractive for small systemssuch as biomedical implants and remote sensorsthat deal with “bursty” signals in need of real-time processing. Industrial firms are also interested in using the technology for telecommunications and power conversion.

“It’s a different way of looking at a problem that people have looked at for a long time,” says Rajit Manohar, an expert on clockless circuits and professor of electrical engineering at Cornell University. “There are a lot of benefits to the approach.”

A signal can be either analog or digital, and the system that processes it can do so either continuously or in discrete time. But digital signal processing has always been practically synonymous with discrete time. “This has been bothering me for many years,” says Tsividis.

In conventional discrete-time DSPs, the clock signal that triggers the sampling must have a frequency of at least twice the highest frequency of interest in a signal. But the clock has to go on nonstop at that frequency whether or not there’s a signal and whether or not that signal has any high-frequency component to it at a given time, which is a waste of power.

The new CT DSP, by contrast, has no clock. Instead, when the signal changes by a set amount, the CT DSP produces a digital pulse. If it changes by that amount again, a second pulse occurs, and so on. A separate digital signal marks whether the input is increasing or decreasing. Those digital pulses are put through a programmable circuit that digitally filters the signal in continuous time and then converts it back to analog.

Aside from the potential power advantage of a CT DSP, it just might make things sound better. Conventional DSPs suffer from two types of spurious signals: one, called aliasing, happens because the input signal mixes with the clock frequency. With no clock, CT DSPs are free of aliasing. The other, quantization error, is produced by the inexactness of turning the analog input into a digitized signal. In a conventional DSP, quantization error is spread over all frequencies, but for a CT DSP, it occurs only at multiples of the frequencies in the signal, so it’s easier to filter out and there’s less of it to begin with. Also, such “harmonic error” is less objectionable to the ear!

Information Source: IEEE Spectrum Magazine

[StarTech] TechSpotlight – Experts on ICT Roadmap – Better skilled manpower holds the key

http://thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=62180

The ICT roadmap in Bangladesh has been a much talked-about issue in recent times. Although the country has been using these technologies since the 1960s, broader use started in 1986 with the formation of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC). Afterwards, the 1997 recommendations on ICT development and the 2002 ICT policy were formulated. More recently, the government formed an e-government cell at the chief advisor’s office, and completed an e-government horizon scan report last December.

Although a national policy on ICT was adopted in 2002, the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology had not been able to achieve the goals set out for e-governance in the policy. This led the present government to appoint Spinnovation and DNet (together with an international partner, Gov3 Limited) to develop a short, medium and long-term national ICT action plan or roadmap for Bangladesh on the basis of the National ICT Policy 2002.

Accordingly, recommendations on the national ICT roadmap have been made to the government. There are five key work-streams in the roadmap which are further broken down into 13 mission critical projects.

This week in StarTech, we have tried to find out expert opinions, from academia and industry, on this issue.

Before going to their opinions, let’s first take a quick look at the five key work-streams that have been recommended by the consultants.

Empowering citizens
One of the objectives under this project is to ensure that by 2011 all Bangladeshis will have access to ICT and the skills to use them. The ICT roadmap plans to deliver this by building a national partnership to establish tele-centres. Another objective is to ensure that digital contents in Bangla are easily produced and uploaded. The ICT roadmap will deliver this through a new national strategy for e-Bangla.

Transforming public resources
To transform the government, Bangladesh needs to have e-readiness. There have to be citizen-centric e-services, and a high demand for them (through a rich mix of channels–including mobile phones, web, kiosks and service centres). Every ministry must develop and deliver plans for e-service investments.

Broadening the ICT sector
The issues impeding the growth of the hardware and software sectors should be resolved to broaden the ICT sector. International ICT trade and investment campaign must be undertaken to develop a globally recognised brand for Bangladesh as a centre for ICT investment, outsourcing and exports.

