Hope Randall
Jan 18, 2023
Researchers are working to advance a vaccine against Shigella. Here, one of the candidates is being prepped for use in a clinical study. Photo: PATH.
This post originally appeared on the PATH website.
Shigella remains an underappreciated child
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Aug 14, 2020
This post originally appeared on Vaccines Work.
Diarrheal disease is the second leading infectious killer of children under five worldwide. Lessons learned from tackling this deadly disease could also help us recover from COVID-19 stronger than
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Dec 18, 2019
Photo source: BCN Confidential.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was an elaborate prank played by my colleagues. What are the chances that my work on diarrheal disease would follow me on vacation in the Christmas markets of beautiful
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Nov 18, 2019
Poop is disgusting. That’s a universal fact that we can all appreciate. But if you have ever rolled your eyes at the insistent refrain from health experts to wash your hands, realize their persistence is fueled by knowledge that can’t be un-known.
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Oct 14, 2019
A nurse in Zambia washes her hands before she demonstrates how to prepare oral rehydration solution. Photo: PATH/Gareth Bentley.
See this post on the Global Handwashing Day website.
Take a moment to picture the last time you went to the doctor’s
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Apr 11, 2019
A full-circle moment in Lusaka, Zambia: all the charts and figures and advocacy campaigns for rotavirus vaccines had been on behalf of children like Vusi. Photo: PATH/Gareth Bentley.
When I hear people in the United States express skepticism
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Dec 20, 2018
Colleagues at our Take the Plunge event demonstrate WASH and vaccine integration… we think.
Personally and professionally, December is my favorite time of year to be reflective, and this year that feels especially the case. I’m not sure if that’
Blog
Oct 10, 2018
Blog originally posted on Crowd 360.
If you’re reading this post, chances are you have grown up with the familiar injunction to wash our hands, especially before eating. But here’s something you may not know: clean hands are a recipe for health
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Aug 22, 2018
Diarrhea. It is often the stuff of comedy, a dreaded first date woe, or an uncomfortable inconvenience after indulging in too much guac.
Beyond the silly and the squeamish, though, there’s a more important story to be told: diarrheal disease is a
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Jun 06, 2018
The inaugural 2016 VASE Conference saw the debut of the vaccine superhero; a new DefeatDD photo booth will make an appearance next week.
Jun 01
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Nov 16, 2017
Our team has made so many good friends this year at Sesame Workshop India, both of the human and Muppet variety. We celebrated World Water Day with Chamki and Googly, and now we’re gearing up for World Toilet Day with Raya, who is just as passionate
Blog
Nov 01, 2017
In April 2009 (can’t believe it was eight years ago!), my first task as a newly minted member of PATH’s Poo Crew was to help finalize and launch our team’s first-ever state of the field report on diarrhea: Diarrheal Disease: Solutions to Defeat a
Blog
Oct 12, 2017
This post also appears on the Global Handwashing Day website.
I’m always impressed by the tireless dedication of community health volunteers, but I have to admit that Babli is my favorite I’ve met so far. She was just so… cool. I imagined myself
Blog
Oct 09, 2017
Nicole Maier, clinical trial coordinator for PATH’s enteric vaccine portfolio, said she got choked up while watching our latest video for the first time. Why? I sat down with her to hear more about her personal take on the video.
Talk to
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Sep 12, 2017
I have yet to meet a child who did not want to be a grown up.
My four-year-old niece, Lily, loves sharing her expertise with her baby sister, Rosalie, on how to navigate the ways of the world. Fortunately for her mom, Lily is fastidious about
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Aug 24, 2017
I knew enough to know that Delhi would be unlike any other place I’d ever visited. I knew to expect heart-stopping auto rides, colorful chaos, seemingly impossible juxtapositions of gleaming office buildings and tattered tents, and delicious chai
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Jul 27, 2017
Zari sandwich! PATH team members Cassie Kobrin on the left, Elana Banin on the right.
Nothing was going to keep this DefeatDD team member away from the Hill event, “Ensuring All Children Thrive: A Global Challenge,” which delivered on its
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Jun 29, 2017
Six years ago, I traveled through rural Western Kenya to gather stories about Alfred Ochola’s one-man mission to restore oral rehydration therapy (ORT) corners in local hospitals. Though I was there to listen and observe, Alfred handed me a hot
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Mar 02, 2017
Welcome to the brand spanking new DefeatDD.org! It’s the same crew, same priorities, and (mostly) the same content – just with an updated look, feel, and organization.
