Dear Colleague,

Thankfully, we are seeing reductions in the number of people being infected and dying from COVID-19 in parts of the world. On the other hand, we are deeply concerned about the march of the virus in Africa and Latin America where resources are severely constrained. Of course, we are also wary of the trajectory of the virus in the autumn and winter.
 
Included in this newsletter is a link to this week’s webinar on Preventing Pandemics: Three Areas for Action, featuring leading scientists from UC Davis, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. REGISTER HERE .
 
You can see our past webinars at www.cugh.org . Additional webinars are being planned on: the pandemic in Africa and Latin America; health disparities in the United States; and another focused on the plight of migrants and refugees.
 
As always, our hearts go out to families around the world who have lost loved ones to Covid-19. We also extend our immense gratitude to healthcare personnel, emergency and essential workers worldwide who serve us all.

Please use and share the useful resources from around the world in this newsletter. To access this information, click on the underlined texts below.

Please send us any important public health guidelines/articles/advocacy efforts related to the pandemic to info@cugh.org .

Best wishes,
Keith Martin MD
Executive Director
CUGH
Each volume of our COVID-19 newsletter contains new resources. To view previously included resources, see our archive of past newsletters here : https://www.cugh.org/announcements/covid-19-newsletter

This newsletter is divided into the following sections:
  • Advocacy efforts
  • Resources for educators
  • Resources for researchers
  • Resources for clinical work
  • Member requests
  • Other resources
ADVOCACY EFFORTS

COVID-19 has highlighted the risks posed by the spillover of deadly infectious diseases from animals to humans. This crisis is also an opportunity for policymakers to invest in known interventions that can reduce the threat of future pandemics and provide additional benefits that can improve the health of people and that of the planet. Join us for our next webinar on Wednesday, April 29 at 9 PM ET , where three leading experts will share what we can do to achieve these goals by: reducing disease spillover; strengthening the Global Health Security Agenda; and reducing the trafficking and consumption of endangered species.

The emergence of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus disease, as a global pandemic is a clear reminder of the importance of investment in research to better understand how to prevent and treat disease. It also underscores why we need to greatly strengthen our public health capacity against such threats. This page features advocacy and communications resources from Research!America and their many expert partners.

"In these unstable times, academia has an opportunity to evolve, to create more extensive partnerships across sectors, and use its substantial capabilities to directly impact the contemporary challenges we face. More researchers need to become public scientists and be a source for evidence-based information."

Dr. Keith Martin and Zoë Mullan discuss the importance of scientists and their expertise within the political landscape in this Lancet Global Health comment.

The COVID-19 pandemic and other global emergencies show us once again the heroic efforts health workers on the front lines make every day to keep their communities—and the world—safe and healthy. Here are five actions we can all take to support and protect frontline health workers—every country's first line in detecting, reporting, and responding to emerging threats like COVID-19.

Immediate policy changes and investments are needed to surge frontline health workforce capacity, ensure health workers’ safety and wellbeing, recognize their commitment and personal sacrifices, and make certain that their stories are heard and acted on by policymakers. Urgent priority must be placed on support to low- and middle-income countries, many of which are in early stages of the pandemic. The Frontline Health Workers Coalition has created policy recommendations for the COVID-19 response .

Controlling the spread of the coronavirus requires aggressive action from states and the federal government to ensure access to testing for those who need it and treatment for those who contract the disease. To date, US states have taken a number of actions to mitigate the spread of the virus and reduce barriers to testing and treatment for those affected. This data tool provides state-level information on:

The International Center for Not-For-Profit Law monitors government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic that affect civil freedoms and human rights, focusing on emergency laws. This tracker compiles policies from 115 countries, including 32 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Oxford Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) collects information on several common policy approaches governments have taken, scores the stringency of such measures, and aggregates these scores into a common Stringency Index. OxCGRT collects publicly available information on 11 indicators of government response (S1-S11). The first seven indicators (S1-S7) record policies such as school closures, travel bans, etc. on an ordinal scale; the remainder (S8-S11) are financial indicators such as fiscal or monetary measures.

As a reminder for Earth Day, Dr. Steve Osofsky from Cornell University reflects on One Health and the importance of maintaining strong, transparent international collaborations.

