Community Preparedness: Expanding Existing Partnerships With Academia to Build Resilience Through Experiential Learning

Background: Sustainability and mitigation in preparedness after grant money is gone has suddenly become a hot topic in the public health emergency preparedness world. By the same token, funding provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for individual preparedness initiatives has not had the desired mitigation impacts. The question becomes, are there alternative approaches that reach more individuals to build a culture of preparedness in communities? One solution involves the leveraging of academic and regional public health partnerships with their Medical Reserve Corps Units (MRC), to train college students in individual preparedness. The purpose of this study is to describe best practices and discuss the incorporation of experiential learning and training activities into an Introduction to Public Health course at the University of Georgia. It also describes the development of a strong academic and practice partnership though the use the agencies’ MRC units. Methods: Three experiential learning activities, rooted in the constructs of perceived susceptibility, perceived benefits and selfefficacy were introduced into the course. First, didactic elements addressing the purpose and structure of public health response, individual preparedness and the role of Medical Reserve Corps volunteers in response were incorporated. Second, the public health partner developed a lecture covering public health emergency preparedness and response using a real world-sheltering example and coupled it with a tabletop exercise. Finally, students were given a final exam option where they built a home emergency kit. Results: Over the course of 3 years, approximately 500 students have been trained in individual preparedness. Students have demonstrated an increased foundational knowledge about the Medical Reserve Corps and public health preparedness in general. Furthermore, this collaboration increased the numbers of new MRC Volunteers and provided for a strong academic practice partnership. Conclusions: Through this collaboration, more students know how to take care of themselves and their families, decreasing the number of potential well worried. This collaboration has also strengthened the ties between the two institutions, leading to more opportunities for partnership

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Community Preparedness: Expanding Existing Partnerships With Academia to Build Resilience Through Experiential Learning

Background: Sustainability and mitigation in preparedness after grant money is gone has suddenly become a hot topic in the public health emergency preparedness world. By the same token, funding provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for individual preparedness initiatives has not had the desired mitigation impacts. The question becomes, are there alternative approaches that reach more individuals to build a culture of preparedness in communities? One solution involves the leveraging of academic and regional public health partnerships with their Medical Reserve Corps Units (MRC), to train college students in individual preparedness. The purpose of this study is to describe best practices and discuss the incorporation of experiential learning and training activities into an Introduction to Public Health course at the University of Georgia. It also describes the development of a strong academic and practice partnership though the use the agencies’ MRC units. Methods: Three experiential learning activities, rooted in the constructs of perceived susceptibility, perceived benefits and selfefficacy were introduced into the course. First, didactic elements addressing the purpose and structure of public health response, individual preparedness and the role of Medical Reserve Corps volunteers in response were incorporated. Second, the public health partner developed a lecture covering public health emergency preparedness and response using a real world-sheltering example and coupled it with a tabletop exercise. Finally, students were given a final exam option where they built a home emergency kit. Results: Over the course of 3 years, approximately 500 students have been trained in individual preparedness. Students have demonstrated an increased foundational knowledge about the Medical Reserve Corps and public health preparedness in general. Furthermore, this collaboration increased the numbers of new MRC Volunteers and provided for a strong academic practice partnership. Conclusions: Through this collaboration, more students know how to take care of themselves and their families, decreasing the number of potential well worried. This collaboration has also strengthened the ties between the two institutions, leading to more opportunities for partnership

Building an advocacy platform for gender-sensitive civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems : final technical report

This project was designed to build an advocacy and communications platform to amplify existing research and to support the Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems (CRVS) to reach its target audiences. This report provides a quick view of accomplishments to date. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many (global, regional, and national) advocacy moments being cancelled or postponed. At the same time, COVID-19 has revealed the importance of strong CRVS systems, so that creative ways to engage in advocacy efforts continue to be vital.Global Affairs Canad

Converse

"Converse" (2018) was presented as a curatorial exhibition of creative works at Boxcopy Contemporary Art Space, Brisbane featuring Nina Ross, Mandy Quadrio, Hannah Raisin, Archie Barry and Barbara Cleveland. The exhibition emerged out of a conversation about Australian feminist performative artworks and embraced conversation as a curatorial method. Each curator suggested an artwork, that the other responded to with another artwork. A printed conversation accompanied the exhibition and documented this exchange. The conversation ranged from how to define feminism today and how it operates as a political or personal framework, to exploring intersectional identities and self-portraiture, examining the body in relation to humour, and performance in relation to history and re-enactment. "Converse" was an 'exhibition as dialogue' and considered the ever shifting and unravelling nature of contemporary feminist art practice