Day 9 – NIH training (USAID, World Bank)

The morning started off with more epidemiology and biostatistics lectures and Q&A from lecturers from the Uniformed Services University and National Cancer Institute. Do I have a lot to learn in those arenas this upcoming year! We had group pictures after the morning lectures and then celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Fogarty International Center of the NIH with birthday cake at the Chiles House on campus.

Our afternoon general session titled “World Decision Making in Health Delivery and Research” included speakers from the Fogarty Center, World Bank, and USAID. (The World Health Organization speaker could not attend.) The World Bank speaker talked about the future of the World Bank and health. He inferred the growing influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others as a big reason the World Bank is in many ways losing influence and clout in the health care arena. One of the scholars asked him a tough question about health care improvements in lights of Structural Adjustment Programs that were more popular in the 1990s and harmful for many low- and middle-income societies, but possibly worked in others. The global health community has been skeptical of SAPs for many reasons, many concerns I also felt after studying them in graduate school. He concentrated on the Health, Nutrition & Population programs of the World Bank, which sound excellent. The Bank is doing amazing work in many areas. Here’s a link to the site: (http://www.worldbank.org/hnp/).

I attended the HIV Vaccines elective session in the afternoon, and we covered some of the trials in HIV vaccines and discussed the biological reasons HIV vaccines are difficult to engineer currently. Yet, hope pervades.

For dinner, a group of us, including Ali, ate dinner at Tabaq, an excellent Moroccan/Spanish restaurant on U Street that has a rooftop glass enclosed deck overlooking DC. Oh, the seafood risotto hit the spot. We had such a great time!

Dinner at Tabaq