Please join the Wilson Center and EMD Serono on April 30 at 9 AM ET for an event focused on the gender and race implications of COVID-19. Hear from experts on topics around women and work, caregiving, gender-based violence, racism and sexism in healthcare, access to sexual and reproductive health services, pregnancy, the context of humanitarian settings, the female-led workforce of nurses and midwives, and the role and experience of men and boys during the current pandemic.

Global Health Council organized a letter to President Trump expressing support for the World Health Organization funding during the COVID-19 pandemic. They had over 1 ,000 signatures, including 177 US organizations, 100 international organizations, and 807 individuals from all over the world. CUGH is proud to have signed on to this letter. CNN also reported on the importance of this letter. To view the article, please see here .

During the coronavirus epidemic, personal protective equipment (PPE) remains in short supply. The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) has been working with member organizations to advocate for regulatory and statutory changes to ensure hospice and palliative care providers are designated as a priority in the distribution of PPE from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The organization also advocates with national stakeholders and Congress to clarify that hospice and other community-based care providers are granted priority for PPE. 

COVID-19 has demanded the world’s attention this year, tested the resilience of health systems, and exacerbated existing inequalities. As countries grapple with its long-term effects, ensuring women’s voices and perspectives are included in the response is an urgent priority to improve health outcomes. This virtual speaker series will explore the gender and power dynamics at play in this health emergency, offer a look into the challenges women face and outline immediate and long-term actions we can take to prioritize women’s leadership. Join the next webinar on April 29 at 1 PM PT .
RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS

Friday, May 1, 2020, 2:00-3:00 p.m. ET

As higher education has moved online in response to COVID-19, how have faculty redesigned and delivered courses that emphasize field-based and experiential learning? This webinar will explore emerging models from the field of global health, where students are expected to address public health challenges through community-based learning experiences—even during a global health pandemic. Join the conversation to share practical advice and effective strategies for adapting teaching and learning practices, integrating the crisis into current courses, sustaining community engagement, and anticipating student vulnerabilities.

As universities declare class cancelations and mandate a shift to online teaching, instructors have the opportunity to design online course materials to be as accessible as possible from the beginning. These suggestions will also ensure that one's course materials are accessible moving forward. All of the suggestions come from disability culture and community.

During the pandemic, many educators have realized that the syllabus might need to be adjusted. This resource, written by Brown University's Center for Teaching and Learning, offers approaches to making these adjustments, through both lower and higher-tech means.

Flower Darby, from Northern Arizona University, writes about finding the joy of teaching after moving to online learning in this Chronicle of Higher Education article.

Anyone who claims to know the future of book publishing — or the future of anything right now — is bound to sound foolish. Yet scholars at all stages of the academic career have questions about what the Covid-19 crisis will mean for the book world. Professor at Eastern Washington University, Rachel Toor, reached out to some folks at academic presses to get their sense of the intellectual and financial fallout.
RESOURCES FOR RESEARCHERS

Johns Hopkins University has aggregated all research funding opportunities specifically related to COVID-19.

The National Cancer Institute recently published the funding opportunity entitled  Strengthening Institutional Capacity to Conduct Global Cancer Research in Low- and Middle-Income Countries . This program will support research training led by United States-based cancer research-intensive institutions working in collaboration with institutions in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The overarching goal of this initiative is to build capacity to conduct innovative and collaborative global research projects that will contribute to the advancement of basic, clinical, translational, and population-based cancer research in LMICs. In addition, you can read more about the Notice of Special Interest to Supplement or Strengthen Global Cancer Health Disparities Research  here .

NIH is devoting significant resources to COVID-19. In addition to dedicating regularly appropriated funds, to date NIH has received emergency funding for COVID-19-related activities in two supplemental bills. Read more about the Urgent and Emergency competitive revision Funding Opportunity Announcements  here . Read more about the related Notice of Special Interest from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs at the National Cancer Institute (NCI)  here .

Experts from the  International Cancer Control Partnership   are compiling and updating a list of resources for global cancer research and control professionals on their  resource  page. These include a link to the  ecancer COVID-19 and cancer resources   page, which includes articles, blogs, videos, and news about cancer, global health, and COVID-19. 
RESOURCES FOR CLINICAL WORK

The COVID-19 pandemic is making demands on all aspects of our lives and is placing unprecedented pressure on our health care system. Traditional procurement and distribution channels are struggling to get new stock to hospitals to meet their escalating needs. There is critical and immediate need for N95 masks and other personal protective equipment, testing kits, and even swabs to capture samples. And there is a growing need for health care workers, transportation, beds, ventilators, and other unanticipated resources.