Enabling the market
Legal barriers to e-commerce must be removed and the necessary business changes put in place in the public and private sectors to take advantage of the new opportunities. The ICT roadmap plans to deliver this by establishing a certified authority to oversee the provision of digital certificates enabled by the ICT Act 2006, and development of a partnership with the banks to establish the business and technical infrastructure needed to make e-commerce and e-government transactions a reality.

Leadership and governance
Accountability for delivering all aspects of the roadmap and associated elements must be clear to all stakeholders for successful delivery of the roadmap, and effective structures and processes must be in place. A full-time “chief digital adviser” reporting directly to the taskforce and the chief adviser, supported by a small ICT roadmap program management office, should be there to strengthen the governance.

Now we move on to opinions expressed by Prof Muhammed Kaykobad of computer science and engineering department at Buet; Mustafa Jabbar, president, Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS) and CEO, Ananda Computers; and Habibullah N Karim, president of BASIS.

StarTech wanted to know what they think should be the key ingredients in the ICT roadmap of Bangladesh and what, according to them, are the job prospects for private university graduates compared to those graduating from public institutions.

We also wanted to how the ACM-ICPC programming contests that are gaining fast popularity among computer science students in Bangladesh could improve their programming skills.

They also talked about the role of the government in decreasing the digital divide in the country.

Prof Kaykobad: Education, quality education, not only in ICT courses but in all levels of education should be the most important single ingredient for ICT roadmap of Bangladesh. The only surplus in the country is human beings that we cannot utilise for national prosperity and develop properly. Investment in education is unacceptably low and we possibly cannot foresee a change of attitude of our political leadership in this respect. Again application of ICT can make up the dearth of resources in education sector.

Investment in and priority of education have changed the fate of countries like South Korea and it is likely to have similar impact on our country as well. We should not loudly talk about globalisation. India never did.

We must be able to develop software systems of our own. If we cannot make it or maintain them, what is the point of using rocket technology? We should shun the path of being non-productive! We must produce at least as much as we consume. India has successfully done it.

After independence they failed to produce even blades of acceptable quality. Today, they are sending rockets to the moon. In early days they sacrificed the temptation of using quality Japanese products, from electronics to clothes. Now they have developed so much of expertise and we still remain mere consumers!

We must have software systems for ensuring e-governance and for other national interests by our professionals and will in no case allow different offices to keep black boxes developed by foreigners about which we hardly have any knowledge.

There is not much difference in job prospect of private and public universities. Since we are yet to generate sufficient amount of jobs inside the country, our entrepreneurs are quite often opting for low salary to quality of expertise. In fact, quality of education in our country is going down whether it is public or private.

These contests do improve problem-solving skill, creativity, programming skill and aptitude significantly. This is why world famous universities like MIT, CalTech, Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard are giving so much importance to ACM programming contests. Even if we do not understand its usefulness, we should just follow the footprint of these famous institutions even without understanding. World famous companies like Microsoft and Google are chasing after contestants with lucrative job offers.

The government can distribute computers and other ICT accessories to schools and colleges of remote areas so that ICT tolls like computer aided learning (CAL) packages can make up for deficiencies in experiences and quality of teachers. Schools and colleges can be enriched with an ICT lab where students of different classes will be learning different CAL packages to improve their understanding.

Mustafa Jabbar: In my opinion ICT roadmap should be targeted at establishing a digital Bangladesh which will lead to a knowledge-based society. The government should first set a target to change its own way of working. There should first be a digital government.

Unfortunately the graduates coming from these institutions are not learning state of the art technologies to work in our software industry. The syllabus, teaching method and the quality of teachers are key elements to improve the situation.

I do not feel that only this competition is improving the situation. Unless the basic education system is not improved, this will help may be only the BUET students.

The government should give computers to every kid and every house should be connected with broadband internet.

Habibullah N Karim: It must have an overarching vision for the nation which will be the beacon/goal of the roadmap.