As the DefeatDD team took on this website redesign, friends and colleagues
Blog
Jan 12, 2017
Just prior to starting at PATH, Fred went kayak camping for several days on the New River (one of the nation’s oldest rivers, which flows north), starting in western North Carolina and ending up in Virginia.
I’ll admit that I was predisposed to
Blog
Dec 07, 2016
"The sun never sets on the Enterobax Empire." Illustration by Ishir Sharma, age 13.
It was quite a productive week for me at last month's ASTMH Annual Meeting. I met several interesting researchers, attended symposia about the promise of ETEC
Blog
Nov 12, 2016
What makes a winning haiku?
Hmm. I should know, shouldn’t I? This is DefeatDD’s third Poo Haiku campaign, so I’ve had plenty of time to think it over.
Do the best haikus have the highest data-to-syllable ratio? Kat Kelley’s haiku hit it out
Blog
Oct 18, 2016
Don't let this haiku intimidate you. Rhyming is totally optional!
Announcing the return of our beloved Poo Haiku campaign has been a reward in and of itself. Much as I love poo-etry, my enthusiasm is often eclipsed by DefeatDD partners and
Blog
Oct 13, 2016
You might know that handwashing makes a huge impact when it comes to preventing diarrhea: if everyone made handwashing a habit, diarrhea risk would drop by nearly half! But did you know that good handwashing and hygiene habits can also help children
Blog
Oct 05, 2016
Do you remember that episode of the Magic School Bus where the class shrinks into a bite-sized morsel to take a journey through the digestive system? It’s one of my favorites! Since a shrink ray is out of scope for our budget (maybe next year),
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Jul 12, 2016
Long-term gut damage, called environmental enteropathy, catalyzes a chain reaction that limits the chances of children and communities to overcome a cycle of poor health.
There's a plot twist in the global landscape of diarrheal disease, and the
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Jun 21, 2016
This graphic appears in USAID's 2016 Acting on the Call Report.
“This is the story of my life, and it begins the same as everyone else's,” says the narrator of “To Keep a Promise.” It's sweeping and intimate all at once, because it tells the human
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Jun 13, 2016
A first photo of my hours-old niece, who joined the world in April 2013.
“Aunt Hopey, stand UP!” commands my three-year-old niece from atop her parents' bed, pulling me up into her imaginary kingdom (with surprising force, I might add!) and
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Nov 10, 2015
Health workers transport pneumonia and rotavirus vaccines across Tanzania. Photo credit: PATH/Doune Porter.
Two years ago, Dr. Namala Mkopi, pediatrician and Shot@Life Global Immunization Fellow, celebrated Tanzania's dual introduction of
Blog
Sep 22, 2015
“The results communicate a clear message: We can choose a better future for the world's children.”
I love that sentence from UNICEF's most recent A Promise Renewed progress report. The fact that we have a choice makes two essential points: (1)
Blog
Jul 15, 2015
It started with more than 500 global health innovations submitted by people in more than 50 countries.
Filtered through more than 60 independent health experts and a rating scale measuring factors like affordability, accessibility, and
Blog
May 27, 2015
For the purpose of our DefeatDD Initiative - which is, of course, to defeat diarrheal disease - we focus interventions that support child health through the age of five. As such, we don't talk about menstrual hygiene a lot, but that doesn't mean we'
Blog
Feb 27, 2015
DefeatDD is a team of movie buffs. So you can imagine our excitement when we saw this photo of our pal Thorsten Kiefer of WASH United with Patricia Arquette… holding our Places We Go toilet calendar! We think the diarrhea crisis is big news, but it'
Blog
Dec 17, 2014
This is one of my favorite photos: the joy and playfulness of these children is a great reminder of why we do what we do! Photo credit: PATH.
In our last post, Deb talked about the exciting yet intimidating early days of the DefeatDD initiative
Blog
Oct 01, 2014
“Hello? Are we together?” That's the first sentence of our new story series, “Together against diarrhea.” We borrowed it from our colleague, Alfred.
Whenever Alfred breaks from a moving story or a passionate argument with this affable refrain, it's
Blog
Sep 12, 2014
Last year around this time, we had our doubts about whether a toilet calendar concept would fly - or whether it would get flushed down the drain (I know, I know - I can't help myself).