T o meet this need, the  C3 Lab   at Northwestern University’s Department of Computer Science and a team at   Rheaply   are collaborating to launch both the Emergency Resource Exchange (ERx) and this companion COVID-19 Resource Map. The goal is two-fold:
  • Quickly connect the needs hospitals are facing with the resources that will satisfy them.
  • Provide the public with an understanding of the evolving nature of the pandemic’s path through the United States.

A panel of U.S. physicians, statisticians, and other experts has developed treatment guidelines for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). These guidelines, intended for healthcare providers, are based on published and preliminary data and the clinical expertise of the panelists, many of whom are frontline clinicians caring for patients during the rapidly evolving pandemic. The guidelines are posted online and will be updated often as new data are published in peer-reviewed scientific literature and other authoritative information emerges.

The guidelines consider two broad categories of therapies currently in use by healthcare providers for COVID-19: antivirals, which may target the coronavirus directly, and host modifiers and immune-based therapies, which may influence the immune response to the virus or target the virus.

With health systems and public health authorities facing the new pandemic, the digital health solutions and eHealth platforms can make a real difference in coping with the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak and become indispensable tools to immediately increase the resilience of the health service delivery systems particularly in resource poor areas. In the light of the COVID-19 outbreak, the government of Luxembourg has made the use of the SATMED eHealth platform available free of charge for the healthcare professionals’ community of selected health organisations to fight the pandemic.

The platform is especially optimized for resource-poor areas. It is immediately usable where internet is available and suitable for the following applications:
  • Multilevel COVID-19 eHealth response platform
  • Teleconsultation service for protecting medical personal
  • Teleradiology services for remote chest image reading
  • Automated SMS messaging for informing patients test results, sending compliance rules and requesting contact persons
  • Hospital Information Systems (HIS) for provisional health centers
  • Geographical Tracking and mapping for outbreak management

Join in developing international  COVID-19 Response Guidelines  based on WHO and CDC sources, encoded with SNOMED CT and the Omaha System. Currently we have 90 interventions for 25 Roles across the continuum of care, with participating public health and clinical experts from 8 countries and 26 states. Contact Karen Monsen at  mons0122@umn.edu  to suggest additions/corrections for the guideline.  

This toolkit is intended for clinicians working in acute care hospitals in low- and middle-income countries, managing adult and paediatric patients with acute respiratory infection, including severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, sepsis and septic shock. The main objective is to provide some of the necessary tools that can be used to care for the critically ill patient from hospital entry to hospital discharge.

These FAQs accompany WHO’s guiding principles for immunization activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is vital that countries commit to sustaining immunization systems, they should use approaches that respect the principle of “do-no-harm” and limit the risk of transmission of COVID-19 during immunization activities.

This brief provides recommendations to ensure maternity care providers can deliver respectful and individualized antenatal care services that promote the safety of women, families and health professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This document provides interim guidance to reduce the risk of infection from the mother/newborn to the maternity care provider and from the maternity care provider to mother/newborn in the immediate clinical care situation.

In the face of the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying global public health emergency, the National Academy of Medicine’s  Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience  is giving its attention to this issue. Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, many clinicians already faced burnout, as well as stress, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and even suicidality. Now this crisis is presenting clinicians with even greater workplace hardships and moral dilemmas that are very likely to exacerbate existing levels of burnout and related mental health problems. The following resources offer more information on how to support the health and well-being of clinicians during public health emergencies, including the COVID-19 response. 

Disruptions in reproductive health care, including access to contraception, is an inevitable consequence of mandatory physical distancing policies as part of a pandemic response. This resource provides the latest guidance and resources around COVID-19 and its effects on women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health, from credible resources. This compendium will be developed as a living repository of the most up-to-date guidance from UN agencies, especially WHO, as well as PMNCH’s health care professional association members.