It should have five components–legal framework issues resolution, ICT infrastructure development, e-government implementation with specific deliverables, making effective use of public-private-partnership opportunities for faster build up of ICT capacity and IT human resource development in sync with market demand.

The roadmap must be consistent with the overall ICT policy of the nation and must be implementation-focused.

The job prospects vary depending on the skillsets of the graduating students. For jobs that require broad technical excellence, graduates from public universities seem to do better but where communication skills are more important the private university graduates fare better. This is a rough generalisation and there are exceptions to both.

Such contests help build problem-solving skills and is a great confidence builder. These contests have proven a great boon for Bangladesh as these provided a platform for Bangladeshis to hone their skills in competition with the best from the whole world and we showed the world that we can hold our own when it comes to technical ability.

Broadband must be made available at very low cost at all parts of the country without any urban-rural discrimination. Modern WiMAX and 3G technologies will allow this at not-too-great a cost. Distance IT learning should be promoted to overcome the lack of qualified teachers in remote areas. The nearly 10,000 idle laptops lying with the Election Commission should be distributed to schools and colleges in remote areas for use by students.

The ICT roadmap must be done in consultation with all the stakeholders and shared with all sections of the society so that there is firm ownership of the goals and activities enumerated in the plan. The new ICT Policy 2008 recommended to the government by a committee comprising representatives of all stakeholder groups contains definitive action plans that can form the cornerstone of any ICT roadmap the nation wants to take on.

Information about the five work-streams are taken from: Article on ICT in Bangladesh by TIM Nurul Kabir ( September 18, 2008)

Spotlight: James P Grant @ BRACU – A School of Excellence in Public Health

http://thedailystar.net/campus/2008/11/01/camspotlight.htm

James P Grant School of Public Health @ BRAC University

With a vision of ‘A world where everyone enjoys the maximum potential of health’, the James P Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University has made a significant mark in public health education in Bangladesh and in South Asia in general.

In South Asia, one of the first public health institutions was the school of Tropical Medicine, which was set up in Kolkata in 1922. After that, similar institutions soon began to appear in the region, but according to a WHO report, most of these schools in India and other South Asian countries failed to create major impact due to ‘neglect, assignment of lowest priority, low prestige, poor quality of staff, and inadequate facilities such as transport and field practice areas’.

To integrate community experiences in public health education, the Rockefeller Foundation helped set up a few schools of public health in Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe and Vietnam. However, the number of such types of schools were much less compared to the demands.

To address the many problems that public health is facing, and to test new teaching/learning methodologies, BRAC, one of the largest development organizations in the world, set up a school of Public Health in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Named after the late executive director of UNICEF, the James P Grant School of Public Health is today breaking new ground in innovative teaching and in creating leaders for public health in developing countries.

During the formation of the school, BRAC collaborated with prestigious public health schools in developed countries including Johns Hopkins and Columbia Universities to develop the curriculum. Guest Professors from those schools also teach in some of the school’s courses. “The idea of setting up the school grew from BRAC’s continued effort in alleviating poverty in disadvantaged parts of the world,” says Professor AMR Choudhury, Dean of the school.

The Program
Since its commencement in 2005, three batches of 77 participants from 14 countries have now graduated from the school through its Master of Public Health (MPH) programme. In the current acadmeic year, there are 12 students from 11 countries of Asia, Africa, Europe and North America and 18 students from Bangladesh. While some of the students from the earlier batches have continued on to doctoral-level studies, most are now back in their own countries and have taken up jobs in various government, donor agencies, media and non-governmental organizations.

Uniqueness of the program
The James P Grant School has several features which makes it stand apart from its counterparts.

1) It emphasises on both the art and science of public health. Apart from the MPH and the several other short courses that the school offers, the faculty members are involved in research on important issues that Bangladesh and other low-income countries face.

2) The location of the school is in a developing country, thus providing a ’social laboratory’ for teaching and learning.

