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Foundation of Healthcare Technologies Society
Newsletter from the Foundation of Healthcare Technologies Society | June 2021

Dear All,

I welcome you to the inaugural issue of “Population Health Research, Innovation, Skills and Entrepreneurship (PHRISE) Updates” newsletter. The pandemic has brought forth in our FHTS family coping, adaptability, resilience, and empathy to enhance the health of the populations. 

We highlight some of our teams’ efforts in responding to the challenges due to COVID-19 with specific emphasis on student mentorship, initiation of an innovative virtual experiential learning program, design and development of a global policy informatics dashboard to track COVID-19 data and policy response, and various other public health research studies that address 21st century population health challenges. Our aim is to aggregate and summarize the news as well as disseminate critical highlights that FHTS is undertaking to address health equity through the lens of population health. 

I hope you find this inaugural issue informative and engaging and look forward to sharing more about our organizing activities and contributions in our upcoming newsletter. I want to congratulate the entire team of FHTS for their perseverance, flexibility, innovation and resilience during these tough times amidst COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ashish Joshi PhD, MBBS, MPH

OUR MISSION
To translate research into practice through use of technology based solutions that can empower individuals and the environment where they live in for the well-being of themselves, their families and the communities.
SAVE THE DATE
October 30-November 3, 2021
AMIA Annual Symposium
San Diego
NEWS
The BMJ Opinion, June 3, 2021
We must seize the moment for a global pandemic surveillance and response scheme
No more pandemics—this is the ambitious goal set by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, whose report reviews the international community’s response to covid-19 and identifies lessons learned. An innovative governance structure tiered to accommodate contextual specificity for data access and data use in different countries would be essential. It should rest on principles such as trustworthiness, transparency, fairness, equity, independence, and neutrality. Read More

Global Strategy on Digital Health, 2020-2025
The purpose for a Global Strategy on Digital Health is to promote healthy lives and wellbeing for everyone, everywhere, at all ages. To deliver its potential, national or regional Digital Health initiatives guided by a robust Strategy that integrates financial, organizational, human and technological resources. Read More
TRAINING PROGRAMS
Operational Research in Population Health
FHTS launched an innovative first of its kind Operational Research in Population Health program for the first year medical college students at Panimalar Medical College and Research Institute, Chennai. The first batch of 150 students are currently undergoing training and mentorship under this initiative. Read more

Doctoral Program in Population Health Informatics
FHTS launched the first of its kind doctoral program globally in the field of Population Health Informatics in collaboration with DIT University, Dehradun. The program offers opportunity to participate in technology-enabled interventions and innovations to enable data driven, evidence based policy making using data, information and knowledge (DIK) framework. Read More
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
The recent paper Developing Evidence-based Population Health Informatics curriculum: Integrating competency based model and job analysis emphasizes need for public health professions to have a core set of informatics skills due to rapid pace of technological advancements. The study describes an innovative evidence-based curriculum framework that aims to integrate informatics competencies and job analysis and apply towards creation of a population health informatics program.

Joshi, A., Bruce, I, Amadi, C, & Amatya, J. (2021). Developing Evidence-based population health informatics curriculum: Integrating competency based model and job analysis. Online Journal of Public Health Informatics, 13 (1)

The recent paper Examine the impact of COVID-19 Vaccine Communication, Acceptance and Practice (CO-VIN-CAP) on Vaccine hesitancy in an Indian setting: Protocol for a Cross-Sectional Study examines the factors that influence vaccine hesitancy and vaccine acceptance and to explore the unintended consequences of COVID-19 infections. The study will further explore the association between socio-demographic characteristics, health status, COVID-19 related knowledge, attitude, practice, and its influence on Vaccine hesitancy and acceptance among individuals living in urban and rural settings of Chennai, Tamil Nadu in the Southern state of India.

Surapaneni KM, Kaur M, Kaur R, Grover A, and Joshi A. Examine the impact of COVID-19 Vaccine Communication, Acceptance and Practice (CO-VIN-CAP) on Vaccine hesitancy in an Indian setting: Protocol for a Cross-Sectional Study. JMIR Res
NEW INITIATIVES
v-Inspire Public Health

The v-INSPIRE experiential learning program conceptualized as a project –based approach in May 2020 to provide experiential learning opportunities to students and practitioners amidst COVID-19 pandemic. Over last one year, the program has been a tremendous success (May 2020-June 9 2021).
SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Heemanshu is an anthropologist holding a doctorate degree in physical Anthropology from Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi.  Her specialization lies in infectious diseases especially tuberculosis, physiological anthropology, human growth and development studies. She has a research experience of working at population level, data collection, compilation, analyses and report writing. She has a work experience of 2 years teaching, and mentoring students.
New Team Member 
Heemanshu Aurora, PhD
Public Health Researcher

COLLABORATIONS
FHTS has established SMAART Population Health Informatics Intervention center in collaboration with Panimalar Medical College and Research Institute, Chennai. The center is the first of its kind with an aim to design, develop, implement and evaluate human centered, technology-enabled interventions that can translate research into practice to enhance good health well -being of individuals, families and the communities they live in. The Center will undertake several activities related to public health training, research, data driven evidence based interventions for informed policymaking. Read More
GLOBAL HEALTH INFORMATICS PLATFORM

Ashish Joshi, Senior Associate Dean Academic and Student Affairs and Professor of CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy in collaboration with researchers globally designed and developed SMAART RAPID Tracker a Research enabled Action oriented Policy Interventions driven by Data, an  innovative  policy  informatics  tool,  aimed  to  track  geospatial  spread  of  COVID-19 outbreak and policy actions globally. The dashboard aggregates publicly available but verified information on the burden of COVID-19 and vaccine uptake globally. Currently the tracker has provided experiential learning opportunities to nearly 300 students with a representation from those pursuing public health, recent graduates and those aspiring to become public health professionals. 
We welcome students interested in experiential learning opportunities using SMAART RAPID Tracker.
Learn more.


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