This toolkit is a set of resources to optimize the analysis and use of data collected through routine health facility information systems, also known as health management information systems (HMIS). The comprehensive toolkit includes a series of integrated modules which can be used individually or together, according to country needs. Routine tracking of data can help identify spill-over or negative consequences of COVID-19 on other health care service needs.

The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) hosted a webinar, “Briefing: Serious Illness, Palliative Care, and the Impact of COVID-19.” The presenters were Diane E. Meier, MD, FACP, FAAHPM, director of CAPC; R. Sean Morrison, MD, co-director of the Patty and Jay Baker National Palliative Care Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Brynn Bowman, MPA, chief strategy officer at CAPC, all in New York. They talked about how the palliative care team at Mount Sinai, at the center of the pandemic, has managed through the crisis, including what has and has not worked. 

The CSU Shiley Institute for Palliative Care in San Diego, CA, has made more than 20 online palliative care courses and resources available for free to help clinicians on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. The courses help participants with critical skills, including communication, advance care planning, crisis intervention, self-care, and more. The self-paced courses will remain available at no charge through June 30, 2020, for anyone caring for patients and families during this crisis. 
MEMBER REQUESTS

This website from Johns Hopkins University is an outstanding resource to help advance the understanding of the virus, inform the public, and brief policymakers in order to guide a response, improve care, and save lives. It includes access to an interactive COVID-19 map.

JHU is also hosting a webinar series focused on Strategies to Support the COVID-19 Response in LMICs. The next webinar, "COVID-19 Modelling and Diagnostics" will take place on April 30th, at 9:00 am (ET) . To learn more and register, click here .

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID-19 Center provides tailored guidance to keep people safe. The site also contains a number of resources on the virus, including cases, data, and surveillance.

The second in a series of two focusing on Emergency Preparation, Response, and Supply Chain Management in Surgical Healthcare as it applies in low resource settings. Juan Carlos Negrette, MBA, Director of Global Health at the University of Utah, brings over 30 years experience working in international healthcare managing programs in NGOs and in academics. He will share his perspective as we explore human factors within health systems, particularly the high intensity environment of the OR.
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY & COVID-19

NYU has been working hard on the US's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Listen to Dr. Joshua Epstein, Director of New York University’s Agent-Based Modeling Lab, on how to best interpret and apply infectious disease modeling on On the Media podcast here .

Dr. Jack Caravanos, Clinical Professor of Environmental Public Health Sciences , was also featured in an article on how best to clean masks. You can read it here .

A commentary co-authored by Benjamin Wagner, MPH candidate at the New York University School of Global Public Health, was published in The Lancet titled “ COVID-19 and immigration detention in the USA: time to act .” Over 37,000 immigrants are currently detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) in more than 130 facilities across the United States. As understandable fear of the COVID-19 pandemic intensifies in the United States, so too does the imminent danger ICE prisons pose not only to the vulnerable populations detained within their walls but to the nation’s public health. Given the urgent need to control the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the authors argue that ICE should release all detained immigrants posing no threat to public safety.

ISGlobal is launching a new series of analytical documents aimed at contributing to the fight against COVID-19 and orienting the strategy for lifting mitigation and confinement measures. The collection will, initially, comprise 17 documents in which 23 experts will endeavour, from the standpoint of research, to identify and respond to some of the major challenges posed by the current crisis. The aim of this collection, coordinated by ISGlobal’s Policy team, is to contribute evidence-based information and the answers to questions about the main topics involved in the management of the COVID-19 crisis. It is possible that further documents will be added depending on the issues and questions that arise as the pandemic continues.
OTHER RESOURCES

The Health in Humanitarian Crises Center has published a set of general principles and specific recommendations to implement a “targeted shielding” approach to protect communities where mass ‘stay-at-home’ orders are not appropriate. The proposed approach shields high-risk individuals from the rest of the community and is potentially transferable to other densely populated low-resource settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents an unprecedented challenge to health systems globally. This brief summarises key principles for promoting resilient health systems in the face of this challenge. It is based on evidence from recent research programmes commissioned by DFID and NIHR. A number of these principles point to the value of anticipation of shocks and appropriate preparation. However, a number also address means of responding in the face of adversity.