3) The fact that it is placed in a development organisation like BRAC which has total commitment to help the poor and the disadvantaged and which tries to blur the artificial divide between health and development and its vast human, material and infrastructural resources.

In the December 2007 issue of the widely circulated Bulletin of the World Health Organization, the school has been featured and the article states that, “[The school] is one of a new breed of public health institutions based in a developing country. It offers courses relevant to Bangladesh as well as international public health issues, and attracts students from both developing and developed countries.”

In 2006, the school organized the launching of Bangladesh Health Watch Report and Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate was present as the Chief Guest in the occasion. Speaking on the occasion, he emphasized that increased slogan of privatization cannot provide health services to all citizens and basic public sector services are essential to provide health security. He drew upon his experiences in China and India and noted that in China, privatization worked for agriculture and industry but not for health. He cautioned that in the name of privatization, we should not be quick to accept and legitimize quacks and fraudulent practitioners. He also emphasized the importance of democracy and the right to information and strengthening of citizen’s voices, which create pressure for better health and services for all citizens.

Also present in that occasion was Mr. Fazle Hasan Abed, Founder and Chairperson of BRAC who emphasized the role of proper management in solving the nation’s health problems. He assured that this initiative would, in the future, investigate focused issues through grassroots level investigations.

Faculty Members
The faculty members in this school comprise of core faculty members and others from BRAC, ICDDR,B and foreign partner institutions. For each course there is a foreign faculty member and one or more local counterparts. The school plans to gradually reduce dependence on foreign faculty through induction of more core faculty.

Research
* Research is a core function of any vibrant academic institution and this school is no exception. Current research projects of the school include:

* Monitoring Equity in the Bangladesh health system (with ICDDR,B and MoH).

* Study on sexual and reproductive health and rights (with IDS/Sussex, Indepth Network, Engender Health, etc.)

* Global Health Equity Project (The World Bank).

The Centre for Health Systems Studies of the school has the potential of strengthening the health system in Bangladesh by informing, guiding and systematically evaluating policies of the health sector and to promote population health. In addition to the launching of the Health Watch Report, the centre has undertaken a number of research activities. Currently, a study is being done on the public private partnership service delivery models in Bangladesh. Dr. Mushtaque Chowdhury oversees the Centre as Director while Dr. Sabina Faiz Rashid serves as the Coordinator of the Centre.

The Centre for Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS, established in collaboration with UNAIDS is designated for research, policy, advocacy and training activities utilizing the state-of-the-art methods and technologies of teaching/learning and providing unique opportunities in hands-on field experience in dealing with gender, sexuality, and HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh and other developing countries.

Modern healthcare is about disease control and MPH is about learning methods and techniques to control disease in the grassroots levels in developing countries including Bangladesh. James P Grant School of Public Health, through its continued quest for success, should serve as a model for similar institutions in Bangladesh and in other South Asian countries.

(mahdin.mahboob@gmail.com)

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Interview of Mushtaque Chowdhury

Dean of the James P Grant School of Public Health

Mushtaque Chowdhury, PhD is the Dean of the BRAC University James P Grant School of Public Health. He is the Deputy Executive Director of BRAC where he oversees the health programs, which include maternal, newborn and child health, tuberculosis control, water, sanitation and hygiene, HIV/AIDS prevention, and nutrition.

Dr. Chowdhury is also a Professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University in New York, and serves on the boards of many international initiatives and journals. He was a co-coordinator of the Millennium Task Force on Child Health and Maternal Health and of the Joint Learning Initiative Working group on Priority Diseases. He is the co-recipient of the ‘Innovator of the Year 2006′ award given by the Marriott Business School of Brigham Young University in USA for his work in making reading glasses available to the poor for improved livelihood.

In an interview with Mahdin Mahboob of Star Campus, Dr Chowdhury has spoken about the various aspects of the MPH program at BRAC University.