I remember our graphic designer's trepidation; a toilet-themed
Blog
May 28, 2014
May 28th is Menstrual Hygiene Day! Though my excitement has occasionally been met with raised eyebrows and puzzled expressions, I couldn't be more thrilled for the global attention to this crucial yet neglected issue.
You see, like diarrhea,
Blog
May 21, 2014
If you move in global health circles, you may have had the good fortune to meet soccer star (and ONE Campaign Global Health Policy Director) Erin Hohlfelder. In her recent blog, she reflects on how access to lifesaving immunizations gave her the
Blog
Feb 20, 2014
Every year on World Water Day (March 22), we celebrate the lifesaving impact of water: a foundation for healthy children, families, and communities. Water is a basic need that connectsus all, regardless of where we live. So this year, we invite you
Other
Sep 25, 2013
An early submission from World Bank/Water and Sanitation Program: Toni Sittoni.
I won't lie to you. When I told our graphic designer about our idea, he was skeptical (maybe even a little freaked out). A calendar of toilets?! I'll admit, it's
Blog
Jan 16, 2013
In a recent survey completed by PATH on perceptions of ORS and zinc in India and Kenya, caregivers in both countries demonstrated some encouraging similarities in knowledge and behavior:
· More than 90% of caregivers recognize the
Blog
Oct 11, 2012
Update: The contest is closed, but the conversation shouldn't be! Keep on sharing with the hashtag #poohaiku. For inspiration, see the winning haikus here.
What inspired us to create the Poo Haiku Contest? We couldn't have said it better than @
Blog
Aug 07, 2012
Many of you already know about our team's recent trip to Zambia to document diarrheal disease control efforts, but you might not know that we also spent a few extra days to fall off of the social media grid and drink in the beauty of the
Blog
Jul 12, 2012
I don't think any of us expected to be deeply moved during an informational interview at Zambia's Ministry of Health, a stop typically made to gather facts and figures rather than inspiration.
In a crowded room with thick binders filling an
Blog
May 02, 2012
At USAID's "Every Child Deserves a 5th Birthday" briefing, USAID Administrator Raj Shah proudly displays a photo of one of his little ones, who had just graduated from her play group.
I've always had a soft spot for revolutionary people and ideas,
Blog
Oct 14, 2011
Like most people, I adore food. I love that one of my first daily responsibilities (to myself and to all around me) is to eat a large, healthy breakfast (followed swiftly by my morning coffee). Beyond just satisfying my taste buds, it's what the
Blog
Sep 14, 2011
Call it what you will: joining up or combining interventions, integration or disaggregation. Whatever you call it, it is essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and to alleviating poverty and disease. We can't agree more with
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Aug 25, 2011
Reposted with permission from End the Neglect
In my work to raise awareness about the global burden of diarrheal disease, I read a lot about the many benefits of safe water and sanitation, including the promise it holds for girls and women. But
Blog
Jun 10, 2011
Reposted from our friends at Project WET
Now that we've gotten the hang of managing a website, blog, Twitter, and Flickr account, Team defeatDD is thrilled to share that we are expanding our social media horizons with Facebook, YouTube, and
Blog
Apr 14, 2011
In the village of Kamusinga, Kenya, parents learn about basic diarrheal disease prevention strategies from a community health volunteer.
Memories of my stay in the bustling border town of Busia, Kenya, fill me with optimism. Last October, I
Blog
Dec 02, 2010
During my recent trip to Kenya, my mission was to explore the ways we can better engage women as advocates for child health.
In several interviews with health care workers, NGOs, and community leaders, I repeatedly heard the words, “Just give women
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Nov 24, 2010
I spent last Friday evening celebrating toilets and talking to a group of nerds about the deadly global impact of diarrheal disease and the solutions to defeat it.
Public speaking doesn't typically make me nervous, but on Friday, I took advantage
Blog
Sep 01, 2010
A room with benches, plastic containers, and oral rehydration solution (ORS): these are the simple tools that furnish a typical oral rehydration therapy (ORT) corner. In the 1980's, this highly effective, low-cost intervention tremendously impacted
Photo gallery
Aug 27, 2010
Picture the complicated everyday life of a mother in a developing country.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked audience members to call up this mental image as she discussed the President's Global Health Initiative last week, and its aim to be
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