Guyana’s paediatric training program: a global health partnership for medical education

Guyana is a low-middle income country on the northern coast of South America between Venezuela and Suriname. Guyana has relatively high child mortality and a notable gap in health care provision. As of 2011, there were no paediatricians in the public sector where approximately 90% of the population seek care. In response to this unmet need, Guyanese diaspora living in Canada, in partnership with Canadian paediatricians and the main teaching hospital, Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), developed a Master’s program in paediatrics. The postgraduate program was designed with adapted training objectives from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American Board of Paediatrics. Innovative strategies to overcome the lack of qualified paediatric faculty in Guyana included web-conferencing and a volunteer North American paediatric faculty presence at GPHC with a goal of 1-2 weeks every month. By November 2016, 10 graduates will have passed through a rigorous program of assessment including a two-day final examination with an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) component.

Does 'improved' sanitation make children healthier?: Household pit latrines and child health in rural Ethiopia

In response to pressure to reach the Millennium Development Goal of improved sanitation access, the Ethiopian government has developed an ambitious plan to achieve 100 per cent access to pit latrines by 2012. The plans to achieve this target rely upon the assumption that universal access to pit latrines will lead to improved health outcomes. Using the Young Lives pro-poor longitudinal data of Ethiopian children, this research uses propensity score matching to test this assumption. Children who experienced a change from no toilet to a household pit latrine between rounds of data collection were compared to those who continue to use a forest/field. The findings show that there is no significant difference between groups in terms of health outcomes and that a pit latrine does not necessarily signal improved methods of waste disposal. Individual and group interviews conducted by Young Lives suggest that poor infrastructure and care for pit latrines deter children from using such facilities and promote a preference for the use of other methods of waste disposal. Policy makers should note that simply increasing access to pit latrines will not necessarily promote better health outcomes, especially when ‘improved’ sanitation appears to be less clean than other available options

Feminist Theory, Feminist Psychology: A Bibliography Of Epistemology, Critical Analysis, And Applications

A selection of recent (post-1980) works on feminist theory and method, this bibliography includes literature from psychology and other social sciences, feminist studies, and philosophy of science. The first of its four sections concerns epistemology and metatheory. The second lists works that offer reformulations or critical analyses of key concepts in gender studies; many of these are grounded in social constructionist and feminist standpoint epistemologies. The third section cites writings that illustrate the potential of new epistemological stances or exemplify new ways of working. The last section lists related bibliographies. (232 entries.