BOMBAY, BOSTON OR BANGLADESH: FINDING ANSWERS, DELIVERING BETTER CARE
Patricia Hibberd, MD, PhD, Tufts University School of Medicine
"We have so much knowledge to give about these diseases, but what's the point of having this information if we don't know how to deliver these effective interventions at the critical, rural community level to cause real change - we need increased investment in global health research to ensure that happens."
For more than 15 years, Patricia Hibberd, MD, PhD, has collaborated with the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health so that her voice can be heard louder and her reach can be deeper on what she calls the world's forgotten killers of children under five: pneumonia and diarrhea. "We have so much knowledge to give about these diseases," she says, "but what's the point of having this information if we don't know how to deliver these effective interventions at the critical, rural community level to cause real change?"
At the Center for Global Health Research at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Hibberd identifies gaps and ways of getting diagnosis, treatment and information out to those who need it most. This is most often rural areas where barriers to accessing health services, if they even exist, are even more difficult. She believes that knowing how to give treatment and how to connect people to critical health care is as important as discovering what treatment works.
Her research also helps others understand what motivates people to improve their own health, whether they are in Bombay, Boston or Bangladesh. In fact, Hibberd attributes U.S. investments in global health research to some of the success already seen in saving lives of children here and around the world.
But she's not convinced that the research is being handled in the most efficient and cost-effective way, and there needs to be a larger discussion about that aspect of it. "We need to be more pragmatic and strategic," she says. "As everyone who has ever done research or public health work knows, the research and health improvement processes can be frustratingly slow. Now is not the time for the U.S. to retreat on our research investments, but rather we need to protect the fragile infrastructure in place before it collapses and puts the world further behind."