To help fight COVID-19, U.S. tech companies have recently announced efforts to leverage public health surveillance, including tracking the spread of the coronavirus using Bluetooth-enabled devices. China, South Korea, and Israel are already engaged in some form of citizen tracking to mitigate and reduce their infection rates. Artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital tools have the capability to capture biometrics, location data, and other indicators of infection. Given these existing and potential uses of AI, what are the privacy implications for the collection of such health data? Which groups are at risk of unintended and potentially discriminatory outcomes? How transparent will these systems be?

On April 21, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a webinar discussion on the existing and potential use of digital public health surveillance tools, particularly AI.

The first case of COVID-19 has been confirmed in Yemen. The spread of the pandemic in the war-torn country threatens to be the most catastrophic in the world. Yemen’s healthcare system has collapsed, over 3.6 million Yemenis are internally displaced, and 24 million Yemenis—85 percent of the population—are in need of humanitarian aid. This webinar is discussion on the implications of COVID-19 in Yemen with Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, government leaders are asking people to ‘shelter-in-place’; thus, housing has become a major defense in fighting COVID-19. Those residing in over-crowded informal settlements or encampments are at a greater risk of contracting this life-threatening virus—partially because they lack access to on-site water or sanitation, and face constant fear of eviction. This document provides recommendations for state policies to protect those in precarious housing situations during COVID-19.

The Global WASH Cluster ,  PRO-WASH  and  CaLP  are co-hosting a webinar on “Introduction to Market Based Programming in Emergency WASH". This webinar will introduce how market based programming can be used in emergency WASH, provide an overview of different approaches including cash and voucher assistance, and strategies to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic. Partner organizations will also share learnings from implementation. This webinar is intended primarily for WASH, Markets, Cash, and Livelihoods practitioners. 
 
This 75-minute webinar will be offered in: 

English on Wednesday 29 April at 9 a.m. EDT / UTC -4
With case studies from Jordan and Zimbabwe presented by UNHCR and Oxfam
 
Spanish on Thursday 7 May at 10 a.m. EDT / UTC -4
With case studies from the Venezuela response and Colombia presented by Save the Children and Action Contre el Hambre
 
French on Thursday 14 May at 9 a.m. EDT / UTC -4
With case studies from Haiti and Democratic Republic of Congo from ACF and Cluster NFI

Wednesday, April 29th from 8am-9am EDT/12pm-1pm GMT
Register in advance for this meeting here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Please join the READY Initiative, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Geneva Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action, and the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University for a weekly webinar series on COVID-19 & humanitarian settings.

The fifth webinar will focus on "Risk Communication and Community Engagement: Perceptions, Misinformation, and Concerns in African Countries in the time of COVID". Recent reports and provisional modeling by UN agencies and the WHO estimate that the number of cases and lives lost in Africa due to COVID-19 could surge within 3-6 months. Urban populations are of particular concern since the majority lives in overcrowded neighborhoods, while unreliable access to hand-washing facilities and widespread rumors and misinformation are challenges in both rural and urban settings. Join Sharon Reader, Senior Advisor Community Engagement and Accountability, IFRC Africa Regional Office, and Sharath Srinivasan, co-founder and Senior Advisor, Africa's Voices Foundation to discuss the work they are doing to understand the concerns, perceptions, and misinformation barriers to practicing preventative behaviors Sub-Saharan African countries, and what is being done to address them.

Moderator
Kathryn Bertram, Social Behavior Change Advisor, READY, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Communication Programs

Expert Speakers
Sharath Srinivasan, Co-founder and Senior Advisor, Africa’s Voices Foundation

Sharon Reader, Community Engagement and Accountability, IFRC Africa Regional Office


As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc internationally, adjusting to this new normal has been no easy feat for us young “global healthers”.

As two fourth year undergraduate students and aspiring global health professionals, Lily Yang and Zoe Atsaidis understand that this has been an extremely stressful and difficult time. Despite the unlimited free time, navigating this new COVID-19 landscape can feel like an extraordinary challenge.

But when life gives you lemons (or in this case indefinite days of social isolation) you make lemonade (but literally, that could be fun too). As young [aspiring] global health professionals, Yang and Atsaidis find themselves in a unique position to use our knowledge and our passion to really make a positive impact. So, they're writing this article to give you some of their personal tips and tricks on what we can do to both better ourselves and the situation around us.
Consortium of Universities for Global Health
202-974-6363 | info@CUGH.org | www.CUGH.org