Star Campus (SC): The MPH Program at BRAC University is known to be the first of its kind (among private universities) in the country and one of the world’s best. Please tell us in details how this program has ranked compared to other such schools worldwide and in Bangladesh?
Dr. Mushtaque Chowdhury (DMC): The BRAC School of Public Health was set up in 2004. The flagship programme of the School is the Master of Public Health (MPH), which opened its door to students in early 2005. Afterwards, many other universities in the private sector have also started MPH programmes. This proves two things: one is that the BRAC School is a pioneer and the second is that there is a demand for such a degree in Bangladesh. Globally, the BRAC School has earned a name for itself already. In any meeting on public health education, we are invited to share our experiences. The US universities implementing global health programmes have recently started a consortium and we were invited to speak at its launching at the University of California in San Francisco. The Bulletin of the World Health Organization, a most prestigious journal published by WHO, show-cased six schools in the world as examples of innovation and the BRAC School was one of them.

SC: Who are the students that study for this program? Are there scholarship opportunities for meritorious Bangladeshi / International students?
DMC: We take 30 students every year for the MPH. Diversity is an important aspect of any educational programme and that’s why we ensure that half of our students are women, half are non-physicians (meaning half are doctors) and half are international. In the current batch the students come from 12 countries of Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. To attract the best students, we do offer scholarships. However, students coming from the first world have to pay the full tuition.

SC: What are the biggest achievements of this program?
DMC: The School has already made a mark for itself in the world of public health education. It is a young institution but we already have graduated 77 students through the MPH programme. Hundreds of others have attended short courses that we offer on various public health issues. All the graduates are now employed in governments, NGOs, universities, research organizations, media and donor agencies and are contributing to improving the health of the population, which is our ultimate aim. The School is also contributing to many current debates in public health. It works as the Secretariat for the Bangladesh Health Watch, a civil society initiative. In the most recent report of the Watch, the issue of the human resources in health was highlighted. It sparked a lot of attention among different stakeholders. There are a number of ways through which a higher education programme is evaluated. One robust indicator is how the reputed universities in the North (and South) recognize the degrees offered by BRAC School. As of now, several of our graduates have been accepted for PhD programmes at Harvard, Columbia, George Washington, University of California and London. These are indications of the high esteem that these universities treat our graduates with. Also, the Asia Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health (APACPH), a prestigious regional organization has accorded recognition to the BRAC School by electing it as a member. In addition, the school has attracted donor attention. For example, the European Commission recently awarded the BRAC School over five million Euros to carry out a Food Security and Nutritional Surveillance Project (FSNSP) for the next five years.

SC: What are the research facilities for students of this program?
DMC: In the MPH programme, the students are required to do an original research work. In this they are supervised by accomplished researchers based in Bangladesh. Students get only about 10 weeks to complete this thesis work but they have shown how much useful work can be accomplished in this short period. Many students have published their thesis in reputed journals.

SC: What makes the BRACU MPH program unique?
DMC: The BRAC School is unique in many ways. The first is its location in Bangladesh and hosting by BRAC and its wide network. This provides a social laboratory accessible to its students which no other institution in the world can offer. The second is the partnership we have with many institutions in Bangladesh and abroad, both for teaching and research. The ICDDR,B is the most important partner with its world-class scientists, research facilities and libraries. The third is the emphasis that we attach to both the art and science of public health. Research is an integral part of life at the School. Advocacy for health is also equally emphasized. The fourth is the emphasis on community-based experiential learning. The first six months of the MPH is conducted in a rural site where the students reside and regularly interact with villagers through exercises illustrating public health in practice. In the Dhaka semester the students continue their community learning by interacting with urban residents particularly the slum dwellers. The fifth is the diversity. Our student body is diverse and so is the faculty. The faculty who come from within and outside Bangladesh bring wide experiences from around the world. You get the best of Harvard, Columbia, Hopkins, Amsterdam, London, Karolinska, Kerala, ICDDR,B and BRAC